An encounter with dinner on the hoof

(Ralph)

One of the most remarkable things about Cape Town has to be its physical beauty.  The city is sited between wild and  steep mountains and the oceans (Atlantic on one side, Indian on the other) – no area of the city seems far from either.  Topography, climate, and light are strikingly similar to California – the city seems to me to be a combination of L.A. and San Francisco in many ways.

These are shots I took this morning walking around the neighborhood where our B&B is located.

This shot looks down from the top of Table Mountain (in the background of the shot on the left), a short drive and $15 cableway ride from town.

You see what I mean about a lovely setting!

I have to add that the quality of the accommodation and the restaurants has matched that of the surroundings.  In addition to being excellent, the dining is (by my elevated California standards) amazingly inexpensive.  We had a wonderful dinner last night with a very tasty local Chardonnay and the bill was just $30.  (Here’s a shot of the menu – adventurers that we are, we of course went for the Game section.  I had the gemsbok sirloin, which was superb.  I’ll leave it for those of you who know Jim’s predilections to guess his selection).

Not far from all this plenty is the grinding poverty of the townships.  We visited the District Six Museum yesterday, with exhibits documenting the demolition of an entire neighborhood and forced relocation of tens of thousands of black and colored residents during the 1960’s and 70’s.  The legacy of this kind of social policy seems to be disenfranchisement and desperation for many, homelessness, and high crime.  Similar fiascoes took place with urban renewal in the US, of course, and one has to go no further than Oakland, CA to see incredible poverty and plenty side by side.  But the scale of things here, and the depth of the gulf between the haves and have-nots, seems far greater here than anything I’ve seen before.

Crime is apparently a big problem in South Africa, and it seems to be very much a fact of life here.  Our B&B is on a quiet residential street, but there is a security guard at each corner during the night.  Here’s a collection of signs I snapped in my morning stroll around the neighborhood (these signs are everywhere):

Despite this rather menacing display, we have felt completely safe walking around Cape Town.  We were briefed at our B&B about areas to avoid at night, which were not places we’d venture in any case (our evening outings have been restricted to 3 blocks from home, and given the amount of wine we’ve been drinking, I’d say that’s a good thing).  People on the street have been friendly and we’ve had nice chats with strangers (aside from those with uncalled-for haberdashery critiques!).

And finally, our first wildlife sighting!  I spotted this on the morning stroll:

No one else seemed to pay the slightest attention – probably it’s similar to seeing a squirrel on Hillegass Avenue.  Nonetheless, I was a bit wary of walking past…

 

If you haven’t figured out what Jim had for dinner last night, this is a good clue.

 

 

 

We’re off now to the Wine County, after a brief detour to the beach where one of us (guess who) just HAS to take a swim in the Atlantic.