Author: JB

Arnaud and I are the 88mph documentary team in residence. Here’s a behind the scenes look at our latest project.

Check out this panoramic shot of Cape Town.

Last Thursday Stefano arranged a dinner for the EiRs and Startup folks to relax and have a good time. Our destination: The Bungalow. We hopped in Old Man Goldfish (our mini’s official name) and made our way over the pass. It’s always a treat to see Old Man G climb that hill. Please visit and we’ll share in the joy together.

Back to the blog at hand. We got there just in time for a beautiful sunset. There really is something to sunsets here. The sun seems to stick around and melt on the horizon vs. what i’ve seen in the past.

We all had a great time, had some delicious seafood, had plenty of laughs and got to know everyone even better. Arnaud, loved the blue blanket, old man look.

I’ve found that I sweat a lot here.

It’s not humid, it’s really not that hot, but I can’t stop sweating. Every night our place is like a sauna with our only small respite being a tiny oscillating fan. Every morning the sun quickly blazes it’s way inside and I’m off to sweatsville again. Work is the worst given that fact that we’re on the top floor.

Good news is I’m here so that works for me.

Saturday morning was our great trip to the Biscuit Mill (I’ll post about this later), but we returned with a nice R200 fine on our car (that’s about $20). The kicker was that someone had pointed this particular spot to us as a viable option. He was even there upon our return and acted as if he was clueless. I immediately regretted my decision to pay him for helping us park.

So here’s how things went down today when I tried to fight/pay my parking fine.

I drove down to the area I considered might be near City Hall and asked a parking employee that was walking around. His instruction was to go to the Civic Centre. Great, I now had a destination that wasn’t too far away. I made my way over, parked and walked into the Civic Centre. A nice government building with high ceilings and big ambiguous signs of where to go. I figured ‘Pay Here’ would work. I lined up…sorry, queued up, and prepared to fight. I spoke to the woman at the window who said I could pay here, but to fight the charge I’d have to go to City Hall. I resigned to the fact that I had to pay and didn’t want any more hassle. I gave her the ticket. She asked, ‘when did you get this?’ I responded Saturday and she informed me that it most likely wouldn’t be in the system and I therefore wouldn’t be able to pay the fine. She confirmed her suspicions and told me I had to go to City Hall.

I was committed to at least paying this fine so I ventured over to City Hall near where I started my task. Now I’d at least have the opportunity to ask why we had received the ticket in the first place, try to fight it and in the worst case, pay for it.

City Hall – def: ‘Place of confusion in Cape Town’

I entered and saw a place to pay. It informed me that I would have to first go to Enquiries if I wanted to ask questions beyond giving my money and asking for a receipt. Enquiries informed me that I’d have to go to the Parking Office. Down the hall and to the right. I went down the hall and to the right. I asked about the Parking Office and the gentleman informed me ‘Not here, this is the prosecutors office. Go back down the hall there.’ Ok, that’s the direction I had just come from. So I waited in the Parking Fine Payment room thinking they might be able to shed some light on my confusion. He informed me, ‘You have to go to the Enquiries Office first.’ Yes, I was already there. ‘Oh, then you need to go to the Prosecutors Office. Right. Back down the hall and to the right. I entered the Prosecutors office where a gentleman helped me by saying that I’d have to talk to Ticketing Office. I avoided the obvious confusion that followed and asked if he could please reduce the fine amount due to my tourist induced stupidity. He would in fact grant this request. Cool, now we’re down to R70.

I headed promptly to the Payment Office with money in hand. ‘No, you have to go to the Enquiries Office to first change the payment amount before you can pay.’ Right. Out the hall and to the left. Wait in line. ‘I’m sorry, when did you get ticketed? Oh, it won’t be in our system yet. Can you please come back in 2-3 weeks?’ I laugh and leave.

Moral of the story: don’t trust those guys in yellow vests helping you park, they have no idea what they’re doing.

What a great day. Today was JB and Shannon relax on the beach day.

We got up at 7:30, went for a run, had a quick bite and headed to Camps Bay around 9am. Camps Bay began with a nice morning coffee and snack on the promenade. The kicker was the Cape Argus cycle race this weekend. It is one of, if not the, biggest general races in the world. They have over 30,000 participants each year who cycle over 100km around the cape. It’s actually the exact same route that Shannon and I took last weekend to Hout Bay. It’d be an amazing route, but certainly challenging.

