johannesburg >
I land after a seventeen-hour flight from JFK and realize sometime in-flight that I accidentally made my car reservation from O.R. Tambo for 8 p.m. (or 20h as they say) rather than 8 a.m. Avis resolves this issue handily once I rent a phone and grab a cappuccino. I am shown to a gleaming white Mercedes C-200, similar to the starter Benz that Hertz gave me last year. At 10 a.m. we alight to the Accenture office in Joburg, which is newly built and has nicer views than our New York suite’s 5th & 6th floors off Avenue of the Americas.
Even the pigeons are more attractive: a pair of what I believe to be common African doves chooses the eaves outside our workspace for their annual nest. One of them brings back building material from the neighboring soccer (they also use our word in SA!) field, which is terribly beautiful and pitiful. Since the team ends up working from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. and more at home every day, I think I’m probably projecting my affinity for this poor bird that flies off every twenty minutes in order to bring back a single twig in its beak. Occasionally the thing is too cumbersome for his delicate neck to support without tilting to a lop-side, and he looks up at his mate and frame house, seemingly perplexed at how he can possibly make things work after carrying his little burden all the way. This goes on for days and days, and with no firm resolution after our departure from SA, I can only hope that the maintenance people for the office haven’t found the nest and cleared it away.
Within a week, it becomes abundantly clear that Johannesburg, and South Africa in general, is a place that lives off automobile transport. After noticing that the only area in which I’m staying, eating, breathing and working is Sandton, the safest (read: richest and probably most problematically stratified) borough of the city, it also occurs to me that no one walks anywhere at any time. If at all possible, one takes the ribbons of World-Cup –new pavement that tie together the landscape as if it were a suspiciously wrapped present. Ehm… Crime is the key factor here, but the culture is another. I’m getting flashes of Texas. Afrikaans music on the radio bears a striking resemblance to country. A couple of spiders make morning stopovers in my shower just like their Houstonian cousins. There’s a clear love of charred meats, and for various reasons including biltong and the allure of braai, I have to report to my less hypocritical correspondents that after seven years of mostly loyal abstention, I am devouring the flesh of cute (and uncute) animals of land, sea, and air again, at least for a little bit. Grant me my meaty rumspringa for now so that I can return to the fold with renewed conviction, I think?
In any case, I’m increasingly convinced of the common saying amongst various people that South Africa is not really Africa, or that at least it’s a distant cousin. My hosts have arranged a delightful little B&B called the Thatchfoord Lodge for my stay, where the mascot is a hoopoe bird, a river runs past (albeit fenced and barb-wired like everything in the city), and the manager cooks fresh full-English breakfast every morning upon request. In addition to the beautiful pool and patio, the roof of the place is, appropriately, thatched. This is ridiculously charming. The fact that I already made Hyatt Diamond as well as Starwood Platinum this year (again) takes away any hypothetical inducement to go elsewhere. Actually, this fact only serves to remind me that there is really this thing called life outside the branding and acronymic codes of being a corporate road warrior.
cape town >
It’s not driving on the wrong side of the road that’s hard. It’s sitting on the wrong side of your car.
In a sort of recompense for losing American Labor day, my team’s senior manager Trey gives us a Friday to take off, and I elect to go to Cape Town for the weekend, hopping on a shuttle flight from JNB and offsetting the airfare and rental car with a very inexpensive stay at a backpackers’ lodge. My ambitions are high since the prior project manager, Trip, is an American who transferred to the South Africa office specifically so that he could live on the Western Cape. He raves to us about the landscape, the people, and the open sea where he kiteboards every weekend. He mentions the tours in South African wine country, cites comparisons to the Italian Amalfi Coast, and endorses the quality pub-hopping on Long Street. I think of a Chinese phrase about beautiful places that my dad likes to quote when pining for San Francisco or even New England – you san, you shui – “with mountains, with water.” Cape Town is a primordial bowl at the southwestern tip of the African continent formed from these elements. Given the hype, I am more or less expecting God’sOwnGardenonEarth.
This expectation proves absolutely, unequivocably true.
