Raw fish, no problem. Soy sauce, yum. Sticky rice, nice. Seaweed - erm, no, I think I'll pass.
Kerry-Anne loves sushi and I'll eat it if the craving gets the better of her and she really has to go to a sushi bar. I don't know about you, but the sushi I like most is the type with the least seaweed, and since I do enjoy the fish and rice I guess that Nigiri would be my favourite. But I just can't get my taste-buds around Maki (those are the ones wrapped in black seaweed), and I'm just not sure that seaweed was ever meant to be eaten by humans. :)
I'm interested to know... (1) if you love Sushi, do you know why this is, and (2) if you don't like it, what in particular don't you enjoy?
Early morning and sunset tractor-rides through vineyards are the best. I've just discovered how difficult it is to find somewhere (near Cape Town) to go on a tractor-ride. But nevertheless I've managed to find a wine estate in Wellington that does just this. Diemersfontein Wine & Country Estate offers tractor-rides for 6 people at 35ZAR per person - including a glass of wine! At that price the cynic in me says that it must be a glass for everyone to share, but Kerry-Anne's convinced that it's a glass per person.
Check out Diemersfontein's website and consider doing some of the other activities, like perhaps a picnic, horse ride or short hike.
Disclaimer: Diemersfontein didn't ask us to write this article, and, in fact, we've never actually been to Diemersfontein. If you decide to go, and then discover that it sucks (which I doubt), please leave a comment and let us know. On the other hand, if it's awesome, please leave some feedback too!
I don't know for certain what this building is, but to me it looks like a homestead built many, many years ago. We discovered it almost by chance while driving down Hout Bay Main Road, from the circle next to Constantia Nek Restaurant towards Hout Bay.
The particular road on which it's located is kinda narrow and there's so much to see that, even though it's right on the roadside, it's easy to miss. I didn't want to scratch around too much, and there didn't seem to be any clues as to what the building was, or had been. Please be so kind as to leave a comment if you know something more about the building, other than that it's found in Longkloof, Hout Bay.
I'm not afraid of heights. I'm happy to jump waterfalls and do the occasional bridge-swing. But this kind of "fun", on the other hand, is just no fun for me. I mean, does anyone actually enjoy feeling nauseous, and does anyone like turning a paler shade of green?
Kids generally just love this kind of thing, but I remember not really being too perturbed as a kid that my friends got to go on all the rides. I was pretty much content to watch them having fun, from a safe distance.
Oktoberfest, a 16-day (sometimes 17-day) festival held in a (super) large field in Germany is celebrated in many countries, including South Africa, with plenty of beer, all kinds of traditional German food, a traditional-style band and plenty of dancing.
Stellenberg High School (which Kerry-Anne attended for 5 long years) held their first Oktoberfest celebration this year as a fund-raising event. Given that it was the first time they've attempted this, we'll forgive them for the tiny selection of Bavarian food, solitary brew of beer, and lack of beautiful woman dressed in traditional German beer-lady attire (and yes ladies, the lack of handsome young lads in traditional weird long-shorts and braces too). :)
But seriously, the event seemed to have huge support from the community and everyone there seemed to be having an awesome time. I have a feeling that next year's Oktoberfest is going to be a rocking event. Best make sure that you get there!
Often when I see an old object like this door I wonder what history it has seen. Isn't it interesting to consider all the people that may have turned and pulled on the door knob? Don't you curiously consider what led it to be removed from its doorway and left lying on this grassy patch?
On a completely different subject... notice the Nasturtium flowers to the left? It was the weirdest thing ever when I discovered one day that Kerry-Anne likes putting these into salad! I guess they do act as a beautiful garnish... but for her it's not only about the decorative appeal - she enjoys the taste too! I wouldn't be surprised if next I find her picking daisies for a quick stir-fry!
Cape Town has a way of looking beautiful and stormy at the same time. The angry dark clouds in this photo rolled in below the beautiful pink and blue sky, creating a perfect contrast.
