Maclear's Beacon... exposed!

I finally have time to catch up on my blogging (with the cricket in the background... man we need help today - Australia require 18 runs off 21.4 overs - 0.8 runs per over).

I thought it would be fitting that I post on the most awesome weekend that I've had in a long time:P After a really good Thursday evening at toiger toiger (spent it in good company:P), I was definitely not in the mood for a large Friday. Come early Friday evening, Whiskey and Soda were determined to change that! With the threat of Green Fairy looming, I decided that it was best to stick to the proven medicine for a long night... need I even mention it's name... vodka! Of course this was all happening at a local watering hole known for making people oblivious to their surroundings (and yes, there is a dance pole... for drunkards who feel the need for public display). Anyway, we ended up at toiger later, which has been a common theme for me over the last few weeks, even tho all I wanted was my bed. I did gather a new respect for a friend who proved his metal as part of "The A List" by inventing new drinks. If u've heard of a suitcase (one shot jack, chased by one shot passion fruit), then try replacing the jack with jegar and the passion with tequila! Needless to say the evening turned out ok, as it usually does, and I fell into bed at around 2:30am.

Saturday was all about the mountain! I was up at 5am. Now it was very tempting to skip the mountain and just sleep (Thought it would be crazy to climb Table Mountain with a huge night and only 2 hrs sleep under my belt), but instead filled my camel back with ice and water, grabbed a sandwich, apples and a choc at a local service station and ended up at the parking lot below Platteklip Gorge at around 8:45am. By just after 9am we were heading up. Now usually climbing up Platteklip is just plain grueling because it's just straight up for an hour and a half, but we decided to have a little more fun this trip. On the way up, we ducked up some rock faces and across to some steep ledges (photos at the end:P). I couldn't believe how easy it is to slide off the edge of a cliff. The steep slopes are covered in sand that you just can't rely on for grip. I think the big fire last year has something to do with it and the vegetation probably hasn't got a proper footing yet.

The view up the mountain from the parking lot

It really surprised me that hardly any South Africans climb up the mountain. Almost everyone we met was a foreigner. Anyway, we eventually made it to the top and had lunch. Now I titled this "Maclear's Beacon... exposed!" because we were prepared for another 200m - 300m climb from there, and were rather disappointed when we found out that Platteklip sits at 1010m above sea level and Maclear's Beacon is only at 1087m, and like 3km away. This means that it was a rather flat walk from there. The view was amazing though! Legend has it that if ur climbing the mountain to Maclear you should take a rock with you to place at the beacon. I didn't know this till on top of the mountain, but I think I'll bear this in mind for next time. At Maclear's, we met Monica, a German girl who was in South Africa alone so she joined us on the trip down the mountain, and ended up going out with the others later that evening. The way up had been cloudy, which was great because it wasn't that hot, but the sun was out when we went down which meant I could finally get a bit of a tan:D Anyway, reaching the car at 2pm, I realised we had been on the mountain for 5 hrs... man that was fun.

Proof, we stood on top of Maclear's Beacon!

Saturday night ended up being a huuge night again. We started off with a fantastic birthday dinner were I got to meet a whole bunch of new people, exchange stories about the day's events as well as general chit chat, and experience an ostrich burger with cranberry sauce (pity the ostrich was kinda raw... ugh!). From there we went to... well... i think it was a pub... no a pool bar... no a hole in the wall!?!? Let's just say that we will be "faxing out" of dodgy places from here on out for a reason:P No it wasn't actually that bad, just the bathrooms... and paint job... and people need to be worked on. We had a couple games of pool... of which I was suitably useless. Next was toiger toiger... again, where there was much celebration, good music (well better than the previous night), djinking and a I even won a bet with a barlady:P

Exhausted and suitably sunburnt, Saturday night was loads of fun

Oh great... Australia just won the Cricket... by 7 wickets! Nice one team! So over it. Well it's Ausi and Sri-Lanka in the final now.

Anyway, Sunday was relax time, and apart from some hilarious cat tossing at a friends braai, was very chilled cos I got no sleep whatsoever the previous night!

