Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

adventures / photo / South Africa / Wednesday — Comments Off
10
Jun 26

Our flight out of Cape Town was canceled

We should be in the United States. We are not. Here is what happened. Remember how, on Monday, I said it was an indoor, rainy kind of day? And remember how there was a haze and a fog and a low cloud cover yesterday? That’s going to come up.

One of our former professors and colleagues was at the next hotel over, also for the conference. We picked her up in our Uber and went across town to the airport. I carried most of her things because she is in a knee brace and on a cane. I also carried my things, which I’ve gotten down to an overstuffed backpack. We checked our checked bags at the check-in counter. Check. We passed through security. This moved quickly. We passed through the border control point. This took more time. But that’s OK, we were at the airport hilariously early, it turns out, for our overnight flight. We went to the lounge, but airport lounges, no matter where you go in the world it seems, are one of the few places that concern themselves with the number of people inside. We were turned away. We found another lounge. We waited until it was time to go to the gate.

We went to the gate. Or toward it. We waited for the sectional boarding process, which was, in truth, a sectional-just-come-this-way process. In between, though, was another security checkpoint. This was a manual process. And it could take a long time. Or it could take no time. This was not thorough or consistent. Also, my backpack has 10 pockets (that I’m aware of) and I had stuff everywhere. I mentally steeled myself for a woman to pull everything out, one-by-one, and explaining what this charger does, or why I have so many Band-Aids and the like. She glanced into two pockets and decided I was harmless.

Remember those views from Table Mountain yesterday? This was one of them. We’re looking down on the clouds and the city below.

Last night I was watching something like that roll into the airport. Never mind, though, because eventually our section of the plane was called to board. I could not convince our friend to go on early, despite her many pieces of carry-on luggage, her cane, and her limp. But the number was called and we took the long walk to Namibia, or our plane, whichever one came to first. Boarded, got settled. Waited. Waited.

Waited.

Over the course of a few hours we heard from various members of the flight crew and the messages could be distilled to this.

“You need 500 meters of visibility to take off. We don’t have that right now. Hopefully it’ll clear up.”

“One of our co-pilots has fallen ill. So we’re down a man. We’re still ready to fly. Waiting on this fog to clear.”

“We’re trying to find alternate routes. Maybe Puerto Rico. Doesn’t look good. And we’re almost out of time.”

Pilots, by law, can only work for so many hours a day. This is a long flight. When one pilot can’t work, the math changes and their flight window narrows. And this is a long flight.

By long flight, I mean retreat from the airport. Our flight was scheduled to depart Cape Town last night at 8:05 p.m. I think we arrived there at about 5 p.m. After waiting on the plane, leaving the plane, collecting our luggage, officially entering South Africa again, walking through the whole of the airport, finding an Uber — which is never not frustrating — and then driving back across town, we arrived here at 2:38 a.m.

My travel companions are take charge people and we most assuredly got out of the airport faster than the other passengers, some of whom waited for airline busses bound for who knows.

So we’re at the Westin. And this was our view from the lounge this morning. This is the Foreshore Freeway Bridge. This is downtown, in the central business district. Designed in the 1960s, built in the 70s, and ground to a halt in 1977 because of budget problems. There is talk of getting back to finishing the thing. But I’d bet a lot of people have grown used to the look of it. These days it is a tourist attraction.

We didn’t do anything today. Slept in because of the late night. Sat around a bit stunned at the events and trying to make sense of being rescheduled. Our friend, who we are now traveling with, is probably having the slowest day of her life. To be fair, she’s recovering from knee surgery and fighting off pneumonia.

The good news is we’re flying tonight. Our original plane has a similar itinerary and this is the atmosphere just before we head back to the airport, and home.

We must now grab our things, get downstairs, pile into another Uber and do it all again, for the first time.

adventures / history / photo / South Africa / Tuesday / video — Comments Off
09
Jun 26

The Table Mountain Experience

We woke up on our last day in Cape Town full of energy. We had one more stop to make before we head to the airport. But, first, the few from our room these last several days, with a little bit of cloud rolling in.