Though slightly on the expensive side of average, Wakame more than makes up for it by having this awesome deck - perfect for sitting outside and relaxing while chatting with friends and enjoying a couple of drinks.
Also, I'm not particularly fond of sushi, but I have to admit that theirs is pretty good. Although for most people it's the raw fish that puts them off sushi, for me it's a combination of the seaweed and the rice - and Wakame's rice seems far more palatable than any other sushi rice I've tasted. :)
I was really really lucky to see two of my favourite South African bands performing back-to-back at Rocking the Daisies. Just Jinjer was fantastically good, and Prime Circle, well, they absolutely rocked the house... or, shall I say, the vineyards.
The dramatic start to their performance built up tension in the crowd, and when Prime Circle finally appeared on stage the masses roared with excitement. The band's unmistakable energy carried over into the crowd, who loved every minute of it. It was awesome to hear their songs live again - the music was precise, and they delivered an excellent performance.
Visit the Prime Circle website for more information about the band, or start the music video below to listen to one of their tracks. However, if you represent a large record company that may plan on signing the band and relocating them to the USA (or any other country), please stop right here. I speak on behalf of all their SA fans when I say that we aren't interested in any offer or contract that you may have. :D
Oh, and don't forget to take a look at the other photos that I shot during their set. Click here to see the albums.
Just Jinjer are arguably one of the best-known South African rock bands. Unfortunately for us they left our shores at the beginning of the decade, as most really successful SA bands eventually do, and spent time in the UK and USA, recording with various large record labels and touring with bands like Def Leppard, The Goo Goo Dolls, and U2.
Over the +-13 years that they've been around, Just Jinjer (formerly Just Jinger) have become somewhat of a legend back home, and now it would seem, they've returned to settle in Cape Town. Although I guess "settle" is bit of a strong word, as they have several tours lined up that will see them out of the country for more time than South Africans are willing to share them. :)
I could go on and on about how awesome the band is, but rather visit their website - the music will start playing automatically. Alternatively, listen to my favourite Just Jinjer song below... and when you're done, check out my photo album from their awesome set at Rocking the Daisies!
Freshlyground is an Afro-fusion band who found their feet in 2002, when they played their first "big gig" at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. They launched their first album in 2003 - their success is evidenced by the fact that they were invited to play at the opening of Parliament in 2004, when South Africa celebrated 10 years of democracy. With both black and white band members originating from South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, I guess that it's fair to say that Freshlyground is a Smarties box of cultures.
Kerry-Anne is a super-huge fan of the band and was stoked to have seen them live at the cosy Zula Bar in Cape Town before they got really big. We were about 3 metres from the stage (which was more of an elevated platform, really), and the band members were incredibly interactive during the set.
Today they have a huge following both locally and internationally, and (if you hadn't yet guessed) I managed to get up close for a few photos at Rocking the Daisies. Click through to our Freshlyground album, and if you have a moment more to spare check out the other RTD photo albums.
I'd never been to Rocking the Daisies before, and it seems as though I chose the best RTD ever as my first experience! Rocking the Daisies is a music festival held near Darling, about an hour's drive from Cape Town up our West Coast. Although there weren't as many people as there were at Woodstock back in the late '60s, there seemed to be just the right number of people in a happy party-mood.
Although the festival stretched from early on Friday to Sunday afternoon, I only managed to go along for Saturday. Many people spent time swimming in the dam (practically right next to the main stage), while others watched the bands, some were entertained by comedy shows, and others spent time listening to DJ mixes.
My summarised review of the event is:
1. Well-organised
2. Great music
3. Fun environment
4. Sufficient facilities
5. Great food stalls
6. Good entertainment
7. Good and easy parking
8. Great camping site
9. Clean and tidy
I'm definitely going to have to go along to RTD 2010 - this one was an absolute jol (pronounced "jawl", which is South African slang for "freekin' awesome"). :) If you're thinking of coming to South Africa next year, but don't want to come during the World Cup, why not time your trip to coincide with RTD? We'll see you there.
