Travel Drinking In Cape Town

For reasons I truly can’t pretend to understand I have a long-term girlfriend. I have a

long-term girlfriend who’s smart, attractive, funny, caring, and – most significantly –

completely out of my league. For the sake of anonymity in this article, I’ll refer to her

with a pseudonym. Let’s call her Chesty Love. (Oh god, I’ve just Googled that name, and there really is

someone called Chesty Love. And it probably shouldn’t be altogether surprising that her profession doesn’t

involve insurance or accountancy.)

Okay, perhaps that name was a bit ridiculous. Let’s call her Melons McBusty instead.

Quite what Mel finds appealing in a beer-swilling travel addict who’s actually quite

proud of owning a pair of pants with the London Underground map on them, is not

something I particularly want to put brain power into. The fact that she continues not

to realise she’s out of my league is all that really matters. What is fortuitous

about Mel, though, is how often she’s prepared to accompany me on some

harebrained booze cruise to foreign climes with the mere promise of shoe shopping.

We took a trip to South Africa earlier this year which was one such example. Didn’t start well, to be honest. Unfortunately, we wound up on the same flight as a group of mothers and toddlers who were in the advanced stages of training for the International

Whining & Screeching Tournament. But the country itself was utterly intoxicating. Both metaphorically

and, of course, quite literally. We began in the province of Kwa Zulu (where Mel was particularly proud that

I successfully avoided a single utterance of the phrase: “Don’t throw your bloody spears at me!”) and

headed across to one of South Africa’s two capital cities, Cape Town.

(On the subject of which, why the hell do you need two capitals? Is Cape Town some kind of spare, in

case Pretoria breaks down?)

I won’t rattle on about our pre-Cape Town experiences too much, except to say ... fuck me, the South Africans can be a bunch of bigots when they get going! We had far too many conversations with some of the white population who’d begin with a disclaimer like “I’m not racist, but...” and then come out with the kind of prejudiced, misinformed shit that would make even Hitler say; “hey, steady on mate; live and let live.”

I won’t repeat the details here, but I will say that it breeds a weird culture of fear. The security alarm boxes on the front of (rich, white) people’s houses don’t just say “Building Is Alarmed”; they say things like “ARMED RESPONSE” in large, friendly letters. We even saw one that said “FASTEST ARMED RESPONSE IN SOUTH AFRICA”, which quite frankly is only one step away from “I’M ARMED TO THE TEETH: GO ON, SAMBO, MAKE MY FUCKING DAY!”

Okay, Cape Town...

We’d booked ourselves into a hotel in an area called De Waterkant. Rather charmingly, this means ‘the

waterside’ in Afrikaans, and even more charmingly it’s pronounced with absolutely perfect diction as

‘What-A-Cunt’.

Actually, to go off on a tangent for a moment, Afrikaans is fantastic for unintentionally offensive pronunciation. In Durban, I’d met an extremely Aryan-looking six-foot blonde woman called Lizelle, whose first language was Afrikaans. She told me – with some degree of pride, I have to say – that their phrase for “choose my subject and side” (a contrived clause, I'll admit, but stick with me) is pronounced as “kiss my fuckin’ cunt”. Delightful! And I don’t mind telling you, having an extremely fit blonde lady issuing an imperative like that to you at a party makes for a unique – and not unpleasant – experience.

Anyway, back to De Waterkant. (Yep, that’s going to make me smirk to myself for the rest of my life.) In the

hotel bar, I soon discovered that the local beer is called Castle Lager which tastes ... well, it tastes like lager,

doesn’t it? What else can I say? Lager’s not exactly the sort of beverage which lends itself to comments such

as: “I’m getting berries ... I’m getting garlic ... I’m getting spices”. It’s usually more a case of “I’m getting drunk

... I’m getting drunker ... hey mate, are you looking at my bird’s tits?!”

There were four other guys in the bar, all rather trendily dressed, and when Mel and I took our seats they immediately started chatting away to us. Or rather, they started chatting away to me. In a kind of flirty way. You didn’t need the most finely-tuned gaydar to twig what was going on. We soon found out that De Waterkant is a cafe culture gay district, featuring the excellently named Pride festival “Out In Africa”.

