Photo: Steve Holyer It's hard to capture a good picture of a Southern Right Whale with my camera equipment, but easy to capture all the other whale watchers and their varieties of camera equipment - look carefully in the inset to make out the tail of a whale waving hello.

A Whale of a Tale Yesterday, I took a couple hour's drive around the Cape of Africa. The way carried me through various landscapes from typical looking beach resort towns, through gorgeous red rock formations, around hairpin turns with sharp drop-offs to the impressively surging surf below, and through the grey rocks of what appeared to be the moon. Finally my way led me along the coast of the Indian Ocean (more or less) to the quaint little town of Hermanus, which is one of the best whale watching spots in the whole world. Although whaling was legal into South Africa until quite recently, the practically disseminated whale population has returned in force thanks to the aggressive protection of the current government (as I was informed by the handy Hermanus whale watching brochure). The Southern Right Whale is most likely to put in an appearance in the bay of this little town, because the bay just happens to be the historic breeding and birthing grounds for that whale. October is mating season so I was practically guaranteed to see whales frolicking gaily in the spring-time waters just for the price of opening my eyes.

And whales frolicking gaily in the spring-time waters is exactly what I DID see. The whales (which are huge and ugly but somehow graceful beasts) do many tricks as if they are performing for the crowds of people on the shore waiting to photograph their every move. They lunge head first out of the water - jumping so that their entire impressive length clears the surface. They blow geysers when they vent their blow-holes. And the Southern Right Whale is even known for doing a strange little trick of "standing on it's head". No-one is quite sure why they do it, but these whales sometimes hang head down in the water waving their tale in the air for several minutes. Ok. That last trick I didn't see myself, but I did catch several of the beasts flicking their tails out of the water at me. Finally, a huge mother whale (no a huge mother whale, not a huge MOTHA' whale) cruised slowly along the very edge of the cliffs where I was standing to allow it's baby (which was also no small thing) to nurse. (I didn't catch that bit on film, but apparently this does happen from time to time because someone posted a picture of a mother and child whale cruising along the cliffs on this page.)

I climbed out on some rocks in the bay to contemplate life and friendships while I watched some more whales and a few sea-gulls. My thoughts were accompanied by the eerie squeals and calls that I had been hearing since I arrived in Hermanus. I was pretty thrilled because the tourist brochure that I had read back at the B+B said that sometimes visitors can hear the plaintive cries of whales calling to each other. While I expected whale calls to be lower pitched, I figured that the high squeal and it's equally high, but slightly differently pitched answer must be the cries of two whales - perhaps two whale lovers about to mate, or perhaps a whale mama and a whale baby. However, when I climbed up off the rocks I finally pinpointed the source of the squealing calls. Two workmen had spent the afternoon pushing poorly oiled wheelbarrows full of concrete powder back and forth along the boardwalk.

Photo: Steve Holyer

And Now for Another Experience ... ... the kind mom is glad to only know about after the fact.

As I was leaving Hermanus, I did my usual and made a wrong turn. Even though I was retracing my route into town, and even though I could see the highway on the horizon, I ended up making a wrong turn. A sad reality of modern-day South Africa is that many, many of the country's black people live in squatter communities and shanty towns. (Though I acknowledge it would be pretty hypocritical of someone who spent his formative years in Picayune, Mississippi - that precious coin in the Old South's purse - to make any judgements.) My wrong turn carried my directly into the Hermanus "township" - which would be the black area of town (did my classmates really call Picayune's equivelant "township" by the name N***ertown as recently as the 1980's?). As it was around 5:00 in the afternoon, the well-paved streets were full of people returning on foot from their day's labors. Feeling like I was somewhere where my white (well make that nicely tanned by the Sandy Bay sun) face and brand new budget rental car stood out of place, I thought I might solicit some help getting out of the area quickly (yes, I could see the highway, but that didn't mean I wouldn't keep making wrong turns until well into the night). I stopped, rolled down my window and asked a friendly looking older gentleman on the busy sidewalks for the way back to Cape Town.

He gave me the directions, and then he said I should make a U-Turn there in the center of the well-paved but empty road and let him into the car to show me the way. Having heard tales of the high crime-rate in South Africa I wondered if it was wise to open my door for the man. But I decided the best course of action would be to try and look open and friendly yet as worldly and wary as possible when driving around lost looking for a highway which was in plain sight on the horizon. After the gentleman got in the car he indicated he would ride with me to the edge to the township. As we passed many of the township's residents on the street the gentleman nodded and gestured, as if indicating "it's OK, I've got it under control". Then he told me never to stop and ask for directions in a township, because any other person might pull a gun on me and drive off in my car in seconds flat. I mumbled a hopefully friendly yet world-wary "is that so?", to which he answered "yes, it is", before I let him out at the edge of the township.

