Long Weekend

This past weekend was a long one: Monday was Heritage Day (and National Braai Day) in SA. I definitely made use of every single day to check off some major sites of my must-see list. On Saturday, my roommates and I went down the coast to Hermanus for the annual Whale Festival. Hermanus is known as the best land based whale watching spot in the world, and late September to early October is the time when the southern-right and hump-backed whales migrate to the waters around the Cape from Antarctica. The town certainly lived up to its reputation: we saw at least a dozen whales breaching and partly surfacing and just generally frolicking around. It was incredible how close to the shore the whales were, and I had a whale of a time (yes I know, ouch). We drove through Lowry’s Pass, over the mountains, to get to Hermanus, which was a beautiful drive. On the way back we chose the even more scenic route along the coast. It was reminiscent of Route 101 in California near Monterey: winding roads cut into the mountain-side and a sheer drop into the ocean on the other side. Gorgeous.

Hermanus is only a day trip, so on Sunday we decided to tackle Table Mountain. It is SA’s most visited tourist attraction and a World Heritage site. As the name suggests, it’s a flat-top mountain, like a table, and looks onto all of Cape Town. When clouds cover the mountain, they call it a tablecloth. The most fabulous thing about the mountain (and the nature reserve that surrounds it) is that it is right in the middle of this very cosmopolitan city. We planned to hike all the way to the top, but I couldn’t make it past the half-way point on the trail. It was seriously steep, and I am seriously out of shape! I’m planning to make sure that I make it to the top on my two feet by the end of this year. Anyway, we ended up taking a circuitous route along the edge of the mountain, rounding along the edge to come upon the Indian Ocean side of the mountain, before trekking down. And then we made like tourists and took the cable car up to the top of the mountain. We perched on a rock, popped open a bottle of champagne and took in the panoramic view.

While the entire weekend was great, Monday was definitely the icing on the cake. I went to a braai-and-watch-cricket shindig with a group of South-African-Indian friends. India won the World Cup in a thrilling match, but what made the victory sweeter was that it was over Pakistan. And it was really fun to watch cricket with a large group of supporters—I had shouted myself hoarse by the end of it. Several of the people at the braai, which is a South African barbecue and a national tradition, were vegetarian (being Indian), so the veggie options were plentiful even though most South Africans would shudder at the idea of a vegetarian braai.

My roommate Krista’s parents have been visiting Cape Town, and are going back home this week. They took us out to a fantastic dinner on Monday night to a swanky place called Baia on the Waterfront. It’s a beautiful restaurant overlooking the water, and it was the location of the last scene of Blood Diamond, so it was almost like having dinner with Leonardo DiCaprio. Almost.

I did take pictures all through the weekend, and you can find them here. Please note that taking pictures is not my way of enjoying a place, so I tend to take the bare minimum. One of these days, my roommates will generously share their pics to supplement the collection here, and there will be more pictures to see.