It felt weird to go back to Strand where there hadn't been much to do the first time and hence even less likely there would be any more to do the second time around, but somehow I was thrilled to actually return to a place we'd spent a long time in. It makes a change on a trip like this to roll into a town where you know the general layout, the transport links, the shops, the restaurants and bars, and in the case of Strand even the people. We've returned to quite a few of the capitals (Addis, Nairobi, Dar, Kampala, Lilongwe) on the way down because of transportation connections or to pick up our bags after a loop trip, but these bigger cities we hadn't got to know in the same sense as we had got to know the small Strand after our first five-week stay there. Before we left from Strand the first time, I had a conversation with Carl about how weird it is that certain places and people from along the way we will remember for reasons we couldn't have predicted in advance and how Strand will be one of these places and the people from there some of those people. We had made a weird connection with Strand, so going back there was like coming back home in some sense.
Bast and Lou(ise) gave us a lift in exchange for some lunch at the Seafarer after T had advertised the ½ BBQ chicken to Bast for the full previous day. So we rolled in through the magic doors after nearly two weeks and it instantly felt like we'd never left. After the chicken Bast dropped us off at Ivan's place where we were warmly welcomed by our host and suspiciously barked at by his two guard dogs, Tessa and Shadow. Originally we'd asked if we could camp in Carl & Co.'s garden but Carl had a word with Ivan about it and they thought it would be a better idea for us to stay at Ivan's, so we were guided into a room with a bed instead of the backyard. Carl rocked up a bit later to say hello and welcome us back to Strand as well, and we all chattered happily over a few beers.
Ivan is always delighted to welcome visitorsThanks to Carl we quickly got up-to-date about everything going on in Strand. It seemed the other barman, Chris, had moved indeterminately to Jo'burg to take time off from his girlfriend so we wouldn't be having another reunion with him any time soon. Carl's sex and love lives (topics which he brings up eagerly) were on their usual tracks and he had also given up and hired a maid to come and clean their house – possibly in expectation of boosting his sex/love life in the near future. Shockingly, he also informed us that Seafarer now had a Happy Hour(!!!) from Sundays to Thursdays. It seemed business really had slowed down after we left. It also seemed Carl's favourite website Sickipedia.com hadn't run out of faithful posters of crappy or politically incorrect jokes. It felt good to be back.
We had planned to stay in Strand for only a couple of nights before Bast would drive us to Grahamstown where he was going to stay and work in his parents restaurant for a few weeks. Somehow our stay extended to two weeks as Bast had some stuff to sort out, friends to see and various presentations to give in Cape Town before setting off. My guilt trip about staying at Ivan's place extended in similar proportions every time we heard of another postponement, so we made a point of doing the shopping and cooking for Ivan during our stay as much as he would let us. We also kept him supplied with coffee when he got back from work and cigarettes (which we regularly bummed off him), benefiting from his and Stephan's advice on where we could buy cartons of crappy cigarettes for R60. We also got Ivan a bottle of brandy as a token of our gratitude, and well into the second week of our stay I announced we would be scrubbing down his kitchen as well, something T silently abided with.
T, Matthew, Addie and Ivan set a new record in the "how many people can look like morons eating breakfast in the same picture" category. Just click on the picture. We really do look retarded. Ivan in particular.In between playing housewife we spent many nice nights with the « old gang » Carl and his flatmate Stephan joining us for dinners and beer at Ivan's or just beer at the « old locals » Seafarer and Barts where Gerhard would join in. We also got introduced to a couple of new faces, namely Ruann (Stephan's brother and the third flatmate in his and Carl's house) and his girlfriend Lorraine, who we had heard of or seen briefly during our first visit, but not really spent any time with. Also, a girl called Addie kept running in and out through Ivan's door on most days so we made friends with her and her boyfriend Matthew in these two weeks. Ivan himself we had only met a couple of times at the Seafarer and once when invited to his place for the braai on World Cup Final night, but as we were spending all this time under his kind wing he became our dear friend over time. He shares my passion for good cooking – Ivan made us a very tasty seafood potjie, a South African style “stew” cooked in an iron pot over open fire for many hours – or at least eating well for my part, quality movies, and coffee and cigarettes at every turn, T's passion for loading up anything funny on YouTube (Thanks Ivan for showing me Tim Minchin!) and mine and T's mutual passion for leisurely conversation about anything over a jar or two, so it's easy to see how we all got along.