There are fifteen vertical feet of flowering plants visited by fairy warblers while you take a boardwalk stroll alongside the nesting ground of African penguins at Boulder Beach. These penguins hang out less than a stride’s length from your footsteps, often reposing supine on the ground as if they were jaded European sunbathers. They are spoiled: every inch of view along the way is lush green cover or shimmering sunlight coursing veins of white gold through the ocean’s littoral skin. The water flows indigo and turquoise over enormous boulders, rounding their shoulders at high tide. I linger for almost two hours along the single mile or so of the beach, making good use of the mere thirty-five rand admission fee with hundreds of pictures. I never take that many pictures. I also usually don’t become enthralled with touristy sites outside the urban core of a city, particularly when that city is described in wide-eyed terms as the meeting point of Africa and Europe. As it turns out, I never really properly explore the city over the weekend except for a healthy bit of drinking, since my hostel is on a salty Victorian strip that reminds me of San Francisco meeting New Orleans. Also, I felt obligated to buy a round for some friendly fellow Americans after I managed to accidentally talk my way into a free few hours’ freezing sleep in their room’s open bunk upon arrival at the LSB around 1 a.m. on Friday, fifteen hours early. Anyway, it’s the following afternoon. I am struck dumbfounded by the sight of baby penguinsa and would rather spend my time hunting down their stuffed likenesses at cheesy beachside gift shops that head back early to Long Street. It occurs to me that this would make a great vacation spot for my family.
As it is, my parents are under the impression that Africa will pretty much mean my certain death. Considering that upon landing, I spent fifteen minutes going 120kph on the N2 highway from airport to the city centre at midnight without realizing my headlights were off, this assumption might be correct. There is good reason to be dubious about the laxity of international driving restrictions considering that most of us are idiotic at engineering complicated systems outside of our familiar environments, and this only becomes worse when one is controlling a complicated system weighing two tons and generally moving at high speeds alongside other such devices. I was almost thwarted at CPT when after an hour or two of booking confusion, my first choice of vehicle turned out to have a manual transmission. I can’t drive stick (yet), and so I found myself running from the friendly yellow blazered reps at Hertz to the gregarious green blazered folks at Europcar in order to pay double (a.k.a. the stupid American rate) for a rather large Kia sedan. This is not good for the narrow streets of downtown, where later in the weekend I slam side mirrors with a VW as it idles outside a primary school, since I am a total f—-ing idiot. I give the driver 300 ZAR after she says she knows a guy who can fix her mirror and reassures me that it’s okay. In the meantime, I apologize and thank my lucky stars that the victim of my sideswipe was a soccer mom and not one of the drug dealers hanging out by the expat discotheques. No other major incidents occur over the weekend, although exciting things (and driver reactions) happen when I flick on the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal.
A lot of this happens as I make my way from the scene of the fender bender to my grand escape to Table Mountain National Park. At one point on the M6, an Afrikaans radio DJ narrates my line of traffic as it swerves around a hen and her baby goslings crossing the road. “[Incomprehensible Dutch amalgam] Freddie Mercury forever” and I’m splitting off the M6, winding around the mountain and gaping in awe since I’m now driving in a car commercial. The summit itself is neither the tallest nor most beautiful peak I’ve seen by a long shot, but its worn red face exudes something like age and demands something like piety. After the penguins and a long drive in, I will make it to the Cape Point lighthouse a bit before dusk. I fully embrace the cliché that it is breathtaking to be up there, feeling like I’m astride the entire world. On the hike back down, a rock hyrax surprises me, munching on some vines next to the stone steps leading up to the lookout. My South African teammate Pieter later tells me they call them meishont (sp?), or “mouse dog”. This is an apt description.
Eventually, I make it to the rocks at the Cape of Good Hope. There is apparently amazing whale-watching from this area, although I fail to spot anything except for several enormous Cape ostriches roaming around. In addition to being terrifyingly large and real up close, they are easily startled and gallop hilariously across the grass when another tourist tries to approach them. There is more menagerie on the returning drive– bontebok, a dark lizard, a lone baboon – and I end up unknowingly overstaying my time at the park, which carries a reprimand and a ticket. Again thanking my lucky stars that the one South African police station I visit is in sleepy Simons Town, it gets settled. I’m late because I took a detour against the advice of the navigator (read: “GPS” in the States) and split for the mysterious sign that said Olifantsbos, “elephant bush” at a fork in the road. After dozens of kilometers at slow speed, there is an open, darkening plane by the sea. The only footprints show three claws or cleft hoofs, and I sidestep a few piles of dung and some bloated sheets of seaweed, trying to see a flock of migrating terns. I don’t immediately notice that there are sandhoppers everywhere feeding on this patch of old death and re-ferment, where sailing ships used to wreck themselves and whale bones washed up on shore. I find out later that this area offers a cabin sleeping six for private eco-tourists, and I will be heftily fined for staying past dark and “deranging” (how French!) the poor creatures large and small. For now though, the beach is literally alive with swarms of arthropods sweeping between my toes. This is not a pleasant feeling at all, but it doesn’t really matter since I am watching the sun put the land to sleep at the southern tip of the world. It’s just me chasing the daylight and stopping too soon. I won’t catch up, but we’ll be at this again tomorrow.
