Life's Lekker in the Mother City

Cape Town, commonly known as the Mother City of South Africa has been an excellent host and introduction to South African culture for everybody, with so much to do in such a relatively short space of time the days have flown by and we’re already into our second week of the trip!

A common term that is synonymous with South Africa is the word ‘lekker’. It’s a difficult word to explain as it is used in so many different ways and not always meaning the same thing but it is most commonly used to describe something extremely positive, especially in our case.

Life has been lekker for us in Cape Town, not only in the water but outside the water as well. We have quite a busy schedule on this leg of our journey as being based in one of the worlds top travel destinations with such culturally diverse communities that is home to some of the most beautiful landscapes and natural life means there is plenty to see and do and we’d love to see and do it all. We’ve managed to tick off quite a few ‘must’s’ already whilst we’ve been here. Here’s a few of the lekker things we’ve been up to so far.

Chapman’s Peak is a coastal drive that stretches 8km from Hout Bay through to Noordehoek, it is internationally acclaimed and its not hard to see why with with incredible views of the Atlantic ocean, steep cliffs, a narrow road and the majestic mountain behind you with the Sentinal opposite you in the bay. It offers incredible sunset views and picnic spots. We stopped by to take in all its beauty and experience it for ourselves.

Though it’s summer in Cape Town and it’s by no means our peak season for swell we’ve been getting consistent big swells all summer and this past week we got to witness one of the worlds most well known big wave spots, Dungeons breaking. It wasn’t the biggest of days but it was still something to behold as you could hear the waves crashing and crunching the reef from our boat idling in the nearby channel. It was a rare opportunity to see waves of this size and power break so cleanly especially at a break as fickle as Dungeons, which was once home to the Red Bull Big Wave Africa but was later discontinued (The event rarely ran given how fickle the break is). When Dungeons is on though it is one of the most feared breaks in the world, we got to witness it from the safety of the boat in the channel.

Boulders Beach in Simon’s Town is home to an African Penguin colony and is one of the few places you can go and interact with wild animals of this kind in their natural environment. Who doesn’t love penguins? We had an incredible time hanging out with the locals who weren’t at all camera shy and seemed to love the attention.

We have a long standing relationship with a great initiative currently running in Cape Town by former Ticket to Ride man Tim Connibear, who runs an organisation known as ‘Waves for Change‘ which positively impacts the youth of one of Cape Town’s largest and most violent informal settlements, Khayelitsha. The initiative creates a platform for change for the youth of the community through surfing and counselling in a fun and safe environment. We spent the afternoon with a few of the kids playing football and surfing, an incredible opportunity for all and a lekker way to spend an afternoon in Cape Town.

When most people think Cape Town, they think Table Mountain. They go hand in hand and anybody visiting Cape Town makes a trip up one of the 7 natural wonders of the world a top priority. We though, with fitness and conditioning in mind decided not to take the cable car up, we hiked up the very steep and relentless Platteklip Gorge. It felt like doing 2000 lunges, but the views were reward enough for our efforts as we all managed to complete the hike in reasonable time. We enjoyed a lunch at the summit and the panoramic views of the beautiful city and Cape.

After a night on the Town in Long Street the night before and busy week of surfing and activities we decided to have somewhat of a rest day in the Table Mountain nature reserve at the Silvermine Dam. The rest had to be earned though as we put in some much needed swim training in preparation for our Surf Instructor course later on in the trip. After 900m of run swim runs we hung out and swam in the beautiful reservoir.