We were going up to the top of Table Mountain (because it is there) and we were a little worried about the views, but there’s a weather station up there and they reported clear skies with nice visibility all morning and, as you can see for yourself, the weather instruments are telling the truth.

You can walk or hike your way up the mountain, and it’s said to be something that’s challenging, but easy enough to do. You can also ride a cable car up to the top. And there’s a few things to consider here. I can walk anywhere. I can’t always take a ride up a gondola. And we couldn’t imagine a time where we thought “I sure do regret not walking up Table Mountain.” Also, this one has a rotating feature. You spin 360 degrees during the ascent and descent. Here are a few of the views, with more tidbits, trivia, notes and photos to follow.

The sign says Table Mountain is one of the new seven wonders of nature, an honor bestowed upon it by popular voting from 2007 through 2011. But new, of course, is a relative term. This formation is something like 500 million years old.

Here’s a small panoramic view from near that sign. Click to embiggen.

We are about 3,558 feet above sea level. And, up here, there are more than 2,000 plant species, most of them shrubs. (South Africa has its own floral kingdom, the Cape Floral Kingdom, one of just six for the entire planet.) More than 4 million people come up here a year, and the stubby plants, the fynbos, are an unexpected pleasure. Every single person up there today was loud, and talking about the most inane things possible.

Table Mountain is flanked by Devil’s Peak and Lion’s Head, all about three miles apart. The plateau we are on is about two miles, side to side.

The most common mammal on the mountain is the dassie, a rock hyrax. Just a few years ago, their population dropped off for still unknown reasons. Their lower numbers might explain the decline in the Verreaux’s eagle population in the region.

Table Mountain also has porcupines, mongooses, snakes, lizards, tortoises, and the Table Mountain ghost frog, and this is its only home. We were up there for a couple of hours, and for most of the time the clouds sat like this on the city below.

People have living here for at least 2,000 years, first by nomadists and then sheperds. The first European, a Portugese explorer named António de Saldanha sailed into the bay, climbed the mountain and named it Taboa do Cabo. They carved a cross into some of the rocks.

If you could see more of the sights below, you’d see Robben Island, which we visited this weekend. You might be able to see the cemetery at Signal Hill, if you knew where to look. People from all over the world have lived here, many not of their own accord, and people from all of the world have died here — perhaps not of their own accord.

All of the stone was transported here by rivers and mud moving down from the north. It all hardened over 100 million years, and the pressure and the heat gave us sandstone, and that’s why we can enjoy the rugged topography. But enjoy it while you can. In another 10 million years, give or take, this will all be worn down to sand.

The peninsula divides two bodies of water, different temperatures, different character and different species. The waters are also the resting place of more than 600 shipwrecks that have happened in the last four centuries. Shipwrecks and life in the water, flora and fauna on the land, it is a place of multitudes, as we’ve come to realize. And while we took the cable car up, there’s an old sign here that says there are some 300 walking and hiking routes up here.

It also has a lot of names. The indigenous Khoekhoe called it Hoerikwagoo, meaning mountain of the sea. The original Portugese name was Taboa do Cabo, Table of the cape. If you were here at night you might see the constellation Mons Mensa, which was given its name by an 18th century astronomer, who used the latin version of the mountain’s name. The peninsula and the mountain that rises from it has been a national park since 1998. That day it was called “a Gift to the Earth.”

It was a real treat to take it all in. This was my second of the new wonders of the world. (There are more of these lists than I realized.) Both of those visits, and indeed this whole trip, is because of my lovely photobombing bride.

But now we’re headed to the airport, and home.

adventures / food / Monday / South Africa — Comments Off
08
Jun 26

Eating all the fishes

Slow day today, here in Cape Town. The weather wasn’t the most cooperative, but that’s OK. Winter is trying to roll in here, and the weather has been charming throughout the trip. Seldom do we take a trip, in fact, where the weather doesn’t accommodate the day’s plans. We got rained on one day in Switzerland a few years ago. Two years ago we had some weather happen some diving in Mexico. It’s just going to happen that you get a day that invites you to stay inside.

