study why sea lions swim in cursive

with our friend veronica (who loves riding in the car) we drove the rental car i had gotten for the dad visit down to hout bay harbor for a nice sunset hike. libby and i always dreamed of walking all the way around this one mountain outcropping, which has a path overlooking the ocean the whole way, and in five hours you could do the whole loop. well, we never made that hike, despite our dreams and our talking about it. we always went down to hout bay in the afternoon and so we had to be content with shorter, sunset hikes. all the same, this one was really worth it.

we found a beautiful place to sit and look out at the ocean…

and there, down below, was what seemed to be 10,000 sea lions. the whole time we were there, they were all singing, talking, playing, eating dinner, doing 10,000 different things i guess. it sounded something like a loud cafe broadcast through speakers to the square outside, except maybe louder, and from sea lions. but we could only be sure it was sea lions by taking close up photos, and then zooming in, again, on the view setting of the digital camera.

(if you have a way to zoom this photo in, you’ll be able to make out the distinct shape of hundreds and hundreds of sea lions).

after marveling at the sea lions, we walked a bit further and watched the sun finally sink into the ocean before heading back home…

amazing sunsets

dad n bro: crazy caves

the other thing, besides mini golf, that i was really sure i wanted to do when my brother and dad visited was to take my brother down to the caves near kalk bay. aj hesitated to make the plan with me quite a bit because my dad wouldn’t be able to make the walk and he didn’t want to do anything that would split us up. i really admire my brother’s desire to do as much as possible for us to spend time together as a family, and i think my dad really appreciated it, too. but as it was, i think we made the right choice to hike up to the caves together. one of my favorite thing about this visit was that my brother and i got time to spend together as brothers, and even, almost like as peers. we rarely see each other in recent years, and when we do we don’t usually get much time to just enjoy one another. so, it was a really unique opportunity for me to be a host for him, and to show him a part of the world that i love and have come to really enjoy.

we checked out on the internet a path that i had never before walked, where multiple caves could be found, and where you could see both oceans at once from the top. it was really cool. we weren’t the most adventurous cave explorers but we had a hilarious time checking them out, even if we only went in for a few meters, and even if libby accidentally made it impossible for us to use our flashlight…

(alternative) sightseeing

there are some touristic sites in cape town that are somehow unavoidable, even if to some extent we avoided being tourists.

district six, of course, must be seen:

townships…

with street art

and memorials to the struggle against apartheid…

down the coast towards hout bay:

the ever reliable botanical gardens…

and what trip would be complete without airport photos?

why stealing windows from metrorail is good

i had to go to uwc for a quick one hour class while my dad and bro were visiting. they agreed to come along and check the campus out.
on the way home, our train car had no window, so we had a good time checking out the unusually good view of the city passing us by, and the breeze blowing in. usually the train windows are pretty cloudy grey somehow, and so it’s not so easy to get a good view. but it’s a pretty interesting train line. unlike other lines, where the communities change quite a bit as you go, on the train line to uwc, it’s all relatively the same. either coloured townships, black townships, industrial areas, or the univerity…

here’s bontheheuwel station (a coloured township, built by the apartheid state to house people forced out of the inner city), where the trains also run down to khayelitsha (black township, built for the same reasons, but much bigger), so at rush hour hundreds of people pour out of my train from uwc and switch to the other line…

coloured townships…

ysterplaat station (which is near where i would later be robbed while trying to ride the train to school, but that story is for another time…)

shack communities…

and back to the city center…

transatlantic totally maniacal minigolf tournament

as libby and i both loved playing mini-golf together, and since i learned from my father all that i know (same for my brother) it was decided months in advance that we would have a spectacular minigolf tournament together, as elaborate and fantastic as possible. we made a complicated rotation, playing multiple one-on-one games, rotating opponents and courses (two each at sea point and muizenburg, the blue one harder than the orange).

dad, looking suave on the course, with the setting sun at his back:

after the games, we took some time to play at the playground in muizenburg:

as we divided the results up into multiple different categories, we ensured that everyone (minus dad, sadly) won in some way or another. libby won the most games of all (nearly perfect, but she lost the last game). i had the best overall score (least strokes). and aj had the most hole-in-ones.

all around it was a fabulous time to be had by all.

the stupid noon gun

since i’d never done it before, and since we had a car, and since it seemed like a nice fun silly thing to do, i suggested to my dad and aj that we go up to see the noon gun explode. the cannon has been fired every day at noon for at least 150 years, or more. dad and aj agreed that it was a really stupid idea. then they decided to go anyway, to humor me.

i think it was worth it. the explosion was huge and wonderful, maybe even bigger than we expected. my dad nearly lost his hearing permanently to get this swell photo of it…

hangin out at hope st.

dunno what he was trying to do here, but…

my brother was really sure that this was the best possible place in my apartment to sit and relax…

dad n bro: sir lowry’s pass

upon arrival at the airport, i drove my dad and bro out to sir lowry’s pass to get a scenic overlook of the whole cape town metropolitan area, before descending back down into the thick of the city (which, anyway, without climbing to some vantage point, is just a city, with all the ugliness, and more, of any city…)

we stopped first at this railroad bridge, and played around with some funny photos…

then we found the actual lookout point and took our real award winning shots…

this is love, you see?

this is beautiful, you see?

while i was visiting friends and celebrating my birthday in budapest, libby was back in cape town, hosting her friends erin and amanda, beginning her semester of studies at UCT and contemplating the nature of love (in general, and specifically between us)…

this is love, you see?

and also this is beautiful, you see?