The Cape Mon
All the below post was correct at the time of writing. Sadly it's taken me this long to get my photos sorted out, so at last, here is my blog from South Africa. My trip was actually in Mid-November...
One week ago today, I was flying back from a truly wonderful week in South Africa.
It was the first time I had ever had the chance to travel to the continent of Africa, and that was special enough: I was obsessed with the place as a child, and Ben and I once learned the entire geography of all the countries, and could recite them all off, going around the whole coast, much to the amusement of the man sat behind us on a plane once, who thought it quite impressive!
It's also the first time I've ever been to the Southern Hemisphere, first time crossing the Equator, first time seeing Orion upside down in the sky etc, so I was very excited.
It all came about thanks to a few coincidences, but mainly due to the timing of the birth of my friend Simon's daughter, Darcy Grace. Simon runs Elegant Entertainment, the company that I do the surprise singing waiter gigs at weddings for. He has been opening up a branch of EE in Johannesburg over the past twelve months or so, and it is doing rather well. They've had a number of gigs over there already, and Simon has normally been able to go out there to take part, and to oversee the new singers, while they become more experienced. This time, however, the birth of little Darcy was due on the same weekend that there were two high-profile and important gigs in Cape Town. Obviously, Simon wasn't able to go out there at such an important family time, so i was thrilled when he asked me to go in his stead. I caused a bit of bother at work, because it was a week's worth of shifts that I was suddenly unable to do, but there was no way I was going to pass up such an amazing opportunity, so I had to bite the bullet, and take the flak.
Another box to tick: I was flown out to SA via Dubai. This added an enormous amount of time to my journey (seven hours to Dubai, two-hour layover, then nine hours to Cape Town), which at first I wasn't very happy about, but in hindsight, I'm really glad to have had the chance to see Dubai, as it's unlike any other place I've ever been to.
Flying in over the desert is quite surreal. The city is surrounded by little green squares, which are obviously the plots belonging to people with enough money to be able to irrigate, because outside these squares, there is nothing but sand. Just sand. It stretches out into the distance in a way that you think would only exist in a movie, or a fable.
Simon's sister, Brooke is running things out in South Africa, and she met me at the airport. I'd not met her before, but she looked after me brilliantly, and we got up to all sorts of wonderful things during the five days I had there.
The first night, after I'd settled into my guest house in Green Point, we went out to Camps Bay for a meal at the great Blues Restaurant. I give it the defintie article - I have no idea whether or not it is famous enough to warrant that, but the food there was delicious! I had a sirloin steak, and it was cooked to perfection. Mm mm!
We were joined at the restaurant by Matt. He is an English actor who has recently moved over to Cape Town, and will be joining the EE team over there, helping to look after stuff in Cape Town, when Brooke is in Jo'burg. Within minutes, we had discovered that we had a whole shedload of mutual friends. The acting fraternity is terribly small. (Not small enough that there are enough jobs to go round of course...)
That was Wednesday night last week, and I then fell into my bed and slept like the dead.
Thursday morning arrived, and the Summer weather over there was magnificent. I took myself off for a walk into the city, mostly following my nose, but I'd done a little bit of research before arriving, so i wasn't totally lost. Not totally, anyway - I did go a little off my course, but found my way again without too much trauma.
I ended up at the V&A Waterfront. The V&A is a harbour development, with some very swanky appartment blocks (some with their own yachts moored outside, like you would park a car on your drive!), and great touristy shops right on the water's edge. I was slightly surprised to find that here, V&A stands for "Victoria and Alfred", instead of what I was expecting, which is, naturally enough, "Victoria and Albert."
At first I thought perhaps it was an error that had perpetuated, and was now too entrenched to be changed. With a little bit of rooting around, however, I doscovered that the Albert in question is Queen Victoria's son, who was one of the first settlers in that part of the land.
Brooke then joined me, and we took the hire car to the foot of Table Mountain, so that we could catch the cable car to the top.
If you've never been to Cape Town, it's hard to imagine what Table Mountain is like. It's RIGHT THERE! You might imagine that it is some way off, but no: it's RIGHT THERE! It surrounds the city like a father's protective arm, and is utterly magnificent.
