Our second day of wheels was shared with Ashley, a fellow
Bardian, also doing student work in South Africa. She is working at the
University here through a masters program at Vanderbilt. She is living in the
Gardens area near the college where there is a shuttle she can ride to and from
the school but no Citi-bus into town. There is a train station nearby, but it
has been in the news quite a bit lately and none of it for positive things. So
she gladly took a taxi to join us in our exploring in our rented car.
She looked the least like an Ashley of any Ashley I’ve ever
met, but I guess it was just the year of the Ashleys. She greeted me with a
hug, being a girl from Kansas despite being a graduate of Bard and former resident of the Big Apple,
roots run deep ya’ll. (Irony on this to come later.)
We would be remiss if we had started our trip any other way
than by the coast of Camp’s Bay by way of Whale Rock on the way to Hout Bay. It
did not disappoint. It was once again a most wondrous drive, for those of us
who were seeing it for the umpteenth time and for Ashley who was having her
virgin trip. We stopped at Hout Bay for breakfast (and Advil.. Ashley had
recently broken her elbow while disco roller skating but forewent the cast for
a brace since she was leaving the country) and I began my poor example of good
nutrition before my adult daughter and her friend. While they took advantage of
the more traditional offerings on the menu, I ordered the decadent chocolaty,
custardy dessert with my double Americano coffee. But we all left satisfied.
Next was the Chapman’s Peak Drive which was as majestic for
us our second (actually the third) time for us as the first. We stopped at a
different point which was an even better stop. Being a weekend, the place was
slammed with drivers, tour vans, busses, but also with cyclists and runners.
These people stay in shape doing this hill, and many were my age and older. I
look at them and think once again that I should be able to run again… if I just
take it slow…
We headed back into the national park towards Cape Point but
took a right turn toward a flatter area of a recent burn where some cyclists
were headed. It wasn’t long before we came upon antelope grazing over the newly
blooming ground where we got out and took pictures. Further on as we neared the
beach and I was taking video of the landscape we came upon an ostrich, up close
and personal. We didn’t get out, but could get great photographs by leaning
out. A bit further there were more, including a female. (I do think it’s the
female with the duller plumage.) There was a parking lot by the coast where the
girls very patiently allowed me to strip myself of my heavy tights which were
way too hot. I had dressed for winter, not autumn and was about to roast, plus
I had visions of getting my toes in the water having found Ashley to be a
fellow comrade in the adventuring into strange waters department. (She has
recently spent four years on an island in Japan and was pretty much always game
to venture into unknown water… fear not, siblings.. we didn’t) The coast was
wild and beautiful with a variety of birds and I so could have traversed the
rock and stuck my toes in, but out of consideration for my fearful daughter, I
did not. I merely admired it from afar.
From here we headed to the main attraction.. Point Cape.
After yesterday’s Planet of the Baboons experience, we were paranoidly working
on our game plan trying to coordinate how to get out of our car. I nearly
panicked when I realized that I had some lollipops in my vest pocket from our
dinner the night before. I locked them in the glove department but didn’t
expect that to keep out a determined baboon.
Imagine then, our surprise when the guards were standing
around calmly with not a baboon in sight, with crazy tourist munching on snacks
while getting out of their cars and headed to the shops. Unbelievably, we were
not to see a wild baboon all day. Since
I had been up the funicular the day before AND taken the walk to the very end,
I stayed behind while the girls went up and walked around the bottom. There
were several trails that I found EXTREMELY tempting… one in particular that led
to the coast where people were getting
into the water, several carrying their boards back and forth and coming to and
from the toilet in the wet suits… but I resisted and behaved myself as the
invalid I am supposed to be. I did walk a bit up the hill, but only when I
could do so among a larger group. I followed a particularly boisterous young
lady talking about how she was going to see a baboon. I shared with her my
experience of yesterday and said I thought this was going to be like bears in
the Smokies. Where are you from? She asked. It turns out that she was from the
University of North Carolina and knew exactly what I was talking about.
The girls didn’t stay long enough. I hope it wasn’t because
of worrying about me, but we did have other places to go. We set the GPS
towards Gordon’s Bay to go up towards Stellenborsch and headed through more of
this beautiful country. I enjoyed listening to the girls talk of Bard days and
New York days. They actually got to know each other better in New York than
they did while going to school at Bard.. Strange world, eh. And then, to my
horror, I listened to how the genteel Southern world of Vanderbilt had treated
this bright young woman. Not to go into too many details in the remote
possibility that someone reading this blog would connect the dots and bring
worse down upon this sweet innocent…but as one of our best and brightest…. she
looked around her at her university and was disturbed by discrepancies in race
relationships that she felt should not still exist in 2014 and with some other
young graduate students tried to start a dialogue among other students and
faculty about the situation. She was called into her advisor’s office and was
told that her ideas would probably be more appreciated in the North where she
came from (and should probably return to). Obviously, someone did not bother to
do their homework to know that she was a Midwestern girl from a conservative
background.… but in other words, Damn Yankee, go home! Now even for someone
from the birthplace of the Confederacy, it seems like an academic institution of
this statue should at least be more subtle than this. (Believe me there was
more to the story and it was worse.) So much for the need for affirmative
action being long over!
But I digress.
After wondering among more beautiful mountains and coast, we
stopped at a wonderful coastal restaurant that pulled us in with its name as
well as its ambience... Excuse My French. We sat on picnic tables with a
variety of chairs and benches in an open air room next to flirty boy toddlers
and their wet dogs, and were waited on by a flirty long haired French guy while
watching guys and birds and boats out on the water. I stuck with my bad example
and had a banana and Nutella crepe while the girls had cheesy tomato lunchy
kind of crepes. They were all delicious... as was the hot chocolate. We wondered briefly through some shops but it was getting
late at this point so we got back in the car and headed on. It was soon
apparent that we couldn’t get to the next point and needed to set the GPS back
to Cape Town. We did have some pretty tense moments as we drove by a very large
township. When the GPS told us to turn to the left ahead and we saw miles of
township to the left, I thought that I had certainly failed my job here as
protector, but it ended up that there was a major highway for us to turn onto.
It was an uncomfortable place on so many levels. I hated being afraid of such
poverty, and yet I knew that my fear had basis in reality and I hated that as
well. Ashley had actually been working in one of the townships during the day
and had felt safe and probably was, but nighttime on your own in a rental car
would have been an altogether different story. This is not my country and I don’t
really have any answers to its problems. My purpose in being here is all about my daughter. The best I can do is
spend my money in positive ways while I am here… and bring my daughter safely
home with me.
We managed to find Ashley’s apartment and then back to ours
as well. I DO love a GPS.. and fortunately we had the restaurant right down the
hill from our apartment so we always put that in as our go home base. This old
woman was just about tired when she hit the sack.
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