Category: this is south africa

Oldenburg & Zorgvliet

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We were lucky enough to enjoy a couple of wine farms on the Helshoogte Pass yesterday afternoon. It was a stunning day and the surrounding mountains gave us a magnificent backdrop.

And at Oldenburg, the wines were pretty good too. Just good though, not “wow”. And with prices starting at R350 and finishing at R1500 a bottle, they really needed to be “wow”.

Ok. That R1500 was an outlier, but there were several wines in each of the 500s, 700s and 800s. And that seemed really excessive. I’m not claiming to be a big wine expert, but I’ve drunk enough and learned enough to know how good a local wine needs to be to command those sorts of pricces. And these really weren’t.

And that does raise the question of what’s going on with asking that much at the cellar door for very decent – but not exceptional – SA wine.

Is it for the tourists? Or is it for the Gautengaleng posers? The tasting was expensive, but it was exceptional: it felt like a premium experience, with a passionate and very knowledgeable host and Argon injected bottles so as to preserve the integrity of the wine. Ooh!
And, as mentioned above, the setting is incredible.

And while any wine (or any thing) is, of course, worth whatever anyone is willing to pay for it, I just don’t see why anyone would pay that for it and how they can justify changing that much for their wares.

And then Zorgvliet, where the wine was nowhere near as good, the setting nowhere near as dramatic, and the service rather hurried and impersonal. Least said, soonest forgotten.

But the prices still utterly ridiculous.

Is this the way we’re going now? Chancing our arm on the favourable exchange rate and some gullible and slightly pissed tour groups? The tasting experience is one thing, sure: make it exceptional, make it memorable. Maybe charge a bit more. Make them want to come back.

But we don’t need to be charging that much for not “wow” wine.

For me, that’s not a good look. And it’s even worse when you’re just gullible and slightly pissed, but on the local end of the exchange rate. So let’s not be another country ripping tourists (and as a bycatch, locals) off. There are plenty of very good wineries producing very good wines for which they are not charging outrageous prices. Neethlingshof and even Spier are good examples off the top of my head if you happen to be out that way. (And if Spier is ripping tourists off less than you, something is up.)

And if they can do it, why can’t everywhere else?

Sugar

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A disappointingly unproductive morning at Kirstenbosch, with many of the local birds rather uninterested in being in front of any lenses. But on the plus side, there are certainly worse places to be while getting frustrated about the lack of feathered photographic subjects.

This Cape Sugarbird (Promerops cafer) was one of the few residents that was willing to have a quick shot taken today, whilst feeding – as expected – on one of the local Proteacae. But they are omnivorous and will also eat spiders and insects.
And if they get hungry… I’m sorry… they’ll what?!?

Dear God.

Let’s just hope that there is enough food around for the local Sugarbird population this year. Otherwise photography at Kirstenbosch is going to be even more difficult in the future.

There goes the election…

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Many people had thought that the ANC might sink to below 50% of the vote in the upcoming national elections. And to be honest, given their performance over the last n years, that seemed like a very reasonable suggestion.

But that was before the ANC asked… er… the ANC to pray for… er… the ANC “to renew itself”.

I can’t comment on all of the other political parties in South Africa (because there really are an awful lot of them), but I certainly haven’t heard of any of the others asking themselves to pray for themselves.

Oops. Missed opportunity right there.

God isn’t going to be looking favourably at any party – no matter how honest they are or how good their policies might be – if their members haven’t been in touch with Him and prayed for self-renewal, now is He?

That’s just not how He works.

So I guess we might as well just hand the election – and what’s left of the country – to the ANC for another 5 years. After all, we’re not just fighting the last of the pre-1994 generation, but also the Lord Almighty too now.

Oh, and the “renewed” ANC, apparently.

Yeah right.

KLM hires private security to get its flight crews to and from Cape Town International Airport

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I mean, from their hotel in Cape Town to and from the airport.
Not from Amsterdam. They have planes for that.

I dunno. This might be a well known thing. It might be a very regular thing. But while we were waiting at International Arrivals the other day, we were watching these two guys from a private security firm hovering between the barriers and the doors, doing security stuff.