The cable car ride to the top is pretty scary. I'm not too good with heights, and I was a little bit nervous. The car itself is totally circular, and what I wasn't prepared for was the fact that the floor revolves all the way up to the top. I suppose this is so that everyone gets the chance to get all the best bits of the view, but it does mean that there is nothing to hold on to, as the handrails are fixed to the walls, which don't revolve, and in an environment where it's more than likely that people are going to be a little freaked out, you'd think that the most natural thing in the world would be the urge to want to hold on!
You get sucked up the side of the mountain in about 4 minutes, and the view is quite litterally breathtaking.
We explored the top for about three hours. If we'd had more time, we could have gone a lot further - you can easily spend the day up there, walking for miles, which I fully intend to do when I return sometime.
At one point, I got onto my backside, and shuffled forward til I was dangling my legs over the edge of the mountain. You'd never be able to do anything like that in the UK. In SA, they seem to assume that people will not be stupid enough to anything really dangerous, so they don't bother to nanny you by blocking stuff off.
I was looking down into the ravine below, through the cloud that had formed there, and it was well worth the scrotum-clenching sensation. Deep in the heart of the cloud below my dangling feet was a perfectly circular rainbow, and a double one at that, with the shadow of my head right in the centre of it! I spent ages trying to get the perfect picture, while Brooke stood behind me, worried that I was going over!
The cloud that forms at the top of the mountain is known locally as the tablecloth, and is really weird. It comes and goes, but once it is there, it just sits on the top, trailing its edges over the side of the Table. It arrived while we were up there, and we walked right into it. What had been brilliantly hot, and shirtless weather, was suddenly damp, and quite chilly.
Through the other side of the cloud, you get a spectacular view of the bay, with Robben Island, home for so long to Nelson Mandela, just out to sea.
You might think to yourself: "So, it's a mountain, and the view is nice. Why is he going on about it?" Well, until you see it for yourself, you can't understand just how magical it really is!
That evening, we had a rehearsal session booked in with the other guys that I was going to be performing with. Simon has been sourcing and rehearsing talented singers out there to perform in the gigs. I met Conroy, who has already done a few concerts for EE, and Germandt, a young tenor, who was going to be doing his first ever gig, with me the following night.
We all got on really well, and before long, I was very confident that they were both going to be brilliant. Meanwhile, I was rapidly going a deeper and deeper shade of scarlet, having not been able to find any suncream before getting up to the top of the Mountain! Stupid, I know, and I was really cross with myself, but once I was up there, and my last hope, the giftshop, had let me down, there wasn't much I could do!
My first gig out there was on the Friday evening. It was for the Bar Mitzvah of a young lad called Robbie, whose parents are incredibly wealthy! The sit-down meal for 80(!) was held outside on the marble terrace, next to the infinity pool, overlooking the ocean! Just amazing.
The gig itself was not without its challenges: the area we had to perform on was not well lit, and our slot wasn't going to be until after the sun had gone down. Being outside, there was a bit of a problem with atmospherics on my mic, which limited where I could move to even further, and in an unforeseen turn of events, the position where Craig, our sound operator had been placed was in complete darkness, so he struggled to see the cue sheet he had been given.
At the point in the show where Germandt, as the chef, pretends to sing really badly, he was doing such a good job of creating embarrassment that the Robbie's mother stopped him short, and told him to get off! When I ran on and tried to sort everything out, she kept telling me that they had heard enough, and we were to stop. For the life of me, I couldn't work out if she was serious or not, but I was being paid to sing, and sing is what I was going to do! I firmly ushered her to the side, and bulldozed my way into my first song, and after that, it was plain sailing. Talking to her afterwards, she said she had had so many of her guests telling her to do something, because "that dreadful man was ruining the evening," that it would have been stranger for her NOT to do something! It actually worked rather well, and all helped our subterfuge, but I have to admit, it was a bit of a hairy moment for me!
Saturday brought another set of rehearsals. We were joined by Pierre, who, at the time iof writing, has yet to do a gig for EE, but will be playing the role of the Maitre D' - the role that I often play. He is incredibly likeable, and reminded me a lot of my very dear friend Christopher, and I warmed to him immediately. He's going to be brilliant, and I wish him well with his first gig, which is coming up soon.
Brooke and I had a few hours to kill after the rehearsal, so we went down to Camps Bay for lunch. We ate in a little Italian restaurant on the beach front, and were served by the most dashingly handsome waiter you could imagine! He was incredibly charming, and I think we both were a little smitten! I had a delicious tuna steak, and Brooke had an enormous plate of King Prawns.
