Into the Wild

                 Hello party people. Sorry about the long intermission between blogs; I’ve been struggling, I admit it. Since I last posted I had a week of invigorating class (maybe a slight exaggeration) along with a few good nights of hanging out at my house and going out to restaurants around town. They have an interesting habit of putting French fries on all of their sandwiches here, which I don’t mind at all.

Over the past weekend we went on a long hike Saturday, which was very fun.

We were led by a native fynbos expert, so he showed us some cool plants.

  I finally fully submerged myself in the ocean, which felt great. The other main event of the hike was our encounters with the baboons. We ate lunch on the beach and there was one other group of people down the beach a ways from us. While eating we saw a baboon come down a hill toward the other group of people. We were suspicious, and got up to go warn them. All of a sudden the baboons charged the rest of the way to the beach, kind of grunting along the way. The people freaked out and ran. The baboon then proceeded to stuff as much of their food as it could in its mouth, grabbed an ice cream container, and ran off. A “park ranger,” of sorts, armed with a sling shot (for scaring off baboons) gave chase, but had no chance. We laughed at the incident, and continued on our hike. When we got back to the parking lot, at the end of the hike, there was a baboon and her baby just sitting on a wall, very close to a bunch of tourists, who were gathering around taking pictures (Yes, we were among them.) The baboon sat, as if contemplating, for a long time, probably 20 minutes.

Eventually the people got bored and left the animal alone. That’s when the baboon acted. With her baby on her stomach, clinging on, she charged at a member of our group named Elliott (also my roommate) who was eating from a bag of peanuts. Since we had seen this behavior before, Elliott didn’t freak out, he stood his ground and held onto the peanuts. The baboon grabbed at the bag, but couldn’t wrench it from Elliott’s grasp, and a park ranger came over making loud sounds and brandishing a stick. The baboon ran off in the bush. Eventually the baboon returned and sat again on a different wall. She chose another tourist, with a bag of food, and charged at him. The man, hilariously, was very scared, and proceeded to drop his bag of food and his cell phone. The baboon grabbed the bag and was off into the bush again. These incidents might sound scarier than they actually were, because Cape baboons are a very small variety of baboon (probably about three feet tall) and throughout, none of the baboons actually touched the humans, they always just used scare tactics and grabbed for food. Basically, the baboons were outsmarting humans, not harming them. It was a cool experience to see these wild animals up-close, interacting with humans in such a confrontational way.

On Sunday of that weekend we went to a cricket match, which was an experience. It was a charity match between the Cape Town cricket team and the Cape Town rugby team, so everyone was having a fun, relaxed time.

My overall feeling after the game was that cricket is pretty much an excuse for South Africans to dress up, get together with friends, drink a lot of beer, and hang out in the sun. The cricket grounds are actually located directly across the street from the Castle Brewery, the largest beer brand in South Africa, so it’s pretty convenient. Needless to say, it was a very fun Sunday, and I can say I definitely understand cricket on a whole new level.

On Monday we left for a trip to the Cederberg, a remote area of South Africa directly north of Cape Town. We drove most of the day Monday, stopping at a few spots to see ancient cave paintings and scrawlings.

We stayed at a town called Lambert’s Bay on Monday night, which was a tiny fishing town with about 1,500 people. We didn’t do much, but I had a delicious fresh yellow tailed tuna filet for dinner, which I was happy about. The next day we made a quick stop at a place called “Bird Island.” It was a colony of thousands of gannets along with a bunch of other kind of seabirds. It was quite a spectacle.

Next we drove for a little while and arrived in the Cederberg in the afternoon. We stayed in small cabins near a cool, clear river, with a white sandy bottom, so needless to say we went swimming right away. We had a huge braai (bbq) the first night, and then went and looked at the stars on the beach until the wee hours of the morning (we also had a bongo and guitar, so we had plenty to keep us occupied.) The next day we went bright and early to a sustainable winery on the edge of the Cederberg, which had a really cool owner. He talked to u about his practices, which all centered around protecting the environment and such, and then we had a long wine tasting session. I had never done one of those, and I actually think I learned a good amount about wine, even in just the one wine tasting. The owner was also a good business man, because all the American students bought wine in his shop after the tasting… We spent most of the rest of the day hiking through the Cederberg, seeing the amazing scenery. We ended the night with another braai/ stargazing session (In the southern hemisphere the stars are very different, and way out in the African wilderness they were brighter than I had ever seen them before, so I was content just looking at them for a while.) 

The next day we woke up early to drive to Namaqualand. It was farther north, towards Namibia, and the land became more arid as we went. We took a very bumpy dirt road through the mountains, with some perilous drop-offs right next to us, so it was a stressful ride. But we made it to our destination unscathed, and in time for a lecture about the people in the area, as well as an opportunity to meet a few of them. We had a cold dinner buffet (because it was pushing 40 degrees Celsius, or about 105 degrees Fahrenheit) of delectable chicken, meatballs, and kooskoos, followed by fruit and ice cream for dessert. The next day (today actually) we woke up early and went to a small town (the name is escaping me now) with about 25 people living in it. It was way off into the arid, almost desert-like landscape, over an even bumpier dirt road. The people there “farm” Rooibos tea, a wild type a fynbos bush that they harvest to make tea. They collect a lot of the rooibos from the wild rooibos plants, as well as cultivate small patches of it, but it is very hard to farm it due to its essential interactions with the other plants around it, and due to its delicate ecosystem (they also say the wild tea tastes much better than the cultivated stuff... also, I got to hold the sickle they use to harvest it...)

They also have a small flock of sheep, and a few chickens. They also have a one room, thatched roof hut that they rent to tourists who wish to get a real African experience (it only costs about $15 a night for dinner, a bed for sleeping, breakfast in the morning, and a tour of the place...) The people there were all very friendly, and extremely knowledgeable of the surrounding plant life, which they used for medicine, starting fires, moisturizers, flavoring food, food itself, thatching the roofs of their huts, and probably other things that they forgot to mention. They lived a very simple, labor intensive existence, but they all seemed pretty happy, and relatively healthy. They fed us a breakfast of homemade bread (which we helped them make), jam, eggs, and sausage. All of the cooking was done in their cooking hut, over a wood fire. After we visited the town we went to the “tea court,” where they, and other villages which harvest the rooibos tea, chop up and spread out their raw tea bushes, which dry out and oxidize in the sun, to give the tea its red color and unique flavor. We helped them spread the tea with long bamboo rods, and got to talk to the workers there as well.

It was a very cool experience, talking to these people who live off the land, and have managed to survive happily in this rapidly modernizing world. We went to see these people because they have formed this rooibos tea cooperative, where they all process, package and market their tea together, so that they can compete with the larger tea producers. They are still struggling to keep up, and it is still very small scale in the grand scheme of things, but they are making a living on their own, which is very cool. I learned a lot from these hard-working people, who have no electricity, running water, or really free-time, but they still have high spirits, a sense of humor, and it seemed a smile on their faces.

It was more hard evidence that happiness is not necessarily linked to money. We drove home after a huge meal in a nearby town of lamb stew with rice (again, delicious) and made it to our house in Cape Town at about 7 PM my time. 

In the future I’ll try to blog shorter and more often, but once again, no promises, I like to keep you guys on your toes… much love from Cape Town, take it easy. Nate, over and out…