from now on, I bathe only in the woods

countdown

Today is my last day of stationary freedom for the next two and a half weeks. 

Tomorrow morning, at 8am, I shall strap myself into my Chevy (car, not truck, sigh) and wheel myself out of homely little Fish Hoek and down to Pringle Bay in the Overberg to begin The Great Inspection.

I'll be on my tod - my work buddy Ollie is pootling up to the Winelands in our other car - and visiting up to six guest houses, B&Bs, treetop cabins, game parks, beach villas, charter boats, country cabins, hammock havens and glampy mud huts a day, and begging for a pillow and a cup-a-soup in the final one each evening before once more getting into my wagon at dawn's crack and doing it all over again.

My mission is to check that all the old places who have been in the Greenwood Guide before are still standing - and that the owners are still nicer than your own favourite granny and gramps - and whether or not the new places who'd like to be in the 2011/12 edition of the book fit our friendly little bill…:

things we like

...unstuffy, humorous hosts who treat their guests like friends, cherished gardens, good food, untouristy places, dirt roads, the lived-in look, the unusual, the artistic, the eco-friendly, creative interior design, historic buildings, modern architecture, big baths, powerful showers, imaginative breakfasts, open fires, real coffee, freshly-squeezed orange juice…..

things we don't like

...conference centres, identikit bedrooms, chain hotels; hosts who disappear irretrievably after your arrival... or never leave you alone; swirly, frilly, lacy décor; the smelly, the over-priced, the sickeningly cutesy; fake smiles, hatchet faces and steely eyes!

Then, on 27th August (incidentally, baby sister giraffe's birthday), having looped down through the Overberg, along the Garden Route and up and over the top back towards the Atlantic side of the country, I flop back into Fish Hoek, sleep for a day, and then begin to write up my findings. And then, when I've just about recovered, I pick a new area of the country and plot a route map all over again. 

And then I lather, rinse, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat... as needed. Until the whole country has been inspected.

Wish us luck. And send help.

has anybody seen my massive beached whale?

I can't remember where I left him

my first elephant sighting

They're smaller than they are on the telly.

a tale of two bicycles

Once upon a time there was a bicycle called Nathaniel. Nathaniel was a most beloved bicycle, for one whole hour. He and his giraffe went everywhere together: out of the house, down the hill, to the shops. They dropped a video back, went for a coffee, pedalled up a hill, down to the beach. Nathaniel had a stiff pedal so the giraffe took him to the hospital quickly for some antibiotics and they pedalled back up the hill for eggs benedict in Kalk Bay. Nathaniel wasn't hungry so the giraffe ate his.

Nathaniel and the giraffe were the best of friends and couldn't imagine ever, ever being apart until at least 2pm the next day when the giraffe had to return Nathaniel to the rental shop. They drove along the coastal road, thinking about the time they had together. On their way from Fish Hoek to Simon's Town they stopped to gaze at the sea and the mountains and the rickety old train which ran alongside the beach. They would have held hands but Nathaniel didn't have any and the giraffe only had hooves. Then, disaster struck.

Nathaniel choked on his own chain and rattled to a crashing, spluttering, horrible halt, giving the giraffe mere nanoseconds to swerve herself onto the pavement and duck her long neck and head out of the way of a speeding lorry carrying a very, very wide yacht. The giraffe attempted to resuscitate Nathaniel but he was oily and disgusting so she sat on the roadside and read the Saturday papers instead and tried to drown out his cries for help with loud humming. The giraffe received several queer looks from passers by - some of whom stopped to tell her that it was rather perilous to sit on the main roadside in the middle of Cape Town - but she told them she was fine. She had the Travel supplement.

Eventually, the hire bike lady came to rescue the giraffe. Nathaniel was brought out of his coma but by then the giraffe had fallen out of love with him. He had failed her and she was not one to forgive easily. Nathaniel watched as the giraffe hopped aboard his nemesis Alfredo (see above) and pedalled off. He fought back the tears until he saw his giraffe and Alfredo standing together, gazing towards the sea and the mountains and attempting - and failing - to hold hands. Then he wept his tears of sticky oil and was wheeled home to the bin.

