It's raining cyclists

One aspect that surprised me a lot about Cape Town (at least the little of it we have seen) is how many persons run and cycle. Having heard ad infinitum about the security situation, I was unprepared for the number of people I’ve seen on the road. It was really a most unexpected and pleasant surprise.

But we were even more surprised today, when the Cape Argus Cycle Tour, rode by our door. This is a massive timed race held annually. It starts in downtown Cape Town, heads down the peninsula (toward the Cape of Good Hope) and then rides up the peninsula, and finished in Green Point (about 5 miles further north from where we are). The race is 118km (under 75 miles) and has some significant climbs. And it literally rode by our door.

Cyclists ge t split up into numerous groups, based on ability and so on. The race started at 6:15am, with the men’s pro race, followed shortly (about 15min) by the women’s. But riders were starting at (decreasing) intervals until past 10:00am! Yeah, there were riders starting for a whole 4 hours! About 35,000 cyclists participated.

We knew the race would go by our door, so we got up early and turned on the TV to watch the broadcast. Once the pro peloton was near our place we ran upstairs and watched them go by. I went back up to watch the pro women (which, by that point had gotten mixed up with some the 40+ men). After a short nap (since we had gotten up so early) we went back up to watch some of the amateurs. This year the event was a great success, no doubt helped by the weather—it was sunny and warm without any wind (which is not always the case).

It was really inspiring to see all the amateurs ride by. With such large numbers, there are clearly riders of all abilities. Some take it very seriously and really race. Some do it for charity (all kinds). But for most it is a fun day in the saddle. Some riders dress up—like runners in Break to Breakers.

It really brought back many memories, and now I feel ready to get back on the saddle. Being here has really inspired me to get back in shape. We’ll see how long the inspiration lasts once my tights start burning on the way up Old La Honda :).

R

P.D. Robbie Hunter won the mens pro race (for those who care).

The Atlantic Ocean

I had written a lot about the amazing view we have of the Atlantic Ocean. But the official photographer has gone on strike and hasn’t taken any pictures of it. Today I decided to take matters into my own hands, so we can post a few photos here (after all, what’s the point of having a view if we can’t brag about it, right? :) ). Table Mountain, Lion’s Head, and the Twelve Disciples are sit behind us. We can see them from the parking lot, but we can’t see them from our apartment.

Apparently it can get really, really windy in Cape Town, but our beach is one of the (or the) most protected beaches on the peninsula—since the the mountains are right behind us. We’ve been lucky so far and it hasn’t been very windy—though once or twice we’ve seen fast moving clouds coming over Table Mountain.

Oh, and the water is really cold, and the surf is pretty rough. To give you an idea, dudes surf on our beach (and they wear full wet suits). Lots of people come to the beach, but very few venture into the water.

R

Malaria

Both Debby and I have tried to stay healthy while traveling. We’ve been conscientious of washing our hands, using hand sanitizer when there isn’t soap available, we got all of our immunizations, and we’ve been following a strict anti-malarial prophylaxis regime. We also brought a small “medicine cabinet” with us with all the basics. Fortunately we haven’t had to use it very often (knock on wood!).

We debated which immunizations to get and which anti-malarial pills to get quick a bit before starting our trip. Immunizations are great for the population at large, but they always carry a risk and, in my opinion, should not be taken lightly. Doctors always prescribe them, but when you read the fine print you realize it is not a risk-free decision. The rabies vaccine, for example, does not prevent the disease. It only give you more time before you need to get shots and it makes it easier to find the medication (if you have been immunized you require a simpler intervention).

We also had a small problem that we were moving around a lot. Some immunization regimes, like rabies, require multiple shots. We got all the 1-shot vaccinations in London and the rest we did in Paris, at the Institute Pasteur (which was kind of cool as that is where the first immunizations were developed).

The anti-malarial pills were another tricky decision. There are basically three choices; malarone, lariam, and doxycicline. Malarone is probably the best and the newest option, but also the most expensive (by far). Lariam is cheaper but makes you crazy—some people have severe side-effects and it can take some time for them to go away. Doxycicline is cheap and relatively side-effect free (it is an antibiotic). I think the main reason it is not used more is that it makes you sensitive to the sun, and, in women, can cause yeast infections. Since malaria is prevalent in tropical places the sensitive to the sun part is a real drawback.