We found this old car on the De Vallei wine farm's grounds. At first I thought that perhaps someone was trying to refurbish it, but on closer inspection I noticed the roll cage inside the cabin and realised that it may be used for stock car racing!
When I was in school, friends often spoke excitedly of the stock car races that they'd been to. I've never been to a race, but Kerry-Anne on the other hand seems to have been something of a regular visitor - dragged along to the noisy events at the Goodwood Showground (which no longer exists) by her mom and dad. She swears it was loads of fun.
The Tygerberg Raceway, a proper oval dirt race track, is still in operation and in fact will be hosting a race on 17 October and 7 November this year. Contact details and information about the events seem to be fairly scarce on the web, but if you're interested in attending a race, this page has a contact number that you could call to find out more about dates, times, and cost.
Can you see the way Big Mike was trying to stare me down?
The first (and only) time that I risked climbing on a horse, the beast in question turned out to be an obstinate animal with a mind of its own, refusing to listen to my gentle (and later, extremely firm) tugs on the reigns. My animal dragged its hooves, keeping a good 50 metres from the rest of the group, and when I dug in my heels it ignored me like a cat being told not to jump over a wall.
If you have more luck than I do with horses (or cats) then check out Horse Trail Safaris - it was some years back, but I think they were the ones who took us on that beach ride in Hermanus.
We were invited to the launch of Encore, an "opera appreciation club" created by Cape Town Opera to promote opera (and other performing arts) among 20- and 30-somethings. Don't you think that the posters for "Dead Man Walking", "Cunning Little Vixen", and "Requiem Mass" all look enticingly appealing?
We spent the evening listening to several young, stylish and talented singers and musicians perform in a style that I'm not accustomed to, and while I'd have to admit that I'll never be a opera junkie, the performances were pretty darn good and definitely worth making a part of your "night on the town".
Joining Encore is a matter of paying a R100 fee per year, which gives members access to several benefits - you can read about them right here. If you'd like to go out regularly, have the chance to dress up a little, enjoy some sophisticated entertainment, and perhaps meet other young people with similar interests, give it a try - I think it's certainly worth the R100.
Jonathan Shapiro (second from the left), better known as Zapiro, is famous for his no-holds-barredcartoon portrayal of prominent South African figures, and politicians in particular.
Kerry-Anne took this photo at the launch of ZA NEWS, a brand-new satirical news show created by Zapiro and Thierry Cassuto (far left). The show, which will be broadcast only on the internet, features satirical "news" snippets acted out by rubber puppets who look and sound remarkably similar to some of our politicians...
I just watched the first couple of episodes, and they were really entertaining. Granted, to catch all the jokes and innuendos you may need to be familiar with some SA history and recent news, but even if you know very little about our political situation I'm sure you'll find it entertaining anyway. :)
I've embedded the launch episode below, but click though to the ZANews or Mail & Guardian sites for more shows (a new show will be produced every day).
We stopped over at the Durbanville Wine Valley Season of Sauvignon 2009 festival on Saturday. Although Jimbo here wasn't part of the festival, he kept a keen eye on the proceedings while munching on ground-greens. I plucked this juicy, yummy-looking weed from my side of the fence and handed it over.
After only a few nibbles, Jimbo's connoisseur's tongue rejected my offering, and he instead demanded a couple of life's simple pleasures: nose-strokes and head-pats. Horses are so easy to please.
Well done to everyone who braved the excessively high winds in Cape Town to attend GeekDinner! I spent a few minutes outside Cappello to capture a few night shots of Cape Town and found it impossible to keep my hand steady enough to take the shot. Eventually I leaned up against a seemingly-sturdy pole to steady the camera, but alas, this was even worse - the wind was rattling the pole like a jackhammer rattles the stout construction worker holding it.
For many people, the word "geek" still conjures up images of socially awkward people interested only in chemistry, physics, astronomy and computers. This is not the case at Cape Town's GeekDinner meets. Also, over the past few months I've noticed an interesting shift in the gender distribution at GeekDinner events. Even though the guys still clearly dominate in numbers, it seems as though there are more and more women at each event... which, believe me, is something that I'm confident the guys are extremely happy about.