Here are more mountain pics.

Off the beaten path

Dabbling in rock climbing... really want to get into this proper

A friend sitting on a ledge

It's really amazing at the top of Platteklip

Teamwork

--Vodka

NITROX!!

Ok, I haven't blogged in a while, so I thought i'd better play catch up. The last few weeks have been hectic to say the least. Work Hard Play Hard is my new motto (while i've always had the work hard bit nailed... the play hard bit seems to be coming out a bit more these days:P).

So I ordered the new car on Friday afternoon. I have decided not to go for the Audi A3 2.0T sportback (sob), but rather to satisfy myself with a black Polo GTI (1.8T with sunroof, leather seats, cruise control etc). Now i'm looking forward to driving this little tiger quite a lot cos i'm borrowing an 1100 at the moment and when i drive up a hill I might as well get out and push it.

Well, cars aside, I had another fun weekend (been out 7 nights in 3 weekends:P). A little tiger on thursday evening, followed by a lot of tiger on friday evening meant that on Saturday evening I took a chill pill as I had a dive to look forward to on Sunday.

Sunday's Dive
Well, on sunday, Whiskey and I headed off to Miller's point to dive the Smitswinkel Bay wrecks. Now there are 5 wrecks at this dive spot, all next to each other, scuttled by the navy in the 70's to form a dive site (well i'm sure they were going to scuttle them in any case.. but kind of them to think of us divers). We got all our gear ready and after a briefing waited for the skipper to return from a previous dive at the smitties wrecks. It soon became apparent that diving smitties was going to be out of the question. The skipper (a technical diver himself) informed us that visibility was at about 1 meter, and the surge was incredibly strong. Now just to put this into perspective, the dive boat finds the wrecks using echo location (sonar / depth sounder / what ever you would like to call it) and anchors on the wreck. The divers then descend on the anchor cable down to the wreck. When they got to the wreck, they could not see it just a few meters in front of them! They ended up clipping retractable lines to the anchor chain so they could find their way back!

Checking Whiskey's Gear

Armed with this information, we packed the gear in the cars and headed off to A-Frame with our tails between our legs in search of a more diver friendly environment.

Once at A-Frame, it became apparent that we were going to have more success. The surge was still strong, and the water was murky, but we didn't care... we aren't your typical bunch of fair weather divers:D So with a EAN32 in our tanks (more oxygen than normal air - woohoo... nitrox!) we headed off to the water. The visibility was not the best I had seen... sitting at around 3 - 5 meters, and the surge was fairly strong. We swam to the cave, which is fun to swim through in surge as you get the whole super tube effect 4 meters under water:D

The Dive Briefing

Whiskey and I took up position behind the group (being master divers, the idea being that we would assist with any problems at the back of the group while the instructor leads). Upon entering the cave, one of the guppies decided to hold back and enjoy the view while the rest of the group headed off. When he realised that he was falling behind, darted off to the group and left whiskey and myself with no chance of finding the group. Not to worry though, even without a compass we navigated flawlessly around the reef, through caves (with one or two spy hops for a location) and gully's until we decided that our air supply (or Nitrox rather) was just enough to get us back without a 400m surface swim.

After a rather interesting swim back through the kelp in the surge (holding the kelp as the surge flows against you... then shooting forward at Mach 1 as it comes from behind!) we beached in style, dropped our gear and sat in the warm sun on the rocks only to watch our guppie surface without air a few hundred meters off shore. It was sweet payback watching the guppie swim hundreds of meters over kelp in cumbersome dive gear back to shore after holding us up in the cave:D

After changing (which is always an interesting experience on the side of the road) we headed off in search of beer at Dixies (a regular after dive watering hole), but alas it was full... so was the southern right. With our luck out here, we met up with some friends at Forries to demolish some beers and an awesome forries burger!

--Vodka

Back in Sunny SA

So after a recent, rather unfortunate and life changing event, Vodka is bouncing back into life in fine style. I'm back in South Africa (sooner than planned), and although the first week back was the toughest week i've had in a while, the weekend managed to put it all in perspective for me.

