Normally I would think it would be difficult to top our last weekend, renting out a bar, having a wonderful cookout with international students, but on friday Arne (one of the germans) and I had an incident that somehow gave us a feeling that the weekend would be even more interesting. We were simply stopping to ring our friends doorbell and see if they wanted to go to the grocery store (always travel in groups), when we suddenly heard what sounded like a bird being beheaded, suddenly a man came out of an alleyway with a huge crow writhing in his hands, he simply walked by and said "how's it going fellas". Needless to say we fell into hysterics, it was a sign of things to come. Friday was just a simple friday, and so was saturday to be, I had volunteered to get up at 5am to be worker at the world's largest bike race, over 35000 people race 109 km all day long. So the good money would be on going to bed early. That would be a really smart move, so I went to a pool party at one of our friends houses. Simple enough, I was actually on my way out, heading to bed like the responsible person I am. Suddenly one of our South Africans friends came in and said "hey guys you ever heard of burning man???"
"yeah of course, i've always wanted to see that"
"oh man well SA has it's own version, a little smaller but it is tonight!!!"
"no I can't I have to get up early for The cape Argus [the bike race]"
"you riding it??"
"no just have to volunteer"
"oh you'll be fine then"
this is where i should have inserted a really assertive "no" and walked out the door. I didn't so a few hours later I found myself on the way to a eco village i.e. where hippies go to die in the middle of no where outside cape town. Afrika Burning was the name of it and they hope to have it every year. It was of course just as silly as you could imagine, costumes, fire, bands, drunk people, people who seemed to be under the influence of something quite different, perhaps TIK- South Africa's equivilant of crack. We immediately found a room that looks like where the seances would later go down, but in the corner we found huge sheet costumes, now in the US we would probably just make sheet ghosts, these however were 3 huge zebras, which we proceeded to take out to the dance-lawn, we were but another animal on the range out there though. people with giraffe hats, leopard outfits, wild dogs running about, and of course what would a crazy party out in the woods be without a man doing an interpretive dance in a speedo. They burned 2 men that evening one at 1 and one at 3 both were seperated by fire twirlers (??? I don't know what else to call them) The burning itself was quite wild (who would have thought a 20 foot bonfire would get that hot) although we all felt it got a little uncomfortable at the end when the remains of the man burning seemed to take the shape of a burning cross. I got home at about 330 (interestingly enough i would say the hardest and most frustrating aspect of Cape Town is how difficult it is to get a cab, many a trip has been foiled by this.). perfect just an hour and a half before the car comes to pick me up.
Well at least I will be doing something the whole time, I'll be so busy that i won't even feel my tiredness. that was a mistaken notion. I was very lucky I was at the end of the 100k race so i had to sit in the dark until about 7:30 with nothing to do, but unable to sleep because I was a volunteer. But it was fun, especially for a bike geek like me, watching not only the first group to go by, the real racers, where you simply saw a blur, and then interestingly enough about 200 cars- the team cars and media almost outnumber the riders. Then though came the 34,900 slower riders who were much more entertaining. some were fast, some slow, some in costumes (apparently they came right from burning man too!). My job was simple wave a flag and warn the riders about the cliff upcoming and try not to lose too many over it. I was in heaven, well except for the no sleep thing, just checking out bikes and cheering people on, for which they would always say "Thank You Marshall" which is what I was, but somehow in a south African accent it sounds very cool. Well so eventually around 2 I was brought home. Perfect now i can take that nap, I was making a goodnight sandwich (for some reason there was no food available at a bike race) when the final insult hit me. We had been planning on going to another concert in the botanical gardens, which is about the coolest thing in the world, but this week the band was a really famous cape town band and sold out in 2 hours.
"hey ell, guess what? Goldie and Perris don't want to go to Goldfish tonight!! Now we can go"
[to finish this story with "no i think I am going to go to bed", stop reading here and close the email and just think of how nice that sleep was for me] or [to finish this story with "sure I'll go, when is the next time i'll be able to see goldfish a kirstenbosch gardens" continue reading]
Boy I am glad I went, one thing about the music here is it always suprises me at fitting into no catagory i could make up, this was 2 guys with a saxaphone and a dj booth, making a mix of techno and jazz and soul, and every few minutes a new person would be added for different vocals or to add percussion. Although it sounds gross, i can't think of one person right now reading this email right now after reading that description that is thinking "oh I think i'd like that" but you probably all would- keep in mind that the crowd at the kirstenbosch gardens is an amazing mix of ages. I'll bring it home for those of you interested. oh and i finally went to bed at 8pm that evening. goodnight. ell
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