After a lengthy conversation with the four gentlemen – during which I went through the time-honoured motions

of being overly heterosexual when gruffly ordering more beer or declaring “hey I wouldn’t mind shagging that!”

when any human female appeared in the vicinity – we found out that the night-life centre of the city is a place

called Long Street. (I should point out, for absolutely no comic effect at all, that Cape Town’s geography

employs an American-style grid system, and naming a street “Long” is thus entirely accurate.)

During the walk to Long Street, as part of Mel’s end of the bargain, we saw lots and lots and lots of shops, stalls and general retail outlets which sold a variety of pots, beads and carved wooden pieces. (If I’m honest, it didn’t take very long until I was all maxed out when it came to pots, beads and carved wooden pieces.) There was, however, one item for sale which almost made me weep for the future of humanity: the God Loves Me baby-faith DVD. Reading the spiel on the back to make sure I wasn’t dreaming (and I wasn’t) I

discovered that this is a DVD that people buy to play to their babies to teach them the story of the book of Genesis.

Let me reiterate that: to play to their babies. The claim on the back cover will stay with me to the grave –

“Guaranteed to hold your baby’s attention longer than any other faith-based baby video on the market.” What?

What?! Any other faith-based baby video? Just how big a market is this in South Africa?

Sadly, judging by the deluded bunch of Bible-bashers that Mel and I met through the rest of the country, I get the horrific feeling that there really are legions of parents queuing up to bombard their pre-toddler offspring with sugar-coated religious propaganda. I know I’m starting to sound like a belligerent Richard Dawkins after a night on the schnapps ... but fucking hell, wouldn’t it be cool to listen to a belligerent Richard Dawkins after a night on the schnapps?

When we finally reached it, Long Street proved to be an alcoholistic earthly paradise, lined with bars of all descriptions down both sides. And after a few minutes’ walk, we spied a veritable beacon in the darkness – an Irish pub. Called The Dubliner. (I guess they all are.) Bliss! An oasis of mindless European down-time right in the middle of a cosmopolitan African city. After

a week of sampling expensive local wines, I could clang back a Guinness and just switch the brain off. Switch

the brain off, that is, if it weren’t for trying to fathom the slightly odd choice of decor – someone in the

management team had obviously decided that what the walls were missing were several dozen framed issues

of Cigar magazine, each cover featuring a different celebrity posing with a particularly Freudian-sized cigar. I

love weird, random shit like this! Although after a brief search around the premises, I did conclude that the

publishers were missing a trick by never having featured Monica Lewinsky as a cover girl.

(Can I just say, incidentally, I don’t see the appeal in smoking a cigar that’s been in someone’s vagina? Call me old-fashioned...)

One of the main attractions of Cape Town is that, only a short car journey inland, lie the Cape Winelands, a beautiful stretch of countryside centred around the towns of Stellenbosch and Franschhoek. And there you can explore (deep breath before saying this) one hundred vineyards all of which sell bottles straight to the consumer. Oh yes! Come on!! We set aside a whole day for this particular treasure.

And let me tell you yet another fantastic thing about Mel ... she doesn’t drink wine. Brilliant! Going on a

vineyard drive with almost anyone else in the world, we’d practically be having a fist-fight over who had to

be the designated driver. No such problem here. Actually, in an unusual stereotype switch, Mel’s a lot

more into cars anyway. I, meanwhile, would be hard-pushed to tell you the first thing about the vehicle we

rented. I think it was white. Oh, and they drive on the left.

While we were on the route out to the Winelands, we stopped off at a little service station where I saw something in the public toilets that I’ve never seen anywhere else. (Now there’s a bold statement. Don’t be scared, keep reading...) There were three cubicles and one toilet roll dispenser. Which was outside all of the cubicles. I have to say, I ran in with some urgency, but I got lucky; I spotted the problem in time. Pity the poor sod who works out the lavatorial geography in the wrong order.

Finally, to the wine. We visited three vineyards over the course of the day – Kanonkop, Rustenberg and Tokara – which might not sound like a lot, but you sample a range of reds, whites and ports in each and see how you get on. For the record, I’d recommend the pinotage. It’s South Africa’s indigenous grape, so the locals appreciate you making the effort. More importantly,

two or three glasses of it will cheerfully take you from “ooh that’s a cheeky little number” to utterly whammed

incoherence dressed up behind the flimsy facade of cultural tourism.

Actually, that could almost be my motto. A good place to sign off, I think.

By the way, on an unrelated note, is it socially acceptable yet to fancy Emma Watson, who plays Hermione?

I just figure it’s about time someone started asking the question.