For a song parody lyricist, I make a great cook.
April 5, 2010: Sis is currently in China for her birthday today. Both circumstances are unrelated.
Anyhoo, apparently here in South Africa they celebrate Easter Monday, and as such most of their business establishments are closed. Some in the group took advantage of their waking up early to go around the hotel area to take some pictures, while I slept it off and only had an hour left of free time to enjoy my breakfast. Beverage section even gave us a choice of bottled Still or Sparkling water, the latter that just tastes weird and turns your orange juice into a less-sweetened version of Royal Tru Orange. Tammy was receiving constant weather reports for Table Mountain, and so far it was still at cold and cloudy, so our morning trip there was put on hold for now. Instead we started our day at Signal Hill, w/c gave us a spectacular view Capetown's two other peaks, Devil's Peak and Table Mountain, as well as a view of the city (ooh, I can see our hotel from up here). Frankly the weather feels very Canadian to me (i.e. Sunny w/ chilly winds), but I still opted to leave the jacket in the car.
Afterwards we drove around the city, seeing the Malay Quarters (no Malays sighted), House of Parliament (where their president stays when he's in town), City Hall (where the pigeons hang out just outside) before finally stopping at the Castle of Good Hope. The shuriken-shaped place (more Pentagram then Pentagon) reminded me of Intramuros, w/ the high stone walls and vintage cannons, but w/o the Starbucks.
Speaking of cannons, we were treated to a cannon-firing demonstration by someone from the South African Cannon Preservation Association (or some-such organization for that-such purpose). While soliciting donations in exchange for being able to light the fuse and fire his small cannon, so to speak, one woman finally stepped up and forked over 100Rand to shoot a small 5lb. iron ball towards a small drawing of Humpty Dumpty (whom legend has it was actually a cannon, not a giant egg, w/c wasn't mentioned in the nursery rhyme, anyway). The palace also housed a military museum that had two life-size replicas of horses. Nice front lawn, too.
We then headed for the West Coast Ostrich Farm and mingle w/ said giant birds, and, unbeknown to them, have the ones not on display for lunch. These giant birds have lot in common w/ cows in that they're herded, their skin makes for some quality leather goods, easy to feed from your hand, but if you agitate them can kick you so hard you'll fart through your mouth.
Their mini-museum had a full-size skeleton, metal skeleton sculptures, giant feather fans, ostrich skin displayed and framed on the wall, and bottles containing their gonads, eyeballs and an embryo. The room next door had eggs being painted and decorated like secular Easter on steroids. Turns out they're able to produce unfertilized eggs for the sole purpose of making these hard-to-break souvenirs, priced as low as 70 (plain) to as holy-crap-high as 500 (Laser-etched, painted and glazed). The two usual entertainment options I didn't do was stand to the ostrich eggs laying at the sand pit and/or mount an secured ostrich for photo-op purposes.
Other creatures of interest included medium-sized tortoises and albino peacocks. The latter slowly (duh) walked around in a pen and our and our museum guide picked one of them up to give us a closer look. The skin on their legs reminded of that Indonesian "Tree Man" (click here if you dare) and lifting him almost threw my back out.
The latter were just hanging around just outside the ostrich pens and attracting the attention of tourists and the sole colored peacock. At the gift shop I bought an ostrich egg to replace the one Jian broke, as well as a couple of pasalubong and those colored stones Ma asked me to buy for the fishbowls and glass trays in the living room. These things were sold by the cup or bag, and you're left to fill it as much as possible w/o spilling any.
After the light lunch of ostrich meat (another thing in common w/ cows: they taste like beef) w/ just the ironically small serving of scrambled ostrich egg, we went to the Groot Constantia Winery for some wine tasting. I placed emphasis on the tasting, giving that cast-iron spittoon they placed on our table a run for its money. Whether it was because of what happened to me on the plane coming to Joburg or just my experience w/ wine drinking in general, all 5 bottles that passed my mouth went from swivel, smell, swish, spit. Repeat. Admittedly, I'm not an expert. Hell, one glassful is all it'll take to make me sleepy. All I could discern was whether the booze was fruity or dry. Sticking to champagne and Welch.
The rest of our late afternoon found us back at the V&A Waterfront, but now we had more time to explore the place, mostly the craft shops outside the mall and local boutiques. I browsed their music shop for a bit, where the "bargain" CD went for 50 rand, or 350 pesos. Hooray for bittorrent. Dinner was at a Chinese restaurant (surprise), Mr. Chan, where they almost shang-danged us out of our abalone. We got back to the hotel earlier than usual, but still managed to stay up 'til 1AM to write on the journal manually (netbook still on the fritz). Also caught the end of the Jesus miniseries (The Passion) and found out that the ''ill-designed'' showerhead i mentioned last time wasn't redundant, but that I just pressed the wrong button. South African hotel shower technology almost beat me. But I can figure out those electrical outlets, this shouldn't have phased me.
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