THE END

blow me

Sith Ifricin wind.

An Essay Question

There is a pineapple growing outside my window.

Do I:

a) Call the police

b) Call the Um Bongo men

c) Call the Ghostbusters

d) Climb it

e) Eat it

Discuss.

theatricalities

For those of you who thought a trip to South Africa meant leaving mop buckets scattered across my bedroom to collect acid raindrops falling through the tin roof onto my wrought iron sleeping bench in downtown Soweto and using decomposing earwigs to flavour my porridge, Ian McKellan is bringing Samuel Beckett to Cape Town. Yah.

Patrick Stewart couldn't be convinced because he has an irrational - yet extremely severe - phobia of vuvuzelas.

sharks in the living room

all maps and no play..

This is a map of South Africa. Y'huh? This is what I have been staring at for the last 12 hours. This, and a whole family of mini-maps. Borrower maps, if you will. Borrower maps to Cape Town, Borrower maps to the Winelands, Borrower maps to the Overberg, to the Garden Route, to the Klein Karoo and to the regular old big Karoo. I don't know what or who or where these places are and we have not yet got about the ankles of the country. We're still huddled near the tiny little willy of the Cape Peninsula. See it? Bottom left corner. Totally flaccid. That's where we are. That's home.

So help me Lucifer, I hate maps. If a map knocked on my door and asked to borrow a cup of insulin for his diabetic map baby, I'd say no. I'd even unwrap a Mars bar as I did it, and lick it. Slowly.

I am attempting to plot a route around South Africa. A driving route where the landmarks are guest houses. Guest houses on beaches, in safari parks, in gardens, on mountains, in valleys, up trees, in caves, on river banks, on top of elephants, under waterfalls, down alleyways and on the wings of albatrosses (albatri?). I may have made a few of those up, but who are you to tell me what's real and what's not? Right now, I think GoogleMaps is my mother. She's the only person I've spoken to all day.

I set off in my Chevvy on Monday. And I will need to visit over 60 guest houses in 2 weeks on the road and inspect them all to see if they are worthy of our Greenwood Guide. I am going to have to beg for shelter and sustenance en route but since I am well-versed in the art of the eyelid-bat, this shouldn't be hard. And if that fails, I know a good line in whining. And body-flogging. And if there isn't any room at the inn, the townships it is. Surely room for a small one of questionable ethnicity.

Toots

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Meet Pansy

This is Pansy.

bedroom

The queerest thing. I woke up one morning and instead of being pinned to my pillow by the neon scarlet Westfield sign tearing holes in my retinas, my bedroom was enveloped in a silky morning mist hanging gently over the eastern side of the Cape Peninsula. If, in the middle of the night, my bed were to be carried just 10ft along a horizontal plane by the BFG, I'd be sharky's breakfast.

Strangely, the mist only goes and gets itself trapped among the mountains (silly, silly mist), so by 10am the bay resembles a snow blizzard at 1850. Today we slid the balcony doors shut just in time before our sitting room was eaten by a cloud.

Giraffe likes to hang his head over the balcony and feel the breeze in his soft horns but it scares the neighbours, so I've told him that he's only allowed to do it out of the bathroom window which looks out onto the bins.

Tata

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To post or not to post, that is the question.

Post!

I like posting. I also like getting post. So please send me stuff.

It's not for me, natch, it's for my long-necked pal.

He particularly likes DVDs, themed mixtapes for long car journeys through the undergrowth, puppies, nibbly bits, home-made poetry, jumpers and pyjamas for cold Cape Town nights, literature and diamonds. He's a very fussy giraffe. And highbrow. Send him a Stephenie Meyer and he'll rip your eyes out.

So, his postal address is thus:

The Giraffe

Above The Sea

50 Highway

Fish Hoek

7975

Cape Town

South Africa

He'll send you a thank-you note. He has special headed paper and a lined sheet underneath so he doesn't go wonky. He used to have problems with wonk but the lined paper has pretty much sorted him out. Forgive him the occasional slip, his eyes are pretty far from his pen-holding hoof (he's a front lefty) so he's going in blind. Bless.

Cheerio

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