This is what we did.

We attended a bit more conference. My lovely bride had a meeting at the conference. I sat and read, which was delightful. The rains came in. We went to the spa and got massages. They were quite nice. Not as good as my last one, but also I didn’t feel beaten up after this one, either. There are always trade offs in the muscle moving game. Also, I think I’m getting a bit better at learning to relax somewhere closer to the beginning of a massage than the end. Progress!

We went to dinner at a place everyone who has been to Cape Town told us about, Codfather, in Camps Bay. They say they have an extravagant menu. They do. Their website asks, “Why eat when you can feast?” and, friends, this is the sort of gastronomical rhetoric to which we can all abide.

This is how it works. You make a reservation. You rent an Uber. The Uber drives us over a small mountain pass and into the appropriate place. He tells you to enjoy your dinner. You go inside and upstairs. It’s crowded and every space is filled with tables and chairs and people. It is loud. The few places that aren’t filled with guests are packed full of employees. There is a great hustle to the place, which we haven’t seen a lot of lately and it’s really quite off-putting.

We were stuffed into a little corner besides some guys all pretending for one another that they’d been in special forces. (One of them might have been in the artillery. He yelled loud enough.) The staff comes to tell you what dinner is like. Every table gets the same sides. You can order your drinks at the table, but you must go up to the counter to order your fish. There are a handful of guys standing there, waiting for you. They’re going to guide you through the selection. They tell you about everything they have available.

They tell you about the waters were the fish were caught, local and farther away. They tell you how the waters were there this afternoon, when your dinner was hoisted from the sea. They tell you about the personality of the mother of the man who brought the fish to the shore.

You go through all of the cases like this. It takes several minutes, because they have an extravagant menu. And if you aren’t perfectly attuned to the guy, or if you are somehow distracted by the din of the place, you’ll miss something important, like what was playing on the radio in the truck that brought this food to the store. Once you’ve gone through all of the cases you tell the guy what you want. He repeats this to a man behind the counters. And he’s smiling in an overly friendly way. It’s loud enough that some things need to be repeated, and this new guy is smiling all the way. And then you get to pick the particular pieces you want, and that man is now smiling like a maniac.

We ordered what seemed like enough food, and then got what seemed like a little bit more. Something about the entire process makes you forget yourself, your inhibitions, your idea about what’s right for two people, and the entire notion of what anything costs, because you have no idea.

But food here is either reasonable or entirely inexpensive. And tonight’s meal, which turned out to be both a lot of food and precisely the right amount, somehow, was inexpensive. Also, it was delicious. Go to the Codfather. I’d go again.

After dinner we walked down the hill and around the corner because it was time for …

Caught an Uber back to the hotel to address our things. Tomorrow is our last day here, but we still have a lot to do.

adventures / history / photo / site / South Africa / video / weekend — Comments Off
07
Jun 26

Robben Island

The human spirit sometimes offers us two rare gifts. One of those offerings is a simple recognition of its largest capability, something which is difficult to understand. The rare willingness of the spirit to be overruled by the heart is the ultimate gift of self-possession. The capacity to look at what has been visited upon oneself, and to see beyond it, is a remarkable thing. It is selfless and it is with great intention, a promise to oneself. I will free myself from that which would imprison my nature, if not my body.

You see it from time to time. You see it in wonder. Often at its core is a willingness to offer forgiveness or understanding. Religion, insight, the bigger picture, they all have something to say about this. So does Modise.

He was a political prisoner at the notorious Robben Island. Now he is a guide on the island. He lives there, at the place where the state once held him, and he tells his story, and the story of the other prisoners, and the centuries old place. He bears the scars of his torture. He shows some of the physical ones, and talks of some of the mental ones, and that is only a part of his conversation with his guests, but certainly not all of it.

I realized, too late, that I should be taking notes of all of the things that he said, and so I don’t have a complete recitation to offer you. To try to share parts of it seems, somehow, insufficient and not to say inappropriate for what it would lack.

