Narrow

I really felt South Africa this visit. Since our move to Australia 12 years ago, I think my understanding of SA has been a bit narrow. We used to go back very summer holiday (not as often now) and visit the same familiar places and see the same people. Since we moved I haven’t really seen any new places or met many different people, so my perception of the country was limited to summer days at the beach house, a suburb in Cape Town and a small town in the Klein Karoo. When talking to Elize before her visit, I had to admit that I didn’t really know much about SA apart from my relatively small and safe bubble, even having spent half my life there. On this visit I tried to be a bit more independent, even though my parents seemed to be convinced that setting foot out of the door alone nearly anywhere in SA would result in certain death. The first 2 days was lovely, Elize was also in Cape Town (cheers for the photos!) so we took the bus around the peninsula, walked around Hout Bay, took a freezing dip at Clifton beach, ate mexican and climbed through the clouds up Table Mountain. I had some quality family time over easter at the beach town where I spent the majority of my summers, ate a lot and ran trails along the ocean. I also went for two beautiful hikes in the Overberg mountains which also has a view of the ocean: perfect. On a longer hike I was lucky to catch up to two girls and chat with them which made the hike even nicer. My family also went to the KKNK, an Afrikaans culture festival in Oudtshoorn and we saw some great Afrikaans plays and a memorable opera performance. My last week there I was back in Cape Town. It was lovely to just spend time with my family and be there for my cousin’s birthday - little family things that I usually miss out on. For the first time I took a train in Cape Town (it was so fine, I think I had this irrational fear instilled in me), took buses around, hiked up Lion’s Head by myself, went for another freezing dip in the ocean, met up with old friends, went for trail runs in Tygerberg Nature reserve. It was great.

 I’ve been super busy since coming back to Austria, will write about that soon.

ON SHOOT

While in Cape Town I was lucky enough (by way of contacts, in this world it truly is not what you know but who you know I tell ya) to do a few days of job shadowing with a photographer, designer and food stylist for a South African magazine. These are some photos from behind the scenes during the fashion shoot. I couldn't stop thinking about how different this is to the few fashion shoots in I'd been at in Oz - we all piled into one Kombi (sans seatbelts and a side mirror) and set off for some interesting (read: dangerous) parts of the city.

THE KITCHEN

So I've been back for almost a month so it's probably time to post the last bit of my trip (South Africa) aye? It is hard culling through so many photos so I'm going to be a bit self-indulgent and just post a lot, in segments, about my three weeks in Cape Town. First up is this place, The Kitchen, in an area called Woodstock in Cape Town. It was a bit embarrassing to be in a city that I've still (just) lived most of my life in and not know about the different areas. From what I discovered in my time there though was that this is kind of the new, up-and-coming inner suburb of Cape Town, which could perhaps be likened to Redfern in Sydney (x1000 in crime terms).  The Kitchen recently released their own cookbook, 'A Week in The Kitchen' which has the most lovely salad recipes and stories about what a role this cafe played in changing the face of Woodstock. As soon as I saw the book I knew I had to visit it while I was in SA, we went for breakfast and it didn't disappoint.

M.I.A.

I finally have internet! I had a wonderful and super busy month in Europe and I'm really enjoying the slower pace here in South Africa. These photos I took are of one of my favourite childhood places in a coastal town about 1.5 hours from Cape Town. I spent the past few days here and even though it's Winter, it was still really beautiful and peaceful, and it was great to catch up with family I hadn't seen in years. I'll be breaking Europe up into separate posts and will try to make up for the 5+ weeks that I've been away!