Ivan also shares T's passion for monstrously oversized sandwiches. This, ladies and gentlemen, is a Gatsby.Once a year there comes a time when I get to have fun on T's behalf in bottomless measures. That time starts when T's birthday comes along and lasts for a good two and a half months before we hit my birthday. This year T turned 27 which is a big number pointing to an increasingly old age but at the same time such a boring digit that a birthday of said digit couldn't have landed on anything but an ordinary Tuesday. I shouldn't even have to mention how ordinary Tuesdays can be, but this Tuesday was all of that. To spike things up a bit, we bought a crate of beer (twelve quarts) and organised to rent – or with the help of Carl's networks, namely Ruann who works in a video store – Buzz the PlayStation game for the evening. The guys came around for this, of course. Not so much to celebrate T getting older but to prove to themselves that they were older and wiser. Ivan demonstrated this well by misspelling the word 'salt' in what was (and I quote in true T rhetoric:) “with utter certainty the easiest question ever posed by Buzz”. We all were in bed before midnight, T having drunk seven or eight quarts and not even feeling tipsy. With age comes tolerance.
When it wasn't an ordinary Tuesday the drinking scene in Strand was its old familiar self. Choose your pub for the evening and despite which one you choose (or even if you run in between the two during the night), a couple of beers and brandy&cokes in you run into other familiar faces in their usual states. The level of game at the pool table in Seafarer was again sunk by our inexplicable talent, and of course we also had to try and beat the top score of the new monthly challenge on the bar games machine. Ivan introduces us to the world of gatsbies (the local giant sandwiches to be had after hours when in state of slight deterioration) and took us for a ride home from Barts on his motorbike risking it to break under our round beer-filled beings. Grateful for the female company, me and Addie picked up a habit of having one-hour sessions of heart-to-hearts in ladies toilets. On a few occasions I tried to get the boys to dance with me, succeeded poorly and ended up being called the Grinder. One night Gerhard and I thought it was a good idea to go wake up Carl in the middle of the night on our way back from the pub and were rewarded with the sight of a pissed-off Carl opening the door after a minute with the computer open on the background. Busted!
Addie and Matthew and Lorraine decided to provide us with some small tours of the area as well, and so on the second weekend back in Strand we drove east along the coast a bit to Cools Bay and Rooiels to see the scenery or rock formations on the beach. Western Cape provided us with the nicer side of its frequently changing weather for the day and after hiking around the rocks and the scenic drive we stopped at Gordon's Bay for some Mojitos recommended by Addie. Sadly, and to Addie's disgust, we got served lemon juice mixed with soda water with a leaf of mint each. In the evening Lorraine took us out to the hills lining Somerset West for the night skyline view over the area and onto a patch of road where your car roams on by itself even if you're out of gear and facing an uphill. The trick to this is that it's an optical illusion and that the road actually slopes down slightly, of course, but it's a funny feeling all the same. Lorraine also showed us a cemetery she likes, and me, T and Matthew went walking around in the dark while the girls stayed in the car, supposedly not because they were scared.
Cools Bay ROCKS!...
The Adventure Gang engage in a bit of scrambling in Rooiels
...without the loss of any limbs at all!