For years, Modise had a view of walls and barbed wire and the quarry where he was worked. He was incarcerated because, as a student, he stood for for racial equality. As an elder, he talks about forgiveness. Reconciliation. Understanding. To Modise, hating the people who held him here, to foster the bitterness of youth and nurture the anger of his jailtime would keep him a victim. He’s come to see that everyone he encountered, even the warders, the people that ran Robben Island, were all victims of apartheid.

The human spirit is full of wonder.

Modise rode with us on a bus around the island. We saw a lot of the buildings from the road, the quarry where the prisoners worked, the inmate cemetery, and the parts of the island that the prisoners knew nothing about. He dropped us off with another guide for a walking tour.

Have you ever been on a tour where guests hugged the guide at the end of the tour? I have. Today.

We had heard, of course, that Robben Island was a trip to take. You go out by ferry and follow the group along on a guided afternoon. We had heard that, at one time, there were a lot of the former prisoners giving the tours. That’s hard to contemplate. Wouldn’t you want to get as far away as possible? But people told us that this was the way to have taken in the experience, but that there were fewer and fewer of them giving tours today. The personal first-hand experience was becoming more rare. I asked Modise how many still gave tours. He said about a dozen. Then, he sent us inside to see the facility itself, as guided by another former inmate.

One of the mass cells.

There are holes cut into the walls, for light, but there were no windows, so the weather was unavoidable, no matter the weather. We were there on a pleasant, if gray, day. This was not, we are told, a comfortable place.

Our second guide had a great big booming voice. Rattled in your chest, bounced off the cement walls, came back to rattle your teeth. He talked with his hands, forever dancing, no matter if it was a moment of seriousness, or one of his well-trod jokes. The sleeves on his jacket, rubbing against his chest and stomach as he moved from the elbows, were his accompaniment, and all of it in this same, steady rhythm.

There’s a spare courtyard and along the back wall sits this tree. And our guide said that Nelson Mandela, who was a political prisoner here for 18 years, buried his autobiography behind it while he was writing it. It was smuggled out out of prison, and on to London. And I’m staring at this tree when, a week ago, I was at another prison that held Mandela, and at his home, staring at a tree that he planted and trying to remember the bit I have learned about trees in the local cultures, the epicenter of food, shelter, law, memory, trade, medicine, art, identity, the place to anchor your home, the place to hide your story.

While Mandela was here for 18 years, our first guide was here for five, but their time did not overlap. Our second guide was here for a bit longer, and he was here during some of Mandela’s later time. They slept on straw mats. They did hard labor. They were physically and verbally abused. Over time, some conditions marginally. How a prisoner was classified dictated what few privileges they might receive, even down to the number of guests or correspondence. In the late 1960s prisoners were given pants, an upgrade from the shorts they’d previously worn year-round. In 1973, somehow, Mandela managed a bed in his single-occupant cell. It was behind this lock.

Through these bars. And if you’re wondering if that paint was chipped by fingers and nails, you aren’t alone.

I lingered behind the group, staring at those bars, and it took a bit for it to register that this was Mandela’s cell. He lived in this 8-foot-by-7-foot space.

This was the end of the tour. You walked down the last of the corridor, away from those individual cells, and out into another hard, gravel courtyard. Our guide was standing at the gap in the wall, trying to count his guests. I told him I was not the last person out, there was one more guy behind me. I stopped and talked with him for a moment. Shook his hand. Thanked him for telling his story, for keeping this story alive. He smiled and pointed, “And now you can take your short walk to freedom.”

I stood and watched him walk across the front of the place, back to where he picked us up. A lone elderly gentleman, head down, strong shouldered, doing this thing he’s done for who knows how long. I wondered how much longer he would do it. I wondered if he was one of the men he talks about in that clip above. I wondered if I was right, when he told that part of the story, when I thought Simply another kind of political prisoner. I wondered what that meant. I wondered how many more people would get to hear these stories from people who had lived it themselves. I wondered about the rare moment of history that we are sometimes afforded like that and what is lost when that moment passes as the eye-witnesses and participants and survivors pass from us. I wonder about that tree.