We went down to the beach for a bit of a paddle. The sand at Camp's Bay is pure brilliant white, and the sea is the most luxurious blue. The water is shallow for quite some distance out, so it is the perfect place for a paddle if you don't (as we didn't) have bathing costumes, and don't (which we didn't) want to get too wet.
Because of the way Cape Town is located on the West side of the Cape Penninsula, it is very much rooted in Atlantic waters, and even though the day was scorching, the water was still cold. Not, you understand, the achy-feet cold of British waters in Winter, but strikingly so, nonetheless. I'm told that the warmer water comes down the East side of the Penninsula, from the Indian Ocean, and as a result, the two side have very different types of fish living in them, which never meet in the middle!
Looking up the beach from the water, you get the most wonderful view of the Twelve Apostles, which is the range of mountains that lead off down the coast from the back end of the Table. The view is stunning, as you can see from the picture, and even though I was there, whenever I look at it, I get a little jealous of myself!
The second concert of the trip was on Saturday night, and was held at the enormous Grand West Casino, a little way out of the city. Brooke, Matt, Conroy, Germandt and I travelled out and congregated there. The heat was sweltering, but we were very glad to hear that the building was air-conditioned.
We were to be entertaining the guests at a huge charity fund-raising dinner, raising money for the Amy Biehl Foundation. It turned out to be a very special night indeed.
For those of you who don't know, Amy Biehl was a young American, who came over to South Africa in the 90s, just as Apartheid was coming to an end, and was working as a volunteer, encouraging the people of the townships around Cape Town to vote: teaching them the importance of their emerging democracy.
Tragically, one day, she was driving some of the women who had become her friends through Guguletu Township, when she was dragged from her car, and stoned and stabbed to death.
The four men who were found guilty of her murder were sentenced to eighteen years in prison. After four years, they applied for amnesty under the terms of the Truth and Reconcilliation Commission. Peter and Linda Biehl, Amy's parents, flew to Cape Town and supported the men's application. They were freed.
Peter and Linda set up the Amy Biehl Foundation, to carry on their daughter's work in striving for a better South Africa. The Foundation runs centres in Guguletu, teaching young people skills, both practical, and artistic, including music and dance. It gives the children of the Township a sense of social responsibility: shows them that there is more to life than just crime and guns and hatred. They can be something. Their lives are not mapped out for them, simply because of where they happen to have been born.
In an extraordinary twist, two of the men responsible for Amy's death now work for the Amy Biehl Foundation, furthering her work, and building a better future for the children of Guguletu.
Wow. It truly is mind-blowing. How can any person show such forgiveness and humanity in the face of such personal tragedy and loss?
The evening was highlighted by performances from many of the children whom the Foundation has helped, playing donated instruments, and showcasing traditional forms of dance. Their fire, and dynamism, and strength of spirit was incredible: these children might not have been born with much, but they performed with the energy and life that many trained professionals I've worked with over the years could learn a thing or two from. I certainly did!
It was an incredibly moving experience. Very humbling, and I'm proud and honoured to have been able to support the Foundation, and be a tiny part of their efforts to raise money so that they can continue their amazing and life-changing work.
Linda Biehl was there that night, and I made a beeline for her during our last number. We danced together for a short while, and I felt what an incredible lady she is coming off her in waves. Perhaps we can all learn from her. She has written, "I can't look at myself as a victim - it diminishes me as a person." She is truly remarkable, and an example to us all.
The whole evening was a triumph. We were very well looked after, and fed with the most amazing steak dinner after we had performed. The auction raised a very healthy sum of money, and the event organisers were very happy indeed. I was on such a high as we left that I didn't want the night to end.
...so I didn't let it! After getting back to my guest house, I changed, and walked into Green Point to a bar for a little nightcap to round off the evening.
People in South Africa are very friendly. There is none of the suspicion of strangers that you get across London. Before long, I had been invited to join a group of guys, and I spent a very pleasant couple of hours in their company. So to Preston, Graham, Craig and Jonathan, thank you for being so welcoming.
Sunday dawned, and my work in South Africa was done. My flight wasn't until half-past-six that evening, so Brooke and I took a drive down the Cape Penninsula to Cape Point.