So here we are watching thousands of cyclists buzz by as us, the lazy ones, enjoy some food and drink looking out on the ocean. I didn’t feel bad about it at all; however, I think I’m set to do this next year. Who’s in?

We subsequently made our way over the temporary bridge, grabbed two lounge chairs and an umbrella and staked out our perfect spot by the water. We were there until 6pm.

The day included reading, sleeping, drawing, swimming, paddle ball and frisbee. We were joined by my colleagues Arnaud and Stefano, plus Stefano’s friend Paolo.

Frisbee was fun but we couldn’t seem to keep the darn thing out of the water. This was no ordinary frisbee as this was the notoriously hard to control Aerobee. Needless to say we spent many a tense moment trying to find this thing in the surf. One such time, all hope seemed lost until it peeked it’s little neon head out of the water. I made a mad dash and dive. Success! Plus Failure! I grabbed the aerobee, but lost my sunglasses. Fortunately, they weren’t the expensive kind. Next time the aerobee went in the water it was Arnaud’s turn to lose his glasses. It was sad, but I laughed a lot during these exercises. We redeemed ourselves later by buying some Foakleys. Original price: R250. Final price: Two for R100. We still got ripped off, but I was happy.

Shan and I enjoyed some paddle ball and reached our collective best rally. Got to always strive for something.

The afternoon proved much windier, but it became amazing as the sun was going down. We grabbed an evening cocktail and watched the sun dip below the horizon. Amazing place to watch.

Camps Bay really is great and I’m surprised it took us this long to enjoy a full day there and watch a sunset. We’ll be going back a whole bunch more.

Leaving Hout Bay we knew next up was penguins at Boulders beach. How to get there? Take the m6 and enjoy the coast. Yes. Is the m6 the narrow, steep winding road towering over the cliffs and water below? Yes, maybe.

Despite my initial apprehension the mini was a champ. Easily taking the winding roads and nimbly taking us to new heights and spectacular views.

We arrived in simonstown around 1pm with penguins on the brain. I had been here once before, but that was 5 years ago. And like 5 years ago, I pulled into the first parking lot and promptly headed to the one farther down the road. The first time because the lot was full and the second time because I thought the first time we made the right decision by parking farther down the road. I was wrong the second time. Here’s my advice. Park in the first lot if you can. That is unless you want to go swimming at the beach, then park in the second lot.

We enjoyed the penguins at Boulders Beach. We marveled at how graceful they are in the water, how clumsy they appear to be on land and how at peace they seem while basking in the sun. We even were lucky enough to witness a couple of penguins showing their affection to one another.

Monday night Shannon arranged a movie night for us at the Pink Flamingo Cinema. The movie we saw is one of my favorites of all time, The Fifth Element. Nothing especially different about the movie this time as I’ve seen it dozens of times and love it every time, but it was all about the location.

This particular theater is on the top of the Grand Daddy hotel on Long street. The theater is outdoors and surrounded by a half dozen Airstream trailers that you can book as lodging.

We ordered a bottle of Fat Bastard wine, grabbed our picnic basket and grabbed a front row seat on the lounger. What a great night.

Per the recommendation of a colleague, Shannon and I decided to attend last night’s PechaKucha in Cape Town.

The way it works is anyone can apply to speak at the event. You have one limitation: 20 images/slides and each slide is only shown for 20 seconds. Last night there were 9 speakers who presented ideas and projects they find interesting. We had topics including gentrification, biodiversity studies, performance arts, township beauty pageants, poetry and Tanzanian hip-hop. Here’s the lineup from last night: http://www.pechakucha-capetown.com/pechakucha-22/

The goal of the event is to inspire and educate attendees. It takes place in over 600 cities around the world and has been in existence for 10 years. You should check it out and see when the next one is in your neighborhood. http://www.pechakucha.org/

It’s amazing to watch the clouds pour over Table Mountain. It can be a perfectly clear day and there are clouds. The cause is the winds blowing from the south east coming from False bay and rushing up over the plateau, condensing into clouds and then falling down into the city bowl of Cape Town.