Toby's journal

Hi guys,
I've been mostly-offline for a bit, but have caught up with a lot of emails today, but not Flickr or LJ.
Cape Town has been nice, and now I have photos of Dassies and Penguins and lovely landscapes and seascapes.. which I will eventually get around to uploading.
If you visit Cape Town, I can really recommend visiting the Kirstenbosch botanic gardens, as it's very nice.
Oh, and Bouchard Finlayson do a nice Pinot Noir.

In the meantime, here is a little story about a flower photo I posted a while ago:

I took this photo by the side of a small hiking trail in the Drakensberg region, near Cathedral Peak. I think, but I'm not sure, that it is an Erica verticillata.

If so, then it turns out it has quite a story:
It was thought to have become extinct by the 1960s, with the last recorded collection from the wild in 1908. (It survived in cultured botanic gardens for a while longer).

However staff at the Kirstenbosch Gardens were able to track down some seeds and cuttings:
In 1984 the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew, London, received a cutting from a private collection, which they forwarded to South Africa.
In 2001 the Heather Society of Britain found a plant in Southampton, and sent some cuttings to Kirstenbosch.

The plant was re-introduced into the wilds.. where I found it.


Adelaideans: Let me know if you'd like to catch up this Saturday? It's not going to be a big celebration or anything since I'll probably be knackered from a massive flight and jetlagged.. I'll have a party later, once I've got back in touch with more people.
I can do other times instead, too - after all, it's not like I have a job to go to during the week.. So it's in my interest to see people then too :)

So last week I picked up a wine tourist guide and flew down to Cape Town, with Liz who knows her away around the city, as well as the wineries. (The wine tourism guide was 200 pages, but fails to mention anything about individual vineyards beyond their opening times and contact details.)

Of the wineries in the Western Cape that we visited, notable ones I liked:
* The Sauvignon Blanc from Constantia Uitsig, who also have a nice cafe going.
* The Merlot from Delheim (also had a good shiraz), who were the most friendly and down-to-earth of the lot, and also did cheese platters.
* The Pinotage and Cabernet Sauvignon wines from Kanonkop topped the lot though - VERY nice wines, and I'll have to see if I can get hold of some bottles of these back in Australia..
(Does anyone there know? It would cost a lot to ship a case back to Adelaide, plus customs would have a field day with taxation on them.)

I liked Cape Town as a city, too. It feels totally and utterly different to Jo'burg and Gauteng. In Cape Town, the minibuses have route numbers on them, and I saw at least one white person getting out of one. The traffic in general was much calmer, and the roads less busy. People (black & white) were walking along streets, and they even had a paved pedestrianised mall. Houses generally didn't have fortress-like walls and electrified fences. I didn't see any shops or cafes that required one to be buzzed in through a security gate by the proprietor.

So I guess what I'm saying is that Cape Town didn't seem to have the paranoia, fear, hostility, segregation, etc. of Johannesburg. But maybe it does, but not in the CBD or areas I saw?
There were still beggars, more than in Jo'burg even, and I saw big shanty towns on the journey from the airport into town.

Also, I think I just felt more comfortable in CT because it was more familiar to me, in layout, and style. Similar types of shops/bars/clubs/restaurants are mostly grouped - eg. Long Street has a whole load of pubs, smaller restaurants, and bars with dance floors interspersed with coffee shops and alternative, urban and clubbing clothes shops. Kloof street seemed to be a lot of different restaurants, and some upmarket housing. Other shops spread out around the shopping centres and malls, with blocks of high-rise commercial buildings.
Down by the sandy beach surfers spent the friday afternoon catching waves, even in late autumn, while cafes pressed up against the esplanade.

On Friday I paddled in the ocean while looking up at the huge mountain above, with pretty houses dotted on the lower slopes. Over the weekend the weather turned dramatically, leading to vicious and almost horizontal rain and a crazy storm.. The weather still hasn't quite recovered, and it has been freezing since - today in Joburg I'm huddled over my laptop wearing a jumper and jacket, despite being sat next to a heater! Crazy stuff.

Liz & I attempted to find a superclub called Dockside, but despite it having various references from both blogs and tourism sites, we could not find it at all.. we eventually discovered that it had closed down years ago, and I sent some annoyed emails to the tourism websites that had mentioned it.
We did however get to visit a few other places, and I liked a club called Fiction on Long street. For eating, Mao gets my recommendation, as does this cute little mexican place just off the side of Long street.

I really liked the way the mountains and big hills surround Cape Town, and it makes for a great view from higher up. I'll be posting a bunch of photos from Cape Town and Table Mountain soon, but in the meantime, here's a shot of a freeway to nowhere from Cape Town:

Can anyone explain it? I don't know if they just never finished it, or if it is all that remains of something that was removed..