Table Mountain

I cut out of work early and took the cable care with Calleigh to the top of table mountain. It has been operating for 80 years, and I can't believe it took me this long to go up here.

This beaver looking thing is 1200 meters up and basking. A Dassie.

Cape Peninsula

That is ocean on the other side of these mountains.

Lions Head, Robben Island, Signal Hill, Cape Town Stadium, City Bowl

The sun was in my eyes, but the city is great.

Another thing great about the city is how well you can eat for relatively cheap. The HLS crew went to Auberginie, a really nice restaurant for my birthday/going away dinner. It is not for a few days, but everyone will be leaving either on my birthday or right after. For $50 we ate like kings.

The Sunset Moonrise Tradition

One thing I really like about Cape Town is how outdoorsy it is. Hiking remains a pretty bougie activity, but it is still great. A tradition is that on the three or so nights of the full moon, people climb the Lion's Head to watch the sun set and full moon rise, drink some wine at the top, and climb down by moonlight. And flashlight. This, objectively, is AWESOME. I can only imagine during the summer.

You can see the crowd ascending the mountain.

With the sun setting over the Atlantic.

Group shot, taken by one of the astronomers that lug up the telescopes every month.

LR- David, Cary, Adam, Josh- Adam's friend and Cary's former boss, Sarah- Josh's fiance, Calleigh-intern from UVA, and me.

People were just chilling out all over the rock.

David. The stadium is on the far left.

Cary will be mad at me for posting this.

CAPE TOWN

Supercheesy. We just have too many normal pictures.

I am really proud of myself for this picture. The full moon rising to the left of Table Mountain.

Red Red Wine- Wine Tasting in Stellenbosh

We went wine tasting on Saturday. The Western Cape includes the wine country surrounding Stellenbosh. We took an hour-long train ride out there and paid 400R for a 4 farm tour including lots of wine tasting. Lots.

Simonsur- #1

He opened this champagne with a sword. Which is awesome.

And a random Chameleon loved this guy.

The second place had something about goats in play.

Someplace dealing with wine production.

Everywhere we go, David wants a picture of his Barack Obama pose.

Cary is a super lightweight, so I played cleanup on her wine. There are sober kids in America.

Farm 3

I think this is actually what Hirsh's world looks like.

Farm 4. Cary still can't relax.

I put the camera away after this.

The wine was great. And inexpensive. But bringing it home would be a huge pain, so I will probably just buy it in the States.

We took a very sketch train ride back to Cape Town after grabbing a pint with some English guys we met studying at University of Edinburgh.

After the Burger Joint, it was definitely bedtime.

On the Job

After the World Cup ended, work has been a bit of a drag. The place where I work is very loud with everyone shouting into phones, and I have taken to wearing headphones.

The Protection of Information Bill is going through Parliament, and ODAC is one of several organizations trying to change some of the awful parts of the bill. The ANC has a huge majority in the parliament, and can basically do whatever they want. Watching them, most seem to be like the itinerant members of city councils or local governments who stridently and incoherently attempt to retain and secure their own power by railing against the past. Under the auspices of 'national interest' the government should be able to prevent any information from being released that it chooses. There was much comment about 'democracy being built on trust' and how the government should be trusted to do the right thing.

It is as if reacting to the exposure of all the rampant corruption in SA, they are trying to limit exposure rather than cut corruption. There were no claims of libel by the media or anything like that. This blog posting sums up my fascination well.

It strikes me as the type of bill that the Nixon administration would have tried to push if the Republican clout had been so substantial to eliminate possible impeachment proceedings and Tricky Dick had not resigned. There are not enough people angry about this. Imagine if Woodward and Bernstein had been publicly villainized by the government?

The ANC reminds me of the worst part of both parties. The xenophobic nationalism and appeal to cultural superiority of right-wing Republicans with the big government, race-conscious, and poor-pandering populism of the Democrats. In other words, the exact opposite of the brand of sensible libertarianism that I believe in and will stunt any political ambition.

