Cape Town -South Africa Gap Year Research Trip

Amusing, Gap Year, gap year South Africa, Research Trips, South-Africa
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“Arty Types, Seeing the sights and Yummy mummys”

As the plane arrived into Cape town I had a grin on my face. I was off, hitting the road and the adventure was continuing. I got my bag somewhat surprised to see it intact having been trough Jo berg baggage handling, it was a dead give away on the carousel as Flat Eric was strapped to it. A yellow monkey emerging through the rubber curtains was too much for one Muslim guy in a dress next to me. I turned on my phone to read a message from Sarah – She could not pick me up so I had to get a taxi into town to her offices. As I strolled outside in the direction of the taxi rank I was surprised not be be bounced on my the usual low lives. Jumping in a taxi being driven by the dead gangster rapper biggie smalls as we drove through a town ship was an interesting experience. He put on the world cup cricket – so I attempted to feign giving a shit about the sport: hey I thought I’d humour him as South Africa are still in the world cup cricket. He asked me were I was from and I told him and also that I was heading out to Australia. Where is all of your stuff he asked? “Stuff? Everything I own is in the boot of your car my man. So don’t loose it.”
When I got to Sarah’s office I looked ( and probably smelled – not that my personal hygiene was in question, it was just I was wearing a Tshirt that was a bit damp and starting to stink). I said hello and trundled through the office to wait for her to finish.

That evening we were going to go to a friend of hers boyfriends exhibition. An artist with an exhibition called “Babel”.

The place was full of Arty types talking bollocks about art. Literally everything thing coming out of their mouths was bullshit. I had to bite my tongue to not actually say what I was thinking (ie they were talking rubbish).

Afterwards Sarah and I went to dinner with the artists ( Where the levels of Alcohol claimed jurisdiction over my sense of saying the right thing and I told the Artist that he and his art was bollocks. He took it surprisingly well. That’s the problem with these “arty types” no fucking backbone.

On the way home, Sarah drove me passed the football stadium that they are rebuilding for the world cup.
“You can see it from our balcony” she said.
“Oh really?” I replied feigning interest
“Yeah, I’m going to take a picture of it every day until it is built so you can see how it progresses.”
I thought about this for a minute.
“So let me get this straight you are going to embark on a 2 year project so that you can put together a 5 second flicker book in order to bore the shit about of people in 2 years. Because lets face it after you have been working on it for 2 years, you are going to want to show somebody. And then they are going to have to pretend to be interested as well.”
“Yeah”
“Very good, just don’t show me!”
We got to Sarah and Skips place, very nice apartment in Moiulle point over looking the Sea. Very Swanky after 2 months in the bush.
The next day was devoted to exploring cape town on foot. I started by heading down to the V&A water front, the sun was out and cape town was looking good. I had lunch (consisting of beer) at the Nelson Mandela gateway – the ferry terminal for Robben Island, the tickets to go to Robben Island were full(and to be honest I was not that interested in seeing a prison.). I then wandered up to Long St, where I had yet more beer and got chatting to a waitress. She pointed me in the direction of a couple of places to go, so then I decided to go up table mountain.

So table mountain, as big rocks go, it is a good one. From every where in the city it pretty much dominates, unless you are looking out to sea, so I figured the views would be fairly impressive from the top. Hoped in a cab and got dropped off at the cable car station, where I paid an exorbitant amount to go up. As I was waiting this old English couple got talking to me, it was one of those bullshit small talk conversations that I was in no mood to have, but out of politeness I smiled and nodded as they began to bore me with the life story. This irritated me somewhat as I was enjoying a slight beer buzz and having my thoughts to myself, not having to bother with anyone else. Finally they ran out of stuff to gibber on to me about and carried on talking to each other about the weather in England. At this point possibly the ugliest woman that satan has every spawned took it apon her self to bark at me.
“Where are you guys from?” I didn’t answer as I had not noticed she was talking to me. “Hey Where you from?” this Toothy grin beamed at me. Her accent was this harsh Aussie butch queensland dialect.
“Oh Sorry, are you talking to me?”
“Where you from”
“England”.
“She attempted to talk to me about the cricket (not the best conversation starter for an ugly bird to have with me) so I was relieved when the old couple got bored of talking to each other and cut in.
Thank fuck for that I though and subtlety shimmed up the queue out of reach. Got I hope that is not a taste of Oz otherwise there will be serious trouble, that direct overly familiar approach really gets my goat. When I was finally safe from irritation, I grinned at how much of a grumpy bastard I can be.

So up I went in this revolving cable car, got to the top, froze, took a few photos and then when to see someone about how to walk back down, after all the weather was closing in at it was getting late ( thinking it would take 15 minutes). It takes more like 3 hours. Shit. So I had to pay another exorbitant amount to get back down, by which time I had very little money left on me, certainly not enough for a taxi even half way back. But being a resourceful chap I came up with a plan. Bribery.
I had a quiet word to a hop on hop off sight seeing bus driver – slipped him a couple of quid and he dropped me right outside Sarah’s apartment.

That evening I went out for dinner with Sarah and then she dropped me on Long St, she had to be at work early the next day but there was no way I was having an early night, I had 2 months of Spunk backed up in the bush. Tonight Cape town was in big trouble. I hit the bars on Long Street, being out on my own was a little strange at first, but not for long, I have a knack of talking to randoms easily, during the course of the night ( memory is a little hazy to be fair) I chatted to an English journalist, (She had just been living in Sydney herself and weirdly had just spent the last 2 months in Tzanneen – near my flight school), a young south African couple who I was doing Jagermeister slammers with ( the South Africans Love that shit. (No really it is shit). Then I ended up in another bar that was on the roof of this building, I got chatting to the barman – a guy called Oscar, a good man who made the worlds greatest Gin and tonic, but he did look like one of the monkeys. Weird looking. He took it apon himself to keep pouring me more shots of Jagermeister. Before I know it I was wasted and in a car going to a club called FTV with a Photographer called Duane.

The place was packed with fit birds, I went up to this late thirties something blonde woman and probably tried out some horrendous line (“Hey! Nice legs what time do they open?”) – memory if very sketchy at this point. She turned out to be not only very attractive, (kind of blonde Ex-model yummy mummy) but also incredibly dumb. Perfect. She slipped me her card, turns out she was the manager of the club, but on her night off. So we had several drinks together and getting friendly until 4 am. At which point the club was closing and she had to be on a flight to Joberg in 3 hours. I got back in a taxi and dragged myself back to Sarah’s where I had to wake her up because they had left the keys in the door. As you can imagine then next day was a write off.

South Africa Gap Year Research Trip

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