Day 26 & 27
Well, here we are. The most southern tip of the African Continent. Next stop would be Antarctica. We spent two days poking around and riding out into the country side. The first day we walked down to the end of the continent and almost got caught in the rain, but ducked into the only coffee shop and one of the few shops of any kind in town. About sunset Louie, the owner of the Cape Agulhas Guest House, our home, took us and two other guests Roger and Janet, on a field trip to the top of the hill overlooking the town. He pointed out various flora and fauna on the way. The Port Jackson bush was imported from Australia to hold the dunes but it pushed out all the native vegetation. They are now treating it with some type of hormone that kills the seed pods and the plant is dying out. The Bitou bush is a pioneer bush that germinates with heat from the fires. It grows quickly, shading and protecting the other plants until they mature, and then dies. It is the one with the flowers.
Roger is a very interesting bloke. In the 70's he was a candidate to be a Methodist minster and was sent to the Angolan border with the South African Defense Forces. He and the other religious personnel saw such atrocity being committed by both sides that they started reporting it to the World Council of Churches and the UN. They were immediately removed from the front and sent home. He later resigned from the church when the church decided to ignore what he saw for political reasons. He is now in the construction business and visited the U.S. on a USAID tour at the invitation of the US Ambassador. He got tour from the east coast to the west coast and thoroughly enjoyed it. We had some very interesting political discussions about his country and mine. He, like myself, gets upset when he hears time and time again people using old stereotypes to classify people. Interestingly they are pretty much the same here as they are in the U.S. It basically gets back to the age old adage of "if you don't look like me and think like me, you are less than me."
Janet is a music and arts teacher at a primary school in Cape Town and she is very outgoing and a lot of fun. She has invited us to dinner at her place when we reach Cape Town.
Lunch, at the recommendation of the a wine maker we met, was at the Black Oyster Catcher winery. It is the first creative food that we have had in South Africa and it was great. The winds were blowing so hard, gusting to 35 MPH, that after some touring and getting blown down when we got out of the car, we went back to the hotel about 3 and took a nap.
