Not having driven a motor vehicle in six months, I figured the best way to get back in the spirit was to attempt something I've always thought impossible. I'm driving on the left. With a stick-shift.

We rented a car to head down the cape for a few days. I think it's some combination of what they call the "Garden" and "Wine Country" routes. With Dad and Matt along, I'm basically along for the ride at this point. I love not having a clue about where I'm going. I just get in the car.

"How weird."
But I was the first to sit behind the wheel. How weird. I had to just sit there for a while and absorb the fact that a steering wheel was sticking out of where the glove box is supposed to be.

I had to keep reminding myself not so much about staying left. That's not so bad. It's the turns. On right turns it's so natural to hug the curb and stay right. But of course right turns here are where you have to cross one lane into the other. It's like brushing your teeth with your left hand.

"That's not an appealing sound."
The pedals are, of course, still like non-British influenced countries. Gas on the right... clutch on the left. But so in the gear shift.

Driving Right

First is up and to the left. Reverse down and right. I seem to think this should be backward as I have more than once attempted to jam the car into reverse while looking for second gear. That's not an appealing sound.

Cape Town is quite beautiful. The ocean, the rocks, the mountains all combine to create something that looks a lot like San Francisco but a bit prettier.

"It's actually a fairly demanding walk up."
We climbed Table Mountain yesterday. And by the way, it's such an amazing sight. I'd heard of Table Mountain before, but never paid much attention to photos of it. An enormous monolith of a mountain with a perfectly flat top looming smack on top of Cape Town. It's actually a fairly demanding walk up. We passed several people who'd called off and turned back down. But we made it and took the famous cable car back down. Photos were taken with the new camera and are forthcoming.

Today was Cape Point. If you look at the bottom of South Africa and see the comma shaped thing sticking off the left end below Cape Town... that's it. The Cape of Good Hope, it's also called. And formerly the "Cape of Storms" if I remember high school history. There's a lighthouse there and really fierce wind. Enough to blow you over. That's probably why it was called the Cape of Storms. I suppose you get that where a couple of oceans come together.

Baboons Invade a Rental Car

"There were baboons everywhere."
The best part of Cape Point, though, was the animals. There were baboons everywhere. We pulled off in a parking lot where some people had stopped to photograph some. While taking photos of the smaller ones, the big male snuck around behind and jumped in somebody's car where the door had been left open. So here these guys are trying to get a baboon out of their rental car.

They started by slamming all the doors but one and then beating on them trying to scare it out. That only served to piss it off. It began rummaging through the car and came up with first a carton of cigarettes and then a small backpack. It then jumped out and tried to take off with it. The people then made the mistake of trying to take the pack away. This really made it mad and it began chasing them around the parking lot. How hilarious.

"Matt says it was an eland... whatever that is."
We jumped back in our car before being dragged into it and before we left the parking lot another exotic animal saunters along. Matt says it was an eland... whatever that is. Looked like a brown gazelle to me, but he had the brochure with photos. If you see stuff like this before you even get to the game parks, South Africa could be quite interesting. It's definitely very different from Latin America.

Not knowing where we're going exactly, I can't tell you where I'm off to... but it's somewhere around the southern coast of Africa.