What else...well, the strike season has persisted. Yes, pretty much any major agency/constituency you can imagine has been involved with strikes or near-strikes. This includes taxis (=minibuses), trains, students, electricity companies, miners, you name it. I guess it’s that lovely time of year when contracts are renewed! In Pretoria even the South African National Defense Force went on strike, only to end up in a show down with the police, resulting in a mess of rubber bullets and cars set on fire. Gotta love it when the army battles the police...in the same country.
Mostly we haven’t been too affected by the strikes, aside from sometimes noticing large crowds of protesters on the streets and running into a few transportation issues. The train and minibus strikes made it particularly hard for some people to get to work. Some m2m employees who already travel almost 2 hours from the townships faced near impossible commutes without the trains and minibuses operating. Apparently when the minibuses strike, the drivers additionally threaten or at least put pressure on people not to take other forms of transportation as a replacement, making for an unpleasant dynamic in certain areas. I actually just heard on the news this morning about a shooting in Joburg involving minibus drivers taking aim at bus riders. The minibus drivers are acting out against the government trying to promote more official forms of transportation, for fear of losing their livelihood.
The only inconvenience we really had to deal with was a temporarily reduced train schedule, requiring us to drive to work and face more traffic than usual for a few days. However, driving in traffic certainly seemed preferable to the unknown world of trains running at reduced capacity, after experiencing one long stuck-in-the-train-station evening. One day last week we left the office and got on a packed train which was supposed to depart within a few minutes. We waited for about 15 minutes without moving, at which point an announcement was made and everyone started filing of the train and onto another one, so we followed suit. (It’s impossible to understand what the announcements say because the only loud speakers are outside of the train, as if it’s not hard enough to understand people when faced with the combination of bad quality sound systems and heavy accents.) After waiting on the new train for another 20 minutes or so, another announcement was made and people once again started filing out of the train and heading towards another one. In order to beat the crowds, the guy standing next to us even reached across to the train next door and opened the adjacent doors, then hopped through that train towards the destination train as opposed to going all the way around on the platform. Some people are born risk takers, I suppose! Once we managed to get to the third train, we prepared to wait again. A few minutes after boarding the new train, which by now was absolutely jam packed with annoyed passengers, the train we had just left, which was now 100% empty, departed the station. Go figure. We waited for a while longer until a horribly smelly drunk man shoved his way onto the train and stood right next to Byron and I, and with absolutely no space to breathe we quickly decided to abandon our efforts and just have dinner downtown before catching a taxi home once the traffic had cleared up a bit. Fortunately we have avoided any similar situations since, and at least the train strikes seem to be resolved...though I have a feeling we’ll still get to experience our fair share of similar incidents throughout the year.
Well, on to more exciting (or at least scenic) news. Last weekend Byron, Wenli, and I drove down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape Point Nature Reserve, located at the tip of the Cape of Good Hope. To orient you a bit (though you might just have to look at a map yourself), the City of Cape Town is actually (counter-intuitively so) located on the northern edge of the Cape of Good Hope, which itself is located on the South-Western corner of South Africa (and the continent for that matter). There are thus beautiful beaches that stretch about ¾ of the way around the peninsula, on the north, west, and south-eastern sides. The water on the eastern side (though technically not the Indian Ocean) is much warmer than the water on the western side, and at the very tip of the peninsula at Cape Point, they like to bill it as “where two oceans meet.”
Regardless of false advertising, it’s spectacularly beautiful. It took us about an hour to make the drive from our house down to the nature reserve, where the first thing we encountered in the parking lot was baboons. They are actually not something to be taken lightly, and you have to make sure you don’t have any food with you or else they may go for it and can be somewhat vicious in the process. Wenli and I were also told to keep our handbags close to our sides because apparently they have learned that women keep interesting things in those weird pouches they hold on to, and sometimes they will try to run off with them. Despite dire warnings, I have to say it was great fun to see the little baby baboons – so cute!
We spent the whole afternoon just wandering around the portion of the park that is at the very tip of the peninsula, exploring various trails winding between the light houses, rocky cliffs, and pristine beaches. Mostly we just stared in awe at the beauty of the scenery and of course took tons of pictures of the same thing. I guess that’s one of the luxuries of having a digital camera! Describing the scenery doesn’t come close to doing it justice, but hopefully some of the pictures below will help. Harsh cliff faces plunged down into spectacularly blue water, occasionally making room for a few beautiful bright white beaches, and mountains could be seen in every direction off in the distance...all in all, it’s pretty idyllic. It’s easy to see how so many ships have met their demise near this area though – with constant wind and sharp rocks abound, it certainly doesn’t look very hospitable to sea-farers.
Aside from being very windy, the day was perfect. We even managed to see a wild ostrich. And perhaps the most monumental event of the day, for me at least, was the fact that I actually drove us home half way – a huge step! I may not be any better at driving these days, but at least I’m braver!
This is actually a photo of Hout Bay, one of the myriad seaside communities that line the Cape Peninsula. We had lunch here (excellent fish and chips) a few weeks ago.
Cape Point
I know it's impossible to tell, but that's a lighthouse down there
Some of the local flora and fauna
Ostrich - yum!
Ok, so you can't really see anything, but there's a baby baboon in her lap!
Wow - I had no idea! Thanks for including us in your life experiences!!
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