Debby wanted to take lariam, as she was afraid of the side-effects of doxy and found malarone too expensive. Fortunately I convinced her that it was better to be poor and healthy than rich and crazy. So she is taking malarone. Malarone is nice to have because it can be used as a prophylaxis (to prevent the disease) and it is also a cure. I decided to use doxy. We bought enough of each for six months. I don’t seem to be suffering any side-effects from doxy (I’ve been tanning quite nicely if you ask me).

One advantage of malarone is you only need to take it for one week after you leave the high-risk areas. Doxy you have to take for three weeks. So while I have to take doxy all the time we are here in CT, Debby can take a break for a few weeks.

We’ve read a lot about malaria before leaving. But to me it always seemed somewhat impersonal; hard to imagine happening to me. Plus I know they make it sound worse than it is, to make sure people will take the pills. What brought it home was finding out the bar tender at Karamba (in Zanzibar) got malaria three times in a two year period! That’s right, while in college she got sick three times. Since then I’ve found out malaria is a really big problem in Zanzibar and Dar. We also found out a significant proportion of the cases in the coastal region of Tanzania are due to plasmodium falciparum, the nastiest form of malaria.

Here’s to staying healthy the remainder of the trip.

R

Prison

Cape Town, South Africa (3 March, 2008)

This is the main entrance to our flat here in Cape Town. You might notice more than a passing resemblance to a prison cell. But pretty much all flats in the complex have this kind of “security” gate, or so they are called by the local residents. What I find fascinating is the gate can only be opened with a key from the inside—it doesn’t have a handle. And the lock is so close to the frame it’s hard to turn the key—from the inside at least. In case of emergency, there’s no way we’ll be able to get out the door—we’ll have to jump out the window. Fortunately there are some sturdy trees right by our window so we should be able to get out with just some scratches.

By the way, our flat is inside a gated “compound”. There is a waist-high gate at the street entrance, with an automatic gate for which one needs a code or a frob. The gate is only waist high, but it has a nasty saw-tooth pattern at the top. And this seems to be a laid-back place. Some of the neighboring complexes have electric fence and/or barb-wire!

Also, everywhere you look you can see signs that aim (or so they seem) to deter crime. There are a million security and/or emergency response companies and their signs are on every property they protect. On the door of the rubbish closet in our complex is an interesting sign that indicates all the possessions of the residents are specially marked. Presumably so they can be identified and restored to the rightful owners by the police. Kind of like your clothes were when you went to summer camp.

I don’t know what compels people to live in such prisons. Clearly they do it to keep evil-doers out, but the security mechanisms bear an uncanny resemblance to those used to keep inmates in. The same happens in Mexico City, where people build 8-foot walls around their house. I’ve never seen barb-wire at a house in Mexico City. Then again, I haven’t been there for some time. Perhaps they’ve learned the trick by now.

It’s been very interesting to see how different security mechanism are used in different cities. In London our flat had a solid metal door (well, it had metal on the outside) with a “Chubb” lock. These are much in vogue in London as they are reputed to be un-pickable (and required by insurance companies). The key to these locks looks like an old-fashioned key, but the “bottom” is unique to each lock. You’ll get a better idea if you look at the Wikipedia article. This is the lock, by the way, for which we did not have a key the day the real-estate agent locked us out of the flat. They locksmith had to drill a small hole in the door to break the lock. This was followed by a very expensive visit by the landlady’s handy-man to replace the lock.

In Paris our flat has a sophisticated locking mechanism that had both vertical and horizontal dead-bolts, all of which were moved by the same key. I don’t know what this kind of lock is called, so I can’t find a picture for it. The key mechanism was waist-level near the door frame. As you turned the key, four horizontal bolts would slide into the frame plus two vertical ones; one at the top and one at the bottom. I always felt like I was closing Fort Knox when locking the door. We also had a metal door. In Paris and in London we lived in a larger building, which itself had a lock. In London we used a key, and in Paris a code.