Here is The Economist on the ANC.

Shark Cage Diving

David, Cary, and I called it an early night on Saturday because we had arranged to go shark diving on July 18th (Mandela day). We were picked up at 5:30 and driven to Gaansbai, 2 hours away. There was a terrible skipping dvd with music too loud on the way there, but once we were out on the water, all was well. We met some nice Canadian brothers doing a cross-Africa road trip.

Whale, diving.

Divemaster Steve.

It took a few hours, but we saw about 4 or 5 sharks. These things are freaking huge.
They baited them, just like in the Discovery Channel.
It was at the same spot that the sharks breach in Planet Earth.
We were the last group to get into the cage, and we had sat around for hours.
We felt like it was going to be amphibious assault.
I bought an indestructible, waterproof camera last summer.

But unfortunately there were not sharks right in front of me.
It still was a cool experience, though cold and uncomfortable.


We got unlucky. But it is like big fishing, but just with you as the bait.

We were tired and headed home. They played Transforemers on the way back.

Robben Island.

Hirsh, Nick, Dave, and Juberg went on a road-trip up the Garden Route and the coast of South Africa over the next week. This left Cary, David, and me in Cape Town for the week. It was really restful, and we went out to dinner at a few nice places.

On the 17th, Cary and I decided to take the earliest boat to Robben Island. It is probably the biggest destination activity in Cape Town. We had wanted to go the week before, but had been rained out. The boat over is a catamaran, so if the waves are too rough, then the tours are simply cancelled. The world cup prices were equivalent to the summer prices, but over the past few weeks, everything has returned to their off-season norms. The tickets were 100 Rand each.

The catamaran held 300 people, but the large boat still pitched enough on the waves to create that roller-coaster feeling that left some people sick.

The Stadium. Cloudy days are so awesome for pictures.

Signal Hill and the Lion's head. In the foreground you can see ducks skimming the surface.

Moored at Robben Island

The view was spectacular, but it felt awkward posing there.

Part of the workground. Where the draft of 'Long Walk to Freedom' was hidden.

Unused World War II artillery.

Cape Town on the way home.

Robben Island is an incredible place. A UNESCO World Heritage sight. It has been used by the inhabitants of the Western Cape as a location for 'undesirables' for centuries.

I had just read More than Just a Game: Soccer Against Apartheid, so I was fairly familiar with the history of the island.

During colonial times, a Zulu leader named Makana was exiled here, and perished escaping back to the mainland.

Makana is the name chosen for the Football Association that the prisoners put together. The league gave purpose to many of the players and is an incredible story.

During the entire history of the apartheid political prison, not a single prisoner committed suicide. Guards did.

On Nelson Mandela's 89th birthday, soccer players and former members of the teams of Makana shot 89 goals into the old goalposts on Robben Island, and FIFA inducted the organization into its realm as an honorary member. It is the first independent organization ever inducted.

An exile of the political struggle gave us a bus tour of the island. A former inmate of the prison gave us a tour of the interior.

Visiting Robben Island is heavy, even if you are not connected to the history. I was very frustrated by the Zimbabwean group of young men horseplaying around, talking on their cell phones and taking pictures.

I refer the troubling tourism problem to an excellent post by my friend Daniel Saver about his trip to the killing fields.

Going to school in Memphis, where racial tension from '68 still boils, I am used to the dialogue. The National Civil Rights Museum gives me more of a sense of complicit guilt than Robben does, of course.

But the prison was BUILT in the mid-sixties. And the percentage of blacks in America is equal to the percentage of whites in South Africa.

Jim Crow was awful no doubt, but Apartheid was somewhere between Jim Crow and slavery. And this is ended in the early 1990s, while I was alive.

I hate race-conscious debate--as it inherently degrades the principles of individual accountability and choice by implying that you are accountable for what you have not chosen--but I can understand the negativity I have experienced from blacks and coloureds while I have been in Africa.

Robben Island was a good reminder of some of the less shiny parts of the experience, much like the township run, but I don't need to visit again.