En route, we stopped off at Boulders Beach, where there is a colony of penguins living wild. It is such a strange thing to see penguins in the hot weather. One always associates them with ice floes and freezing waters, but here they are, basking in the sun of the glorious South African Summer.
Apparently, not so very long ago, it was possible to join them on the beach, and be among them on the sand. Sadly, that's no longer possible, and the beach is separated from the tourists by fences, but the viewing platforms are great, and we spent quite a bit of time enjoying the little dinner-jacketed gentlemen going about their business.
To get to Cape Point, one must drive through the Table Mountain National Park. It's a bit of a misnomer, being nowhere near Table Mountain itself, but it's definitley worth the trip! Once through the gates, you are urged to keep doors and windows shut, as the wild baboons can be viscious, and are attracted by food! I was hoping we'd see some, and we weren't disappointed: even before we had entered the park, there was an enormous baboon sitting on one of the gate posts, eating a branch of some kind.
The landscape is very moor-like, and not dissimilar to that of the Yorkshire moors, although a closer inspection shows that the vegetation is nothing like what you see in the UK!
We had stopped the car so that I could get some pictures of a family of baboons sat a little way along a side road. I couldn't get any decent ones though, as there were other cars there doing the same thing, and we couldn't get ours close enough.
Just a little way further down the road, and I yelled at Brooke to stop the car. I couldn't believe my eyes: on the other side of the road, walking towards us, was a family of ostriches! This was an opportunity too good to miss, and throwing all caution to the wind, I leapt out of the car. I crossed the road, and started taking pictures of the majestic birds coming right towards me. The enormous father, resplendant in his signature black and white plummage, and the mottled brown mother bringing up the rear, were following six little brown and tan chicks, all standing about 18 inches high. I was merrily snapping away, when I became aware that the male was looking at me. I was only about ten feet in front of him, crouching on the road to get a better perspective, and he lowered his head to come down to my level, and looked me squarely in the eye.
Ah, I thought to myself, this is probably my cue to back away from his family, before he gets cross and starts to charge. I retreated to a safe distance, and they went on their way past me, down the road. It was one of the most exhilirating moments you could ever imagine. I loved it.
Cape Point itself is the most Southerly tip of Africa, and allegedly is the place where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet, although Brooke and I overheard a tour guide on the top of Table Mountiain saying that the actual meeting point is some miles further east. To get to the actual point, you have to take a little funnicular railway up a very steep hill. (Well, of course you can walk it if you want to, but it's a long way, and we didn't have a lot of time left before I was due at the airport.)
Once at the top, a few twisty, turny paths take you even higher, and then you are at the Cape Point Lighthouse, which looks out over the ocean. We didn't get to the very tip - I'm not sure that the public are allowed to, but it was quite odd to look out over it to the ocean beyond, and to think that the next land mass out there is Antarctica!
The day was wearing on though, so we retraced our steps, and got back on the road.
Before we got out of the National Park, though, Africa had one more treat for me.
We had to stop the car on the road, becasue a huge colony of baboons was blocking the way in both directions. There were some park rangers trying to shoo them off the road with red flags. I'm not sure if the flags were for the benefit of stopping motorists, or for attracting the attention of the baboons. Possibly both.
It meant that I was able to take some great footage of the baboons as they cavorted in the road, fought with each other, rubbed themselves on the tarmac, and generally did what baboons do! At last they decided to move on, and so could we. Simply wonderful!
And so, my trip to Africa had come to an end. All that was left was for me to travel back to the airport, wish Brooke a fond farewell - she had been such a good host/chaperone/tour guide/friend, and I was sorry to say good bye - and fly back to London, once again, via Dubai.
On the flight to Dubai, I was sitting next to a very nice young man, and we chatted quite a lot. He was flying onward to Kazakhstan, to start a new life through his job as a visual merchandiser for Gap. He'd never been, was leaving his girlfriend behind in Cape Town, and had no idea what to expect from such an alien and unknown place. I thought how brave he was, and how excited he seemed to be to discover what such changes in his life would bring.
I thought then how much my short trip, and my encounter with the people at the Amy Biehl Foundation had changed me. No small amount, to be honest. Life is so precious, and so short, and you never know what is around the corner, good or bad. Be sure though, that change is inevitable, and that every experience you have changes you in some way. That ability to be changed by the world around you is how we grow, as people, as individuals, and as a world.
I plan to grow as much as I can.
And so this is me, signing off.
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