And along came suzie!
Always a glutton for punishment, Adam decided to up the ante on his time in Cape Town by traveling with not one woman, but two. We met Suzie while at a hostel in Cape Town. The proposal was simple. We would travel the surrounding areas of Cape Town as a trio thus reducing transportation and accommodation expenses. Although a bit of the vintage hipster granola type, Suzie came across as a fun and reliable travel partner so we said, what the heck and set off for adventure. Over the next week we rambled through the Southwest corner of Africa and took in some amazing sights.
First stop was Cape Point, I'll be publishing a separate post on that location later but for now, lets just call it windy.
After visiting the Point we wandered up to Simon's town to visit the local penguin population. There's something about small flightless birds that never loses its entertainment value. Here we were able to wander the beach with the penguins and interact directly with the little buggers. These guys were a riot, just tripping and crapping all over one another, priceless.
Next we puttered around False Bay to Hermanus, the Southern Right Whale capital of the world. Suzie, Ingrid and I camped on the beach and were able to watch the whales right from the shore. These whales make a 15,000km round trip each year to the Antarctic Ocean then back to Hermanus to Calve.
While we were there, the older males were teaching the younger males courting rituals that make holding doors and buying drinks look like child's play. These whales were breeching!, a.k.a. jumping completely out of the water! It was wild to watch the worlds largest mammals jumping, splashing, slapping their tails, waving their fins, and generally goofing off about 250m from shore. Made me wonder just how much rum was required to get those first sailors to hop in a wooden dingy and attempt to hunt such huge animals.
Leaving the whales behind we made our way at a leisurely pace on to wine country. It was during this segment of the journey that we discovered Suzie was not comfortable going more than 80km/h no matter what and felt the need to slow things down to about 40km/h for rugged terrain such as America's Nebraska. No matter, we have nothing but time.
While in Stellenbosch wine country, we stumbled across Simonsig, the winery that made two of the wines served at our wedding in Estonia. The employees were delighted to host their first Estonian and uncorked their best champagne.
We left wine country and headed North to flower country. It's still difficult to wrap our minds around the fact that we're in spring time here in the Southern Hemisphere, but it means the flowers are in bloom. (Guys, try not to lose your cool the way I did when I learned about flower season in the Cape)
In short, everything grows here in the cape. There is more flora variety in the Cape Point National Park then in all the British Isles. America has 37 varieties of some obscure blossoming flower all within California, South Africa has 14,000 (yes, 14,000) varieties of that flower on their western coast. "Flower Season" occurs right now, a few 100km North of Cape Town, when massive fields of these flowers come into bloom. It's Martha Stewart's dream garden and Woody Allen's nightmare all rolled into one.
Though he won't go so far as to call this "cool", Adam was impressed with a field of Lilly and Bird of Paradise, and other flowers that sell for several dollars each in the States. Here the locals use the lilly's as bandages?!? Oh, and the ginormous fields of pollen toting flowers has resulted in ginormous Bumble Bees and Wasps. Seriously, the Bumble Bees sound like Huey's and the Wasps look like they could take out a raccoon, it's really unnerving.
From flower country we rolled back to Cape Town along the coast and took in some getaway towns along the way. Yzerfontaine took the prize of Ingrid's favorite town on the trip with meticulously maintained beachfront cottages surrounded by white sand and purple flowers. We met Chris, she owns a cleaning company, and she took us inside a beachfront home imported from Bali. The home consisted of two glass walls and if it weren't for the neighbors, it would have had four. Simply breathtaking.
Ultimately Suzie proved to be an excellent travel partner and only needed to be spurred on once. Should you be in the area and want to travel with Suzie, she can be reached at crazycombies.co.za . Speak to Cliff and ask for the vintage VW bus with the Chromed Snakehead gearshift and the Zebra window dressing, He'll treat you right and so will Suzie.
First stop was Cape Point, I'll be publishing a separate post on that location later but for now, lets just call it windy.
After visiting the Point we wandered up to Simon's town to visit the local penguin population. There's something about small flightless birds that never loses its entertainment value. Here we were able to wander the beach with the penguins and interact directly with the little buggers. These guys were a riot, just tripping and crapping all over one another, priceless.
Next we puttered around False Bay to Hermanus, the Southern Right Whale capital of the world. Suzie, Ingrid and I camped on the beach and were able to watch the whales right from the shore. These whales make a 15,000km round trip each year to the Antarctic Ocean then back to Hermanus to Calve.
While we were there, the older males were teaching the younger males courting rituals that make holding doors and buying drinks look like child's play. These whales were breeching!, a.k.a. jumping completely out of the water! It was wild to watch the worlds largest mammals jumping, splashing, slapping their tails, waving their fins, and generally goofing off about 250m from shore. Made me wonder just how much rum was required to get those first sailors to hop in a wooden dingy and attempt to hunt such huge animals.
Leaving the whales behind we made our way at a leisurely pace on to wine country. It was during this segment of the journey that we discovered Suzie was not comfortable going more than 80km/h no matter what and felt the need to slow things down to about 40km/h for rugged terrain such as America's Nebraska. No matter, we have nothing but time.
While in Stellenbosch wine country, we stumbled across Simonsig, the winery that made two of the wines served at our wedding in Estonia. The employees were delighted to host their first Estonian and uncorked their best champagne.
We left wine country and headed North to flower country. It's still difficult to wrap our minds around the fact that we're in spring time here in the Southern Hemisphere, but it means the flowers are in bloom. (Guys, try not to lose your cool the way I did when I learned about flower season in the Cape)
In short, everything grows here in the cape. There is more flora variety in the Cape Point National Park then in all the British Isles. America has 37 varieties of some obscure blossoming flower all within California, South Africa has 14,000 (yes, 14,000) varieties of that flower on their western coast. "Flower Season" occurs right now, a few 100km North of Cape Town, when massive fields of these flowers come into bloom. It's Martha Stewart's dream garden and Woody Allen's nightmare all rolled into one.
Though he won't go so far as to call this "cool", Adam was impressed with a field of Lilly and Bird of Paradise, and other flowers that sell for several dollars each in the States. Here the locals use the lilly's as bandages?!? Oh, and the ginormous fields of pollen toting flowers has resulted in ginormous Bumble Bees and Wasps. Seriously, the Bumble Bees sound like Huey's and the Wasps look like they could take out a raccoon, it's really unnerving.
From flower country we rolled back to Cape Town along the coast and took in some getaway towns along the way. Yzerfontaine took the prize of Ingrid's favorite town on the trip with meticulously maintained beachfront cottages surrounded by white sand and purple flowers. We met Chris, she owns a cleaning company, and she took us inside a beachfront home imported from Bali. The home consisted of two glass walls and if it weren't for the neighbors, it would have had four. Simply breathtaking.
Ultimately Suzie proved to be an excellent travel partner and only needed to be spurred on once. Should you be in the area and want to travel with Suzie, she can be reached at crazycombies.co.za . Speak to Cliff and ask for the vintage VW bus with the Chromed Snakehead gearshift and the Zebra window dressing, He'll treat you right and so will Suzie.
posted by aiechter at 3:09 AM
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