If you're used to living in a large city then this kind of scene probably seems quite unusual. What's cool about Cape Town is that farms and smallholdings like this one aren't too far from the city centre, which means that within half an hour you can move from the inner city, through leafy suburbia, to wide-open farms.
What I found interesting about this little field is that the farmer has planted green lettuce in between his two rows of red lettuce. It doesn't seem particularly practical - I mean, surely all the red lettuce will be harvested together? All I can think is that he has a bit of an artistic eye, and likes to keep his fields pretty. :)
Today is the City Daily Photo Theme Day, an event held on the first day of each month to encourage you to visit some of our sister City Daily Photo blogs. We haven't taken part in Theme Day for several months now, but as I type it's 01h05 in Cape Town and can you believe it, we've actually managed to get an appropriate photo to suit the theme day topic and we've managed to post it on time! We so rock this month!
My previous post about Wijnland Auto Museum featured a photo of something one would expect to see at an "auto museum" - even though the cars in the photo hardly looked like traditional museum pieces...
However, ten metres to the left of the previous photo rested this itty-bitty-baby tank. While awesomely cool, I'm not sure that I'd class a tank in the "auto" category. Its presence in the museum display is more or less like having a high-powered rack of blade servers, or better yet, an IBM mainframe, in an Apple MacBook display. :D
This is the third photo in the set taken in Joostenbergvlakte. (If you've missed the previous two, click here and follow the trail back to them.) We thought we'd take a drive out to this remote suburb to visit the Wijnland Auto Museum - which, from the outside, looks more like a scrap yard, or an auto graveyard.
Sadly, we failed in our objective. We took a quick look around and decided that we'd rather return with a group consisting of other photographers, perhaps, and two or more people dressed up and ready to be models. The museum apparently has one of the largest collections of rare cars in the country, and old (perhaps deceased) cars like these make a great backdrop for a modelling shoot - don't you think?
You'll find the museum by
driving along the N1 (with Cape Town at your back)
taking exit 34
turning right at the first opportunity
driving to the end of the road (past the nursery on your right)
Strangely the Wijnland Auto Museum has no website or email address, but they can be contacted by telephone on +27 21 988 4203. The museum is open daily until 16h00 (including Sundays) and charges R50 per person.
As promised, here's another photo taken in Joostenbergvlakte. The suburb has an odd mix of large, lavish houses and smaller, less beautiful places like this one.
Did you notice the barbed wire surrounding the property, the dirty walls, the rugged driveway, the old house? Perhaps you did, but I bet you couldn't help but notice the enormously-hugely-oversized Afrikaans name on the gate: "Geenbuffelsmetgeenskootgeskietgeenfontein".
While it may look weird to foreigners, the lack of spaces between words, and the length and make-up of the name is considered rather amusing in South Africa. Loosely translated the name of this property reads "No-buffaloes-shot-with-no-shots-no-fountain". It looks a little weird because it's a play on the more common (yet equally amusing) farm name, "Tweebuffelsmeteenskootmorsdoodgeskietfontein", which translates as "Two-buffaloes-shot-dead-with-one-shot Fountain" (where "fountain" refers to the spring of water often found on farms). Read the Wikipedia article here.
I guess farmers became bored of the traditional names like "Clear Water Fountain", or "Never-ending Fountain". These are some of the gems of the Afrikaans language and culture that we hold so dear. :)
We took an afternoon drive out the back of a slightly-away-from-civilisation suburb called Joostenbergvlakte, so in the next few days we'll bring you a few gems that we discovered in the area.
Joostenbergvlakte (pronounced something like "Yooah-sten-berg-fluck-tuh") is a suburb of smallholdings, inhabited by people who like to farm on a small scale, or who need a lot of space for their horses or some kind of business. People sometimes even buy these smallholdings simply because they like a LOT of space around them, as opposed to the relatively little space that suburbs closer to the city afford their residents.