We were wondering if some celeb like Ant from Ant & Dec or Romanian football wizard Gheorghe Hagi was going to be coming through the magic doors from customs and be whisked away, but it turned out that they were waiting for the flight crew from KL597. And that made us understand that the bus in convoy with the private security vehicle that we’d seen going into the airport earlier was probably the flight crew for the outgoing KL598.

Now, I know that the N2 around the airport isn’t the nicest bit of road – especially at night – but this does seem a bit drastic. After all, the guys from the Air France flight were left to find a completely unguarded bus by themselves. And literally none of the passengers from both those flights had heavies or goons to get them safely to their hotel. Mind you, maybe none of them made it. We’ll never know.

Has there been a specific incident? Was there a specific threat? Or were these guys actually very clever robbers, picking their targets early on and then stealing all their stuff once they were safely on board the bus back to the hotel.

Of course they weren’t. They looked very professional, and as long as any crook was within arms length and there was no running involved, I’m sure they were very capable of capturing and detaining the baddies, as well.

But this isn’t a great look immediately as visitors enter SA. OK, we might not be Oslo-safe, but really, we’re not in Lagos territory either.

I’d love Capetonians thoughts on this. Is this the way we’re heading now? Because I can’t afford private security detail to get me to and from the airport each time I need to get somewhere.

So I guess it’s just as well that I can’t afford any flights either.

Bit of a moan – Pt.1

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Part 2 may follow tomorrow. It may not.

But I’m fully aware that this is a moan. It even says so in the title. I’m not expecting anything to happen about this moan, although it would be nice (and really weird) if anything did.
Sometimes you just need to have a bit of a moan. Get things off your chest. This is one of those times.

Tourism. The lifeblood of the summer economy in Cape Town. Love them or hate them, tourists are plentiful and vital to keeping this country going.
This isn’t the first time I have lived in a tourist heavy city. I was in Oxford for almost a decade and that gets ridiculous numbers thanks to its proximity to London (and the whole of Europe). It’s also about 30 times smaller than Cape Town, so things can get very chaotic very quickly there.

Locally, comparative statistics are a bit difficult to gauge at the moment given the effects of the recent pandemic, but it does seem like the numbers of visitors this year will break all the previous records for people arriving to enjoy all that the Mother City has to offer.

I absolutely recognise the need for tourism as a valuable contributor to our economy.
But that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.

Still, as with any touristy place, if you avoid the touristy areas, you can avoid the tourists.

Just about…

There are two particular tourist “attractions” here that are seemingly unavoidable, incredibly intrusive and make life all a bit crap for the local residents.

The first is the Red Bus. Yep. I know you get them everywhere and they are a lot of fun. I’ve even done a couple of tours with the kids myself. But wow. Things have exploded recently. I mean, not literally, but…
Our roads are made for getting people from one place to another. When those roads are populated by any number of big red buses going around their two routes – here’s a shot from their “live bus tracker”:

Ah Jesus…

And of course they are deliberately driving at 20kph to give the visitors a nice leisurely view of the city and surrounds: on our suburban roads with 60 or 80kph limits. It causes a lot of congestion and a lot of frustration. Hugely disproportionate to the number of tourists actually using the service.

But that’s really nothing compared to the helicopter tours. Sure, they don’t cause traffic jams or delays, but could there be a more invasive, less eco-friendly way to annoy the local population? When the weather is good, there are no fires and the tourist season is on, we can get one every few minutes, coming over our back garden at (at best) a couple of hundred metres.

I’m not sure at what point the repeated noise, irritation, disturbance and greenhouse gas emissions:

would constitute a “hazard” as in (2)(a) there per se, but wow, if you not only want to have a look at the mountain, but also piss off everyone in the Southern Suburbs while you’re at it, then a helicopter flight is absolutely the way to do it.

Ironically, there’s one going over the house right now as I type, but then, that’s not very unusual.

There is even the double whammy, whereby you can book both these excursions on one single site.
A veritable synergy of local infuriation, at a discount price.
Who wouldn’t go for it?
No, I’m not providing a link.

So. Moan over. Did it turn into more of a rant? Does it even matter? Will it make any difference?

I’m off for a nap. If I can keep the noise out.