Lunch time Namibian beer in honor of St. Patrick's Day

Happy belated St. Patrick’s Day from Cape Town.  If I know you, and I think I do, I bet you spent St. Patty’s Day drunk in a bar drinking green beer at noon.  Shame on you!  Unlike “some people,” I was out exploring Cape Town on the giant red double decker hop on/hop off bus blue route.  The blue route is the scenic route.  I stopped off at the Kirstenbosch botanical gardens, which is impressive and massive.  I walked around a bit and hopped back on the bus to do a township tour in Hout Bay.  The same township tour that I did the “drive by” with my friends the day before.  I feel like as far as townships go, I was in one of the more chichi ones and that I got a “vanilla” tour.  ”Kenny,” one of the community leaders picked me up at the hop on bus stop along with some weird guy who was a few fries short of a Happy Meal and he kept trying to touch me.  I was like “please don’t touch me” and he just stared at me instead.  I was definitely reconsidering the tour at this point.  Anyway, I paid my 50 rand ($5) and off Kenny, Happy Meal, and I went.  

There are clearly different levels of the standard of living within the township.  There were about 500 nice houses that the Irish version of habitat built and the rest of the 5000 or so houses are shanties.  I went into two of the Irish built houses and they were bigger than I thought they would be and they had multiple tvs in them.  I was like what the heck chuck?  I don’t even have more than one tv!  They had washers/dryers as well (again, I don’t even have that…well not legal ones anyway).  In that township there were 21 hair salons, one public library, and 63 pubs.  I went into one of the Sheebans and the booze was guarded by a woman who was in a locked room and you could purchase cocktails via giving her money through the bank teller like screen made of chicken wire .  I was surprised to find a brand new pool table in the Sheeban.  After the bar tour, my guide took me on a shopping tour.  I think he was trying to bleed me for money.  It appeared that the plan was to get me liquored up at the Sheeban and then spend a lot of time in the church/community center which also served as a crafts market.  I thought it was funny when I saw a bodega like store owned by Somalians called the New York Store, which claimed to have “anything you need.”  Really?  Can I get a burrito? Because I’m craving Mexican at the moment.  

The highlight of the day was having dinner at Mama Africas on Long Street and getting my “game on,” (pun intended).  I had the best meal in Africa there.  I ordered the kudu, springbok kebab, followed by a springbok/kudu potjie (pronounced poykee-a Cape Malay stew like dish).  O.M.G.! That alone was worth the 5lbs that I’ve gained here.  I also had a delicious Amarula cream on the rocks as an apertif.  It’s a local liquor compared to Bailey’s, but I think it’s far more delish than Bailey’s and has a mild and refreshing fruity taste.  Oh and lots of delish wine with dinner.  If I had died at that point, I would’ve said that I had lived a full, rather satisfying life.  

The rest of St. Patty’s day took a turn for the worst when we went to the ONE Irish bar on Long Street.  One of the members of our group was going to bribe the doorman to cut the line, but it turned out not to be necessary and we lasted all of 3 minutes there before realizing we were too old to deal with an overcrowded bar.  Our would be briber later remarked, “I can’t believe I was going to pay money to get in there.”  It was that bad!

From there we took our lives into our own hands when we took a cab home that was driven by an insane Zimbabwean cab driver who may very well have been under some illegal substance.  Thankfully, the luck of the Irish was with us and we arrived home safely.

After my first day in Kruger, I can now confidently answer the question of who I would want to most meet that is either living or dead.  It’s not the Dalai Lama, or Ghandi, or my boy Senor Jesus (I’ll see him again one day anyway), it’s Hemingway.  I’ve always been fascinated by that little lush and his adventures (fighting in the war in Spain, liberating the Ritz in Paris, what’s not to love).  Lately and for obvious reasons, I’ve been drawn to his writings on Africa.  Here’s my African tale:

Day One of the Safari:

I met my guide, Neil, at my hotel, which was in a posh section of Johburg and another English couple in their 30s who happened to be on their honeymoon.  When I heard that I said, “funny, so am I,” and I told them my solo honeymoon idea, but I digress.  Neil was amazing.  He knows everything about everything and was a great guide to have.  On our way up to Kruger, we went for a drive through the Drakensburg mountain range and stopped off in Neilspruit, one of the closest town to Kruger, where we did a massive amount of grocery shopping for our daily braai’s (South African term for BBQ).  Neil planned out amazing meals for us, which he would cook us every night.  After a quick picnic lunch we were on our way to Kruger.

After waiting a lifetime to be here, I couldn’t believe I was actually in Kruger Park and was largely in disbelief.  At first I was skeptical that we would see much game because it’s the rainy season and the bush is thick and because water is plentiful, the animals aren’t forced to visit the watering holes.  20 minutes in and we weren’t seeing much even though we were in rhino territory.  Rhinos, along with buffalos, lions, elephants, and leopards are part of the “Big Five” (they were named that because during my boy Hemingway’s time they were the hardest to hunt).  However, we started spotting the ever popular impala, followed by elephants and zebras (btw, I think we pronounce zebra incorrectly and that the Brits say it right…we say zeebra, but they say zeb-rah like the way “Debra” is pronounced).  We started to get into the grove and spotted a few white rhinos.  We later saw some rhinos hanging out with some wildebeests (huge animals) and warthogs and we would later see them with baboons.  We saw kudu, springbok, steenbok, vultures, and some rando birds.  I didn’t really give a flying hoot for the birds, but the Brits were into them.

After a full game drive we had a fantastic braai at our camp and by camp I mean that we’re staying at one of the “camps” in Kruger, but that we’re staying in air conditioned rondavels with our en suite bathrooms.  The braai consisted of chicken, beef, and ostrich, baby potatoes, salad, and yummy wine.  We also snacked on Biltong (basically South African jerky) made out of many types of game meat…we had springbok, kudu, and ostrich types.  So, I can now add those to the list of random meats, I’ve eaten.  After the feast, I collapsed in my bed and slept like a baby, which was awesome since we have 4:30 a.m. wake up calls.