Almost by chance, as I walked back toward the ferry, I saw these statues in the distance. We were being urged to hurry, and they were too far away to see. But I have since learned that they were in stalled last September. They are likenesses of six of the former political prisoners here. They are, Khotso Seatholo, Andimba Toivo ja Toivo, Robert Sobukwe,
Nelson Mandela, Krotoa, and Autshumato.

All but the last statue were produced by Cristina Salvoldi.

We took the ferry back to the mainland. The ride was just long enough for darkness to fall along the waterfront. (This shot will join the banners on the site one of these days.)

You come off the ferry, down the ramp, up some stairs, down some stairs, up some more stairs …

And into the night. We had dinner near the waterfront, smelling of dead fish and whatever the sailors next to us were smoking. It was one of those where you try to finish before you lose your patience, and before the rain returns. Also, there was a shuttle to catch back to our hotel. We got the last one back, for a late night in.

adventures / photo / South Africa / weekend — Comments Off
06
Jun 26

Touring more of the Western Cape province

We visited a 17th century winery today. This is part of the inner-workings of the famed Fairview Winery, which began in 1693. Think on that for a while.

This, they tell us, is where the magic happens. Grape juice goes in here and sits and does some stuff and so on.

The mixing, the fermentation, the initial aging of wine. I’m not sure that I realized there were different stages to the aging of grape.

This is far more interesting, far more romantic. Those stainless steel tanks are manufactured somewhere. Probably by machines, maybe brought by aliens. But artisans made these barrels. Or, at least, they once did.

I assume there are still coopers in South Africa doing this work by hand. I follow a guy on social media who still does this in Europe. He’s almost the last of his kind there. What will we do for barrels when this craft disappears? Who will help the wine industry? Or the repurposed wine barrel industry? People buy these from wineries when they are exhausted, having given their last to years of grape juice, and they become planters, or centerpieces of homes and businesses. Oh, the stories they could tell of the grapes they have known. Good seasons, bad seasons, random people taking a photo and walking away, never pondering this process from acorn to tree to saw to cooper to Fairview.

And while this place has been at it longer than the United States has been a country. (Or South Africa, too, for that matter.) They are also known for their cheeses. They produce all of this right there on the farm. We saw some of the goats.

Some of those cheeses were outrageous.

Wine labels are the most interesting thing. It’s an art, in that some are just there, some have a style that works for the viewer or drinker (or both!) and some just look like they are trying to hard. Here, I was amused that the catalog was broad enough to allow for all different sorts of artwork. This is just festive and evocative. It is a place you’ve never been, perhaps can never go, but suddenly you want to be there.

Classic color scheme and iconography, full of memories and long days and longer nights.

The standard issue label. Just stylized black text on a cream-white sticker. But the back tells the tale. Someone thought so highly of this batch they named it after Ma.

That also means that somewhere, in those rooms with the tanks and barrels, every so often someone has to give a sample a try and decide whether the new effort is also worthy of her name.

We went over to Stellenbosch, which is a college town and also a wine town. Established at the end of the 17th century, it has a population of just under 80,000 people. It’s 30 miles from Cape Town, and the glimpses we saw make it feel like a universe unto itself. Charming as can be. This is the Moederkerk (Mother Church) in Stellenbosch. It is the second oldest congregation of the Dutch Reformed Church in South Africa, and it traces its roots back to the 1680s.

Here’s an accidental photo I took of my lovely bride. Wasn’t even aware of this thumb clumsiness until I started editing these photos.

And we stopped in one store in Stellenbosch and this gentleman was telling the story of his town, his tribe, and his life. He was also offering little sips of this 15-year-old brandy. Nice fellow, I liked most of the composition here.

And if you like this sort of thing, too bad. I don’t think they’re shipping to the U.S. at the moment.

We had a lovely day. The sun was out. It was mild, but warm, but noticeably not summer. Winter has been trying to work its way into the region, and will get here soon enough, but this was a brilliant day to be outdoors, reveling in the sights and sounds, and thinking about those cheeses and wines.