Some people love it and dream of owning a tiny farm, but not I - and even more so not Kerry-Anne. :)
Whoa, where did all this rain come from? Kerry-Anne and I drifted out to Paarl to check out the "Persia to Paarl" festival that was being held at the Nederburg estate.
Sadly, on arrival we scoped out the scene and decided that it wasn't going to be worth the R160 entrance fee (for two of us)... so instead of photos of pretty dancers, lovely bottles of wine, or sparkling beaded jewellery, we bring you this somewhat grey, perhaps even depressing photo of a wintry Cape Town weekend. :( To be fair, it was raining kittens and puppies, so perhaps that was the reason for the festival appearing to be rather less exciting than we'd hoped it would be.
When I blogged about Altydgedacht Wine Estate after our recent wine tasting expedition, I had no idea that we'd soon be back for another birthday party. A friend of ours invited us, along with about 25 of her other friends, to celebrate her 30th birthday at the estate... and boy, were we impressed. The venue was beautifully prepared, the food was exquisite, the wine just great and the service impeccable.
We had an awesome time partying the night away between two rows of absolutely huge wine barrels, and the great thing about the venue was that because we were far away from any neighbours, we could play the music as loudly as we liked without having to be considerate.
"Think Big" is a part of the mindset that the CIO of the company I work for tried to instil in our IT department at a recent IT visioning meeting. The rocket on top of this yummy cupcake, he explained, symbolises the concept of thinking beyond what you know today to be possible.
Just this month a satellite developed by the staff and students at Stellenbosch University (one of the large universities in the area) was launched from Kazakhstan, aboard a rocket. The satellite named SumbandilaSat (a Venda word meaning "lead the way") is the second one to be launched by South Africa and will be used by the government mostly to monitor crops, dam levels and population migration.
Still far from the capability of satellites portrayed in the movie Enemy of the State, this one represents another leap forward for South Africa's ambitions to have their own little bit of space. :) Well done, guys!
We took a road that we hadn't taken before, into the hills behind Durbanville, and happened upon the Western Cape Microlight Club's airfield at Contermanskloof. I really wanted to take a cool photo at the club house, but there were no microlights to be seen and the club house isn't really the most inspiring building. So, I took a photo of this lake surrounded by those invasive Australian Blue Gum trees instead! :)
If you have Google Earth installed, you can follow this link to view the airfield from the air. And, if you have an interest in microlights, be sure to check out the Microlighters forum.
According to Grain SA, South Africa consumes about 3 million tons of wheat each year - 2 million grown locally and the other million imported. Isn't it weird to think that this huge field doesn't even scratch the surface of all the wheat that we consume?
An interesting fact I picked up is that since the beginning of the year the price of wheat has fallen from around 2,600 ZAR per ton to about 2,150 ZAR per ton, which I guess (though I'm no economist) indicates slightly less demand than supply.
Perhaps South Africa is trying to lose weight. "Eat less starch, eat less starch!" ;)
I like cows, though, it seems perhaps they're not as fond of me. Or, perhaps the weapon that I was pointing at them (aka camera) was too terrifying for them to bear. The moment I stood near the lead scaredy cow bolted, taking the others with her.
Today we buy our milk from Woolworths, Kwikspar or Pick 'n Pay. In years gone by my mom gathered us three kids up for a weekly trip to the milk farm up the road - to buy fresh milk in 5-litre buckets. The best thing about buying the milk from the farm was that the cream would rise to the top of the milk (remember those days?) and us kids were allowed to scoop it off to pour over our cereal!
Is there anybody out there who still gets their milk directly from a farm?
We'd never turned in at Meerendal farm before, so when we did we were surprised to find that the gates hid a farm with a rather appealing part-modern/part-old-English atmosphere about it.
We unfortunately arrived just in time to see the doors to the bistro and deli being shut for the day so I can't really say whether or not the food and produce is any good.
The signpost in the photo points to another, apparently more sophisticated, restaurant called Wheatfields. If the review on Travbuddy is anything to go by, then it sounds like Wheatfields is a restaurant that we'll have to visit asap!
