Prosper

The day we arrived in Cape Town I was told that Prosper would be at the house waiting for us with the keys.  He was. In fact, he was sitting in the garden, using the wifi to download his email. Prosper is 23 and from Zimbabwe. Both of his parents have died and he has 2 younger brothers in Zimbabwe who is he supporting and putting through school.  And it turns out we both share a passion for cycling.  In fact, at the time he was commuting daily to work 50 miles roundtrip on an old, broken down pink mountainbike with no helmet.  Thanks to the generosity of some biking friends in the Providence, we found him a helmet and some styling new bike clothes.

Sometimes in the morning, out for my training rides, usually on the steepest hill, Prosper would come whizzing by, making me feel like I had been standing still.  It was clearly time for him to do his first Argus, the classic 70-mile bike ride around the Cape that some of us are addicted to.  So we got Prosper entered, bought him some new skinny tires and off he went, completing the course in a remarkable 3 hours and 20 minutes, despite being on an old mountain bike, never having been in an organised ride before and stopping for water twice!  Compare this to Abby's cousin Steve and I, supposedly experienced bikers on state-of-the-art bikes - and we could manage only just over 3 and a half hours.  Here he is topping Suikerbossie, a 2-mile climb at 5% grade, which isn't that bad except that you have already been riding for 50 miles by then!  Prosper clearly didn't have a problem!

Since then, Prosper got a new job working as a mechanic in a bike store in Cape Town.  

He is over-the-moon happy! 

Black and White

Recently, for fun, I have started taking some black and white pictures. Here are a few I like...

These first two are from the day of a serious storm - a few minutes after I took these huge hailstones started to fall and I hauled it out of there!

And this is Table Mountain from Signal Hill

The Moon

By now, we have watched several full moons, which are a big deal in Cape Town - the landscape is so open, and the moon is everywhere - behind the mountains, over the Cape Flats area to the east of the city, and setting over the ocean, sometimes at unexpected times.

One of the best things we've done under the light of the full moon was to participate in the monthly 'Midnight Mass' bike ride, which aspires to get anyone and everyone riding a bike into the Cape Town city center on the night of the full moon.  Here is our group (minus Mark, who took the picture).  Fun!!

Another evening, on the way to pick Leah up from a friend's house:

And yet another more recent evening:

The Animals

One of the things that people most often want to know about our time here is what animals we have seen (in addition to Abby and Mark's work, more on that in an upcoming blog, and Leah's school, see her blog for that!).  

In Cape Town itself, and the surrounding area, there are no big game animals such as lions and elephants.  But there is an incredible diversity of marine and ocean life.  We have seen dolphins, seals and even an occasional whale.  Recently, we spent an afternoon at Boulders Beach, which has a large colony of African penguins, part of an unusual mainland colony of just over 2,000 breeding pairs.  They have endangered status due to declining numbers and various threats including habitat destruction.

These are pictures of the big rocks that gave the beach its name ... and this is where the penguins live.  

Mostly they are walking around or hiding under rocks, but we also saw some swimming.  We watched them for an entire afternoon - as the sun started to set, penguins came out of their hiding places in the rocks and walked up and down the beach ...

and even jumped up on the walls ....

 What's this?  That's no penguin!  This is a 'rock dassie'.  They are found living in many rocky places along the coastline in and around Cape Town.  Some are big, some are small, but you'll never guess what their most closely related to:

The elephant!

The Arts - Beadwork

Beadwork and wire art are two of the common forms of handicrafts that South African artisans make.  It is common to find many different things represented in bead and wire art, like bicycles ...

Wire and bead bikes

 flowers (these are wire versions of the South African national flower, the Protea)

 and all kinds of animals.  What do you see in this picture?

Answer:  elephants, giraffes, lions, rhinos, zebras, hippos

We have gotten to know a beadwork artist who sells his crafts on the beachfront near our house - his name is Innocent and he is from Zimbabwe.  He made the animals in the picture above.  Here, he is making a chicken for Abby's cousin Betsy.   We now regularly commission Innocent to make stuff for us and for friends.  First he started with the logo of Leah's favourite band, One Direction.

Then he made her a ballerina using only a picture I printed from the internet!