Personally, if my US based experience is any indication, I imagine that the crime in the townships is both serious AND seriously exaggerated for various reason in the telling. I never really felt threatened, but that might be because I'm just to durn naive. Also, it's fair to question my own racially motivated assumptions in my reactions, both in my desire to get out of town quickly, and to ask a stranger for help. But at any rate, my wrong turn gave me another instructive and memorable South African experience ...
posted by Steve at 10/15/2003 10:57:00 PM

Photo: Steve Holyer Cape Town and harbour from my camera

Hey, Everything's Upside Down I hadn't really thought much about what it would be like to come from a land down under (at least not since sometime in the 80's). But here I am - south of the equator in a land that's really down under. Everything's reversed here. The first thing I noticed when I arrived at the airport was that all the drivers were sitting on the wrong side of the car, and the second thing I noticed was that all the cars were driving on the wrong side of the road! I'm still trying to test the idea that the water flushes the other way around the toilet (one of those fuddy-duddy Internet sites explains that the swirl of water in the toilet isn't swirling long enough to be acted on by centrifugal forces ... not having seen it myself, and not one to take sides in a physics fight, I won't say which side is full of the stuff, I'll just report that some toilet-flushers at Nenya have reported seeing the stuff flush down the opposite way).

And, Beautifully Bronzed Annika pointed out that the sun here moves across the sky from right to left and not from left to right as it does back home. She noticed while sun-bathing on the Lake of Zürich (as we did together earlier this Summer) that you move your towel from left to right to follow the sun, and down here you move your towel from right to left - which of course works out correctly if you lie yourself in the best sunbathing position of facing the equator (which is "down" from Lake Zürich, but "up" from the Nenya Pool). Which brings me back to the best part of being here: the seasons are a backwards! Everyone is dieting to be ready for the beaches by December, and yesterday I sunned my buns on the Sandy Bay.

I have almost gotten used to driving on the left side of the road (which is the right side here) in my rental car. I just have to remember, as mommy always said, to look BOTH ways before crossing the street.


Wie, bitte? When I started language lessons with my current German teacher she said her goal, at least for our pronunciation, was to teach us to speak German with enough of a German accent that people wouldn't immediately answer us in English. In another example of the world turning upside down, I ordered my usual from a bartender (who turned out to be a German-boy from Dusseldorf) in the totally hot new Cape Town techno dance palace Confessions. Naturally, I ordered in English (which is one of the predominate mother-tongues in this part of South Africa), but to my surprise he answered me in German! ("Das macht Sieben Sud Afrikanisch Rand".)

I asked him the next time I bellied up to the bar why he spoke to me in German, and he said it was because he thought I was a German-boy - because of my accent!

While I like to think I surpassed my German teachers objectives, I actually ordered a Cola-Light, as my usual drink is called in Zürich and in Cape Town. And since I learned Cola-Light as a German word, I tend to pronounce it in that Germanic back of the throat half-swallowed sort of way. If I had ordered a Di-et Cah-oh-ke (or better yet a Di-et K'Coah-la) like we do back home, he would've known right away that I hail from Texas and the piney woods of Mississippi.
posted by Steve at 10/12/2003 10:27:00 PM

Zürich (by webcam) has I write this ... which is why I'm glad I'm writing from another hemisphere

The Sun That's Shining On My Face ... is the nice springtime sun over the cape of Africa. Yep, vacation time is here and I headed south of the equator. It's awesomely strange to think I'm actually standing in Africa, and instead of cold rainy fall it is steadily warming spring.

Last night, I made a tasty plate of the real variety of Züri G'schnätzlets for my dear friend and closet Schweizerin Annika who owns the delightfully beautiful Nenya B+B near Cape Town.

For the tasty goodness of Steve Holyer's Real Züri G'schnätzlets just follow the link. Engüete säme!
posted by Steve at 10/09/2003 11:28:00 AM

Memories of Home Well after just a few days, every corner nook and cranny of the house is occupied by an aluminum can filled to varying degrees of full with flat Coke Light. As much as I like the aluminumy taste, I think I'm going to switch back to the 2.5 liter plastic bottle.

Quotable "This is as if a bald eagle attacked the president of the United States," Frank Danielsohn, a longtime Las Vegan, said referring to the tragic tiger incident at the Las Vegas Mirage on Friday, as reported by Steve Friess in the Boston Globe.
posted by Steve at 10/05/2003 12:07:00 PM

Just for the Taste of It The local supermarket just started carrying Coke Light (that's Diet Coke) in a can. I just love that slightly aluminium taste that only comes from a finely aged can of Coke Light.
posted by Steve at 10/01/2003 06:22:00 PM

I've attempted to leave this blog in the state it was in early 2006 as a historical artifact, but Google broke my original Archive page. What you see above is a quick reconstruction to rebuild some archive functionality without altering the original blog layout (or researching too deeply into Blogspot).

Original Contents Copyright 2002 - J. Stephen Holyer. All Rights Reserved.