"Sunset Beach"
Somerset West and Strand by night. You'll have to take our word for it...Such a nice day came to a worse end when, after ending up at the pubs later on, I somehow managed to start an attempted pub fight. The background to this story is that Carl and Ivan (taught by Carl) have picked up a habit of tickling me whenever wherever as I am very ticklish and seem to provide some kind of entertainment to the souls of their small devils when tickled. So, when I walked into the Seafarer late at night I was met with the standard reception of Carl tickling me and picking me up from my feet so that I'm Jane-of-Tarzan style helplessly hanging somewhere in the air over his shoulder. Now this one guy we'd met at the pub the previous night was at the scene and thought it was a good idea to follow suit and tickle me as well but I didn't take too kindly to being anyone's tickle-bag and, while giving my revenge of pinching the guys in the neck with my sharpish nails, gave him one of these pinches too. It's all a bit blurred how the snowball effect worked here, but he came back to demand an explanation about why I'd pinched him and started getting really pissed off at me. At some point I bought him a shot to signal that we should just forget about it but got « F*CK OFF! » screamed at me as response, followed by some threatening and finger pointing some time later. Drunk as I was, my response was to shrug him off and tell him what I thought of people who come and bully women when their boyfriends are in the toilets. Needless to say, that might have been a bad move considering T's well-being... To say this guy is a beefcake is a nice understatement. This guy came back a while later once again, pulled mine and T's barstools apart looking like he wants to throw a few punches around and started a pushing and shoving session to which all the men in our party somehow got involved. T got pushed but thought to play the calming tactics which worked for a bit. Disturbance was enough still for Carl to have to get involved from behind the bar and decided to employ a slightly different tactic, namely raising his voice at the troublemaker in Afrikaans. This landed Carl in a quick wrestling match with the guy as he took to going behind the bar in order to try and strangle Carl. At some point the other barman and also our old acquaintance, Mitch, called the police who turned up with their bellies bouncing up but in less than five minutes to finally break off whatever could have started. Carl obviously had to stay in duty but the rest of us took our leave and headed back to Ivan's where I finally caught up with what had just happened and felt awful and worried sick about causing all my friends to stand in line to calm this guy down. The next day we heard that he is the husband of one of the barladies, Erica, who we also know reasonably well, and usually a fairly nice guy. Small town syndrome strikes again, together with the fact that we all have double personalities, one when sober and one when drunk. The previous night we'd been in the same bar with T and Gerhard talking to the same man about the beautiful flowers of Namaqualand (where he's from) and about going swimming in Crystal Pools (natural pools halfway up the mountains close to Strand). Such is life.
Post-bar-fight: M tries out her new anti-dickhead uniformEven the longest two weeks eventually come to an end, and after a few inquiries by T into the matter Bast had finally sorted his life out enough to promise us a definite departure date. On other fronts, the dogs had gotten so used to us by now that they were becoming lazy rather than alert and would wander in through the kitchen door for snacks. For his part, T was getting so used to Ivan's place that he forgot to turn the alarm off one afternoon on his way in, causing the security man to drive up and demand the password which Carl had to shout out loud in the drankwinkel (=liquor store) on the phone to T due to him standing by the side of a busy and noisy road. I felt relieved to get off Ivan's corners to give him his privacy but also heavy to be leaving old and new-found friends behind yet again. I suppose I should be used to it by now but I'm also happy I'm not quite there yet as I don't like goodbyes, just see-you-laters.
We thought it would be a nice idea to do something together before we'd leave so on the last evening us and most of the gang went bowling in Somerset West. Carl claimed he'd never been bowling before and we soon found out his friend Leonard apparently hadn't either. Carl proved his level by constantly finishing bottom but Leonard comfortably fell in the middle with me and Ivan as Lorraine and T controlled the game. Bowling of course involves beer so we unexpectedly ended up at the pub after the game with Carl and Gerhard (again joining in at this stage) to toast to just about whatever for the last time, with Leonard the driver sleeping on the couch. Having talked about his snorting abilities to us on several occasions Gerhard finally impressed us by polishing off a line of sweet chilli sauce mixed with black pepper, which he soon after went to blow back out, decorating the tissue in a very artistic way. (The proof is available on video to anyone who requests to see it.) Another scene later, we're buying pies from the petrol station at 2am and once again rocking up at Carl's – to Stephan's and Ruann's grief. While Leonard was snoozing on the couch, the rest of us said our long see-you-laters many times over insisting the guys must come and visit us in Europe one day soon.
Carl attempts to deflect attention from his poor performance. "When you guys were out bowling, I was busy getting laid...". Clearly the green balls would suggest differently
Ivan puts on a bizarre vampire face for the second time in this post. Other than that, it's a very serious nostalgia-evoking picture
M gives Gerhard a hug but obviously his lovemobile is what she will be missing more..Ivan woke us up around 7am the next morning before heading out to work so we wouldn't miss out on our early date with Bast but also to say bye for his part. Similar painful hugs followed as the night before, never mind that our hungover state made everything else hurt physically as well. But hey, mates say bye when they are drunk, friends when they are hungover. We went back to snooze for another hour before waking up to a panic packing session when Bast phoned us up from the McDonald's across the road. We swerved by Carl's place to drop off Ivan's key and say our hungover friend byes to him as well before hopping in the Bastmobile and riding towards Eastern Cape.
Confidently striding on to new adventures!!
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