Dixon and Lukas, who we'd met in Sudan all those months ago, had been in South Africa for quite a longer while than us, but a lack of wheels on both sides (we had none, theirs was broken down) we hadn't managed to meet up yet. On the days between the Second round and the Quarter final though, this would change. We'd arranged to meet up in Cape Town as they were lounging in Stellenbosch and it was convenient for both of us to get into town. Mav (as Lukas was more commonly known due to his preference for Tom-Cruise-in-Top-Gun style aviator sunglasses) had got the car fixed and so they were finally back in business. We had a lazy day in Cape Town, sipping cocktails in a string of happy-hour-priced establishments and catching up the lost time from the last 7 months, and promised to meet up soon.
Mav explores his sensitive side with a few Cosmos. Dixon explores his sensitive caveman side by munching on a maraschino cherry
Mav, T, Laura, Dixon, Matt, M. It's business-face time.On the days we'd lined up, Mav couldn't make it but he was ably replaced by Sal, a friend of Dixon's from university days who lived in Sydney and had come over for a few weeks, and we picked them up at Strand train station. Dixon, with his usual political correctness had nicknamed him “the terrorist” although we're not sure why (I doubt his Pakistani origins and beard had anything to do with it). Any comparison with Osama bin Laden quickly dissipated after he proved himself to be an able drinker of beer and the few lingering doubts were extinguished as he joined Dixon and me on the beach in his boxers one morning for a swim and a quick kickabout of Dixon's football. He was good fun and we liked him immediately, and he completed the unphotogenic quartet to make any pictures of the four of us utterly repulsive. It seems he liked us too, as a few days later they were back.
Dixon explores his traitor side by delivering a fiery speech on Argentina's right to the Falklands
Sal joins the gang
And proves himself immediatelyBeing good hosts, of course, we took the lead in cooking the dinner for us although, as the cooking got underway, I realised that we had no cheese left. This would have been a disaster for me at the best of times but given that cheese was urgently required in the dish, the lack of cheese took on an unprecedented urgency and Dixon was enlisted to drive me to the shop (for they had now come with the car) so that we could pick some up, while M and Sal entertained each other in the flat. As we sat in the car he turned to me and said “You know, this is the first time I'll have ever driven in the dark”. Despite the two of us having a few reservations about zipping down Strand's main road with someone at the wheel who'd never driven at night before, I don't think that either of us expected him to crash immediately. This is, however, exactly what happened. He engaged the reverse gear, probably said something along the lines of “right, let's go”, and reversed the newly-repaired car straight into the pillar that stood to the side of the car, taking a lump out of the driver's door and leaving his wing mirror hanging by its cables. For the next half hour (or so it seemed), he adopted a pose that one would more expect of a devoted Christian in a church, rather than a demoralised motorist in a car park, sinking to his knees and looking abject. What separated him most noticeably from God's faithful flock was the amount of cursing that his mutterings produced. It was a pitiful, yet highly comical scene.
CRASH
...and his ability to park his popcorn into his mouth is not much more developedI'd managed to hold my nerve up until I got back upstairs to see if there was any duct tape or the like, although M and Sal had to wait until I'd got rid of my giggles to actually find out what had happened. There was no duct tape and M decided to put the cooking on pause as Dixon drove us to the Seafarer to ask if they'd have any equipment to help shore up the wing mirror while we got our cheese. The cable ties they had didn't work and so we went off to a petrol station down the road where the manager kindly donated some kind of blue sticky tape to us which did the job perfectly. The supermarkets were closed by this time and so we bought some crappy petrol station cheese and a 6-pack of eggs for the morning at extortionate prices. On our return, Dixon parked at the other end of the car park and refused to move it until it was time for them to go back to Stellenbosch, while everyone else managed to turn absolutely every conversation into a joke about driving or crashing for the remainder of the evening. We helped him drown his sorrows with 5 of the best in the Seafarer's "poncho challenge" as Dixon turned to the good stuff to escape this constant hounding and, on arriving to “Pirates”, a restaurant serving burgers and steak which remains open until 4am, he retired to the toilets for a nap, earning him further badgering. Sometimes it's just not worth getting up in the morning.
The poncho challenge laid out
Dixon gets the upper hand...
...but hell hath no fury like a woman scornedOf course, not all of our time together was debauchery and bumming around in substandard bars. Besides our morning at the beach, we also managed to visit Lourensford winery (quite a classy activity in these parts) to sample some of its products and look like we actually knew what we were talking about, swirling the wine around and so on. Most of the comments flying across the table were slightly negative or comically derogatory although this doesn't actually mean that the wines were bad. It just reflected the fact that we had no idea what we were talking about. Somehow, the conversation turned to the isolated Christian communities in the north west of Pakistan and we decided to find out if we could do a wine tour in the Kailash valley where we thought that one of these communities lived. One for the scrapbook I'm sure.
Wine tasting??? In PAKISTAN???????
A farewell gift from Strand, courtesy of Chris the Yank's printer (probably). 
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