On friday night, tequila and vodka were the drinks of choice as we began the celebration of some work collegues departing for other opportunities. We began our marathon at Panchos (in obz) where the food was decent, and the Margaritas ice cold. Next was Stones where more good conversation and some pool was in order (don't forget the beers). A few hours later, the evening really kicked into gear when a few brave individuals decided that an excursion to Tiger was required. So with a short trip to Claremont, we were soon at the shooters bar meeting new and interesting people. After vodka and limes, a few jager shots, several suitcases and a couple hotties, we had lost track of time. By 4am, the place was emptying out and we decided to call it for the evening. I still had a full day of test driving ahead as i'm in the market for a new car.

Later on Saturday...
With a bit of a groan, I woke up to an sms from my test drive buddy (who had also been a part of the previous evening's escapades) informing me that we had just missed the 10am appointment to test drive a 2.0 FSI Audi A3. So with some quick thinking and a little initiative, I was at the dealership by 11am. Now respect to Audi for hiring the sales person that they did. They must feel pretty confident about the technical knowledge of their customers as the sales person, although very good looking, did not know a lot about cars. Anyway, after a few minutes of chatting, the sales consultant was set to join us at our next evening at Tiger, and my test drive buddy had arrived. Off we went to put this machine through its paces. The model we drove was the A3 2.0 FSI manual (I don't really care for an automatic).

In a couple of minutes we had found ourselves on a local freeway onramp. 60...120...170...190... man this machine had some spirit. It also had a nice interior. I realised that my co-pilot had his hands gripped on the seats when we finally came to a stop, a few meters behind a row of cars. The car I'd get would definately have to have ESP... Man what a ride. It was my co-pilot's turn. With the acceleration and braking taken care of, steering and handling was next. A quick, rather jerky ride found us back at the dealership with a shaken but smiling sales consultant. After a short talk about details and options, we decided to head off for the next vehicle of choice... the Ford Focus ST.

At a local Ford dealership, it took about 5 seconds to find ourselves in a black 2.5L Ford Focus ST. A turn of the key and an audible growl sent shivers through my spine. Now the car really is an all out beast. The turbo dials centered on the dash, and the seats cupped and firm meant that this machine was not for the refined individual. We headed off to another local freeway, but with all the traffic, could not risk putting this machine through its paces in the way it's really meant to. Never the less, we got her to groan and we soon realised that the cupped seats were there for a reason. My test drive partner was sold on the car, yet I found myself still thinking of the more refined Audi just a few km away.

It was after this drive that I realised buying a demo car might not be the best idea. According to the sales consultant, we were timid in the car. Anyway, we moved on and looked at both Opel and BMW, but I had one car on my mind... the 2.0 T FSI which I was already driving in my head.

Saturday evening started off a little slower than Friday, but that was by no means an indication of the evening ahead. We met up at the Tavern and headed off to Durbanville to support a friend of a friend of a friend's band. Now, the area was suitably dodge, but it was here that I tried a new vodka (triple vodka lime). After the first song, which was admittedly good, we decided to find our fortunes at a club in town called Opium. The evening continued on in fine style where jager bombs, and naturally vodka limes were the order of the evening. After a quick trip to the not so awesome VIP lounge we found our place on the dance floor. When we had had enough fun here, we were off to Tiger to try more interesting shooters and meet more interesting people.

Tiger on Saturday was less packed than on Friday, but we soon made up for that. Vodka and limes, shooters, the dance floor and an interesting architect student kept the evening going till well past friday night's record. At just before 4am, we called it for the evening and headed back home. Finally getting to sleep just after 5am meant that Sunday was going to be a slow day.

True to my previous night's expectations, Sunday was all about recovery, purchasing new clothes and having a rested afternoon in a hammock at a friends afternoon braai.

Anyway... enough with the talk... here are the pictures.

Exhibit A (never took photo's at the test drive, so this is from the net)

--Vodka