Cape Town:

It was when we rounded the head just south of Camps bay in our hire car that the beauty of this amazing scenery really took my breath away. The coastal road takes you past cliffs over 1000m high, past table mountain, fabulous beaches dotted with even more fabulous bodies, through pleasant villages, all the way down to the Cape of Good Hope.

After the dry highveld scenery and dour shopping malls, it was literally a breath of fresh air. Quite a large breath in fact - the wind is pretty powerful at times at the Cape.

Cape Town itself has the feel of a real city that Joburg doesn't. Like having streets, with shops, and not just shopping malls reachable only by car. The waterfront area is a little too touristy for my taste, but pleasant none the less - Joburg has no equivalent, not even a river to walk along.

Long street is a pretty lively area - almost to the point of downright dodgy on a Saturday night. But the atmosphere is much more multi-cultural - whereas in Joburg most bars are either black or white, here there's a bit more racial mix - at least in the bars.

But it's the beauty of the Cape that really appeals. You can very quickly immerse yourself in the wilderness of table mountain, or huge deserted (and windswept) beaches, cape point itself, with its baboons and buck. Another amusing sideshow is boulders beach - a real beach (strewn with boulders) which doubles as a huge penguin colony. These penguins are not emperor-sized, or quite as dignified, but they are very comical and unafraid of humans. It's a pretty incongruous sight to see a pair of penguins waddling amongst sunbathing tourists!

Conclusion: I could definitely live in Cape Town. At least in the summer.

So what's it like there?

Obviously lots of people (both here and at home) ask me “what’s it like? How are you finding it?”
Instead of answering the question, I thought I’d note down a few things which I find interesting about this country.

The first thing that hit me was the amount of traffic. This is a country a bit like America, where everyone drives everywhere. And I mean everywhere. The high levels of crime and a complete dearth of public transport obviously don’t help. The blacks tend to do a bit of walking, and they’re pretty much the only ones you’ll see walking anywhere. There are lots of minibus taxis (think Toyota 15 person vans) which provide an affordable way of getting around for black people – but no white person would ever dream of getting in one.

Then you have the people at traffic lights (or “robots” as they call them here). These are almost exclusively blacks. Most of them are handing out flyers for property developments, or selling fruit. You also see quite a few begging – often with an emaciated child in their arms. It’s quite a heart-rending sight when you first witness this African poverty – but you soon develop a heartless indifference and a middle-distance gaze. I wonder what they’d do if they had roundabouts here.

The similarities with America extend to town planning. Australia, another new world colony, still has English-style city centres, streets which make for an interesting stroll, and parks. Here the mall is king. You can’t really walk around Sandton city centre as it’s just a collection of 2-lane roads, but you can go and park your car (no-one walks into town) in a huge car park and enjoy an enormous shopping mall with no windows. Nelson Mandela square is a similar let-down. Basically a group of restaurants around a small square, it has a rather contrived feel. No, South Africa’s charms do not lie in its cities. Well not this one anyway. I’m looking forward to a trip to Cape Town, as I am told it has a more European feel. I hope that means that is has streets you can walk down and maybe if I’m lucky, a park.

No, it’s the scenery and wildlife which are South Africa’s trump cards. Within 45 minutes drive of Joburg you can visit several different wildlife parks, where you can see lions, rhinos, springbok, rhinos, etc etc in something approaching their native habitat. I’ve only visited one, and I was pretty impressed. Most locals are quite dismissive of these kind of places, but I thought it was great! We had lions prowling around outside our car, and one even attacked the wheel of the car next to us and punctured the tyre!

A visit to the Kruger National Park is a must. It’s close by local standards (ie 5 hours drive). But it needs time, as it’s larger than Israel, so you can’t really do it in a weekend.

The 94.7 Cycle Challenge

Once a year, 27000 people converge on joburg for a bike race. The enthusiasm for these kind of events seems to be uniquely South African and goes beyond the usual group of hard-core roadies. If you think 27000 is a lot, there is an even bigger race in Cape Town with around 35000 participants.

When I turned up on race day I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I had come inappropriately equipped in my view – a mountain bike with slicks on was not the most suitable steed for 95km of on-road riding. However I was surprised by the many people who were doing the race on ordinary bikes – plenty of (in my view) masochists were doing it with cheap mountain bikes and knobbly tyres.

I was quite impressed with the sheer scale of the event. The numbers being so large, the start was broken down into perhaps 50 groups, each of around 500 people. We were herded into pens, ready to start at 5 minute intervals. By the time we started at 8:41, the winners of the race had already finished – they left around 6 am. Things happen early in the day in a place as hot as Joburg in the summer.

So we zoomed off onto the M1 – a strange feeling riding your bike in the fast lane. After the hustle and noise of the start it was actually quite a relief – very quiet. 95 km of roads, including plenty of motorway, had been closed for the event, so at no stage did we have to share the road with any cars. I found myself overtaking quite a lot of people as the person whose place I had taken had put in a pretty poor time the year before of 6 hours. It felt particularly satisfying to overtake roadies with flash bikes on my 12.6 kg mountain bike.

We headed into downtown Joburg, then out through leafy suburbs all the way to a motorway, the route lined all the way by supporters and groups of people enjoying the race with a braai (barbecue) and a few beers. The headwind on the motorway exhausted quite a lot people, including me, and we were all glad to be on normal roads again, but I was by this stage feeling the effects and not overtaking so much as being overtaken.

I was quite glad to reach the finish, although this was tempered by the horrible climb which preceded it. It probably was just a molehill, but my fatigue ensured that it assumed mammoth proportions.

The finish area consisted of an enormous grass area full of tents, a huge stage with live music and awards going on, and plenty of tired cyclists. I managed to blag my way into the vodacom hospitality tent where I got a massage for my aching legs and back, met up with a few friends, and had some food.

So, same time next year?

I've been in South Africa for a couple of weeks now and now that I've found my feet I thought I'd kick off a blog to let everyone know I'm still alive and what-not.

For the uninitiated, I am contracting for Vodacom in Johannesburg, working on the Vodafone live R9 upgrade (don't worry if you don't understand that - it's so not important). I should be out here for 6 months or so, depending on how long it takes for us to get this beast working and launched.

I've just moved into my new abode after a couple of weeks of sofa-surfing and hotels. More info to follow...