When I walk back, it doesn’t feel like I’m sitting on the wrong side of the car anymore.
franschhoek >
The town lies along the famed Stellenbosch corridor, named for the French Huguenots that settled in the valley with their direct communion to Christ and their ways for tending grapevines. Since I heartily believe in one of these things at this point in my life and am still reserving judgment on the other, I hope the town agrees with me. It does so totally, living up to the quasi-European reputation. Art galleries and cafes line the streets with shops closing early (try 14h) on a Sunday. Most of the locals are reformed quirks and long-suffering commuters catering to the weekend populace – retired rich people and yuppie couples basking in the secular good life.
I’m not kidding myself and I’m not immune to these charms. A galleriste recommends her family’s place just up the R45 Paarl. Wending my way up from town, I overshoot and ascend mountain roads to catch a stunning glimpse of the namesake wine valley in full flower below. An enormous caterpillar stirs as I pull to the rocky shoulder and welcomes me with what I can only describe as a wag of its hairy tail. A quick portrait and then I see the valley below. I cannot do it justice in words; just go to the picasa. More excessive taking of pictures. While there’s still time, I reverse course to stop at La Petite Ferme, where I’m able to pick up some notable house rosé and a stunning view from the viognier’s restaurant to the ripening valley. There’s only time for one more place, and I make my way to Môreson, the gallerist’s recommendation. Driving in the Winelands is excellently droll: 80kph limits on the two-lane freeway are for the normal population, but it’s 40kph or less for the tipsy and/or confused out-of-towner taking the shoulder, plus additional gaps when enormous buses appear in front of your car and wish a glittery “God’s blessings upon you” from their back windows. Sliding from the shoulder to a slow gravel road takes the car past a guest house to the afternoon tasting. My menu leads me to two sparklings, a rosé, a pinot noir and a chardonnay. The delight of these wines precludes any thought of spitting the stuff out, except for the rosé, which carries an odd spice to it. I’m not really experienced with this stuff by any means, but they tell me one of the whites carries a fresh finish of green peppers from the oak casks and it unmistakably does. The chardonnay admirably rounds out the space between butter and acid, evokes images of meringue and cheesecake pairs. Both sparklings shine on the palate, with one in particular sending mouthfeel-flavor-serotonin signals straight up to my amygdala. The pinot noir tastes like the hands-down classiest bouquet of flowers I’ve ever stuffed into my mouth. Disbelieving any controversy over the honorable and delicious pinotage grape – a divisive hybrid character of South Africa’s own inventive provenance – and highly incredulous that Môreson does not have American distribution, I leave with two bottles after agonizing over the most worthy vintage for space in my carry-on baggage. I’m frankly a little drunk at this point but it is a pure joy and perfect for a sauntering wander through the vines.
The sun does me some good as my happy intoxication evaporates harmlessly right around closing time at 17h. I don’t catch the orchid nursery, but I make it out of the gourmet deli with a morsel of chocolate & nougat almost melting on my tongue before it’s out of the wrapper, and some delicious Spanish salami to stow away. I offer a lift to town when I see the girl who just recommended these in the food emporium. She’s walking home, or at least toward a lift, along the gravel path from the winery. She tells me that she was once studying law, and promptly agrees with me that even with the heat over the hike to work, this beats any corner office. As she alights, there’s a paper map in the seat with more names: Vrede en Lust, Rickety Bridge and Mont Rochelle to be next on my list, among the dozens of others… Even if it’s geographically inappropriate, that old Decemberists’ tune now floats in my head, the one that goes, Take a long dram with me… Oh, and Neko Case. Surrounded by all this earthly delight, yes. I’m an animal, too.
{pt. I}