All this security is in sharp contrast to the carefree ways of San Francisco, where millionaires feel comfortable with a simple lock on the door—and maybe an alarm system.

For now we’ll keep our fingers crossed and hope we don’t have to evacuate through the window…

R

The surf and tide are up today

Ther waves are beautiful to look at but dangerous to swim in. We've been watching people get tumbled all day. And the tide has pushed all the sun-bathers up against the wall as the waves cover almost the whole beach.

R

More photos

I added a few more photos to recent posts. If you are curious scroll down. Have we mentioned how nice it is to have high-speed Internet?


R

33° 56' 11.27, 18° 22' 40.44

Cape Town, South Africa (1 March 2008)

Sorry for not uploading a longer update yesterday (Friday). I ended up working on a more sophisticated posting environment. As you can see I can now also post pictures! yeah, I know, blogger, the blog service we are using, does this by default. But I’m an engineer and so I had to find the hard way to do it.

In case you haven’t figured it our, the numbers in the title are the coordinates of our place. If you fire up Google Earth and you type in the coordinates into the Fly-To thingy, it will take you to out location. Or use this kmz file. Let me know if it works (or not). You need Google Earth for it to work.

Our home phone number is +27-21-438-4059. So please call us! We would love to hear from you. Don’t remember if I mentioned already our flat has high-speed Internet! So we can browse all we want, talk on skype, chat on gmail, etc. At least for the next three weeks we are in Internet heaven. Oh, and we have a TV and a DVD player so we’ll have something to do at night.

The apartment complex is built from the road down to the beach and we are on the ground level, i.e. closest to the beach. We have designated parking, which is nice because Victoria Rd. is really busy and there is no parking at all. The parking garage is on the roof of the complex.

Inside our flat, the bedroom and bathroom are at the same level as the main entrance, with the kitchen and dinning/living room in a lower level. There is also a “sun room” off to the left side. We think it was meant to be an open balcony but the owner closed it off to make it easier to maintain. The apartment is nicely decorated and has a spectacular view. Though the photographer hasn’t taken a nice photo of the view, so you’ll have to take my word for now. If you have Google Earth you can look at the photos there.

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Cape Town seems like a really nice place, though we haven’t seen much of it yet. We are enjoying having a home and not having to pack up every night. We had planned to stay home and do laundry today as the apartment complex has a laundry. But the laundry room is only open Monday to Friday from 8:00 to 18:00. You read that right, it’s not open during the weekend because it “disturbs the tenants”. How anybody who works gets their laundry done is besides me. Perhaps they assume if you can afford to live here you can Alford to have you laundry done for you. Oh well. So no laundry but we still stayed home all day resting and relaxing. Debby has been reading about Cape Town and I’ve been hacking on the computer.

We did take a ½ hour walk on Clifton Beach (which is right outside the door). The sand is really white and soft but the water is cold. We were told it is about 14°C.

My one achievement was to go running along Victoria Rd. up toward Sea Point. Sunrise is at 6:30 and by 7:00 the day was really bright. Anyway, it was nice to run along the coast. There were a lot of people out exercising; running, cycling, swimming. I was surprised to see several large groups of cyclists. It seems like a nice place to ride as it has the coast and also significant climbs. And it’s warm :).

Debby went walking in the afternoon to buy a few miscellaneous food items we forgot to buy yesterday. So at least we both got a little bit of exercise. I’m sure in a day or two we’ll be ready to explore the town.

Oh, I should mention after the ostrich farm we spent two days in the wine region east of Cape Town. We spent one night in Swellendam, in the Robertson’s Valley Region. The next day we stopped in Franschhoek, near Stellenbosch. Franschhoek is famous because it was settled by Huguenots (French Protestants). It is a quaint little town. The wine region is beautiful. Like Napa it is located in a fertile valley, surrounded by rugged mountains. Debby did a bit of wine tasting and bought two bottles to enjoy while we are in Cape Town.

R