August 17, 2007: Muizenberg and Montagu, South Africa

Anyone who has watched Shark Week on the Discovery channel knows that South Africa has a large population of Great White sharks that occasionally chomp on a person instead of seal. One wet day in Muizenberg, Charles and I popped into a pub and the proprietor told us about the local method of shark surveillance. Allegedly, a "street person" (homeless?) started keeping an eye out for sharks from a high road that overlooks the beaches and bays in the area. The road follows the coast for miles and really is the perfect height to afford an unobstructed view of the sea. Anyway, he somehow radioed or contacted the lifeguards when he saw a shark and they acted accordingly. After awhile, more and more people volunteered to keep watch up and down the coast, and now it is a government sponsored program with paid employees.

There are around 25 sharks that are tagged, making them easier to monitor (one of the tagged sharks swam to New Zealand and back!). Others are recognized by distinctive markings. The entire program is very organized now and employees keeping watch on the road radio each other when sharks are on the move along the coast. If they determine a shark is going to be a problem, they notify the appropriate lifeguard in the grid in which the shark is looking for a tasty snack, and the lifeguard will raise a colored flag so folks know a shark is in the area. Once a shark has moved on from an area, the lifeguard raises a different colored flag signifying that a shark was in the area during the last two hours. After two hours, the lifeguard raises another flag for all clear. I would get eaten by a shark because I don't remember which color flag means what. Despite my chances of becoming a Darwin Awards statistic, I found it interesting that a voluntary act by a single person became a government sponsored program.

With Muizenberg weather not cooperating, we hit the highway and drove to Montagu. Riding in BIRT is a trip. It is such a crazy vehicle that people stare, wave, cheer, and generally look completely befuddled. Drivers don't quite know how to react either, especially when merging onto the highway. You can see the thought process: first they are going quite fast, then they notice BIRT and put on the brakes (probably thinking "What the &$*#@?"), then they speed up real fast and cut bravely in front. It's pretty amusing. I haven't talked much about BIRT yet, but I'll get to that later once I get this journal up to date.

Montagu, "voted South Africa's favorite village in 2002 and still a firm favorite" according to the road sign leading into town, is nestled in a valley surrounded by small, weathered and rocky peaks. Loved it.

Montagu sunrise:It's a little town with a great bakery (hello sweet tooth) that I went to every day. Not just for sweets. but also the meat pies which were awesome and the equivalent of $1. Steak and Onion was my favorite. The women who worked there knew me quite well by the time we left.
The area is filled with canyons, called kloofs, and the rock is a gorgeous red color that glows in the sun. There are some wineries about which give the region a bit of a low-key Napa feel. Unfortunately, I didn't make it to any before they closed. We stayed at this great campground, de Bos, run by a climber, Stuart Brown.

Stuart climbing a new project route he is developing:It was a farm/vineyard/campground/everything. A bit of a warren, there was an indoor climbing wall (small, but serviceable), stables (which had been converted to hostel type sleeping, then turned back into stables) where we cooked dinner on a gas stove while the horses munched hay (not sure having a stove in the barn is the best idea...), a kitchen for campers, rented bungalow type rooms, a separate kitchen for the paid rooms, random courtyards, etc, etc. And all very reasonably priced. I think it was the very hot showers that sold me completely, despite the fact that they had a hole cut into the wall at about head level. Definitely for ventilation and a bit of a breezy experience.

As soon as we arrived in Montagu, we immediately went to a crag near the campground. It was a pleasant hike along a stream filled with reeds that must have been 12 feet high, effectively blocking the view at eye level. Imagine, then, walking through the reeds to emerge onto a small, grassy pad bounded by a rock wall and the stream filled with...police and medical personnel. Not just any medical personnel, but forensic pathologists. Yes, a dead body was floating in the marshy pond fed by the stream at the base of our intended climbing crag.

The scene of the crime. The pond is the dark water in the lower right of the pic:That was certainly a first. Of course that didn't stop us from climbing. It was a little eerie, however, to look down at a corpse from the top of a crag. Bloat never looks good on any body. It was a bit like happening upon a car wreck -- you wanted to look and felt slightly dirty for doing so -- but it was unavoidable because you have to look down for feet placement when climbing. In reality, there really wasn't much to see. The body looked like a blue barrel (due to clothing, not the cold). Anyway, the authorities milled around for a couple of hours until some guys showed up and donned drysuits. I guess corpse retrieval was not in anyone else's job description. The new guys jumped in the pond, inelegantly backstroked their way to the body, and grabbed it with their glove encased hands. Once they hauled it to shore, they zipped it into a bodybag and all the authorities quickly left in a big, official looking posse. All that was left was the horror at realizing that our driver, Henry, drank some water from the stream before we happened upon the scene. Luckily, the flow was going away from the corpse, but still, huge ick factor.