Paradise Park: The White Township

I have been really lucky this semester to have decided to take astronomy here. My teacher is a world renowned astronomer who should have been a comedian, every class is like stand-up. Actually he just delivered his last lecture at UCT after 30 years of teaching and the entire science faculty was in my astronomy 100 class, some of his old students even flew in to be at his last lecture, he's a legend. But the best part of the astronomy class was that last weekend he took us out on an overnight camping trip to the desert (Karoo) to visit one of the South hemisphere's largest telescopes (number 2 I think) and do some observing in the dark desert sky.
So dumb old me spent the friday night before the trip getting a good amount of sleep, then the next morning I got up packed a light bag including a light sleeping bag and headed to the meeting point. The first thing I noticed was the size of the bags everyone else had, large, "what could these people have for an overnight" after a five hour bus trip we arrived in the Karoo, my first trip to the desert. The first thing I realized was I was drastically underdressed, and the large bags were sleeping bags for the night. Now I assumed that this being a school trip, it would be pretty mellow. I guess that was when I noticed the people boozing and smoking weed, and this 70 year old man just chilling in the midst of it as if it wasn't happening or just didn't care. Now I had prepared myself for 40 degree temps and that was what it was, but I hadn't considered the wind, which was whipping at a cool 40 miles an hour, blowing our tents all over and getting the "feels like" temperature to about 0. I didn't sleep most of the night partially because the stars were amazing and mostly because i was afraid i would lose a digit in the evening.
That was my first "wholesome" weekend, this last weekend Arne and i decided to have another "wholesome" weekend by going out biking along the coast for two days. Of course our first obstacle was that we wanted to leave really early on saturday morning and of course our favorite band was playing on longstreet friday night, well needless to say we wound up staying up til 3 am jumping up and down and dancing until we were exausted.
we awoke exausted at 7:30 the next morning, sure 4 hours is plenty for a 80 kilometer day (sound familiar levi??) We started off strong, nice tailwind, fairly flat road couple of bumps but nothing too bad, and it was gorgeous out. Then we hit the first mountain, a good 25 minute climb followed by a 5 minute decent of equal distance, and then back into the climb. It was some sort of mental and physical torture, there were no flats, just long painful uphills followed by quick downhills and then more long painfull uphills. After each hill Arne and I would simply break into hysterics as we looked over at the next cliff which would include a huge uphill and a huge downhill. after 40 k we could barely move, but we had to make it to the town with the hostel, which was still 40 ka away. Sadly we had started a bit late (we had to drive to the start and only started at noon) so around 4 we were still a bit far away (somebody had to stop and take photos of the baboons too) so we decided that hitchhiking was safer than riding into the night, so we sat down on the side of the road and prepared some sandwiches for the wait. I hadn't even taken the first bite when a van drew up with 4 people on board all of whom seemed a little to giddy to pick us up. "hop on in guys, going to hermanus??" "yeah thanks" "no problem, here have a beer, we've been at a 4x4 rally all day. We'll give you a ride to hermanus but first i promised my girl here a game of pool." ( I think I actually heard Levi laughing at me for this situation) The first thing I noticed about these guys besides the fact that they had been drinking large quantities of alcohol was that they were pure afrikaaners, they had the real accent.
They brought us to this dive bar literally out in the middle of nowhere. I have never felt less comfortable in a bar, perhaps i'm just used to being in the minority now, but the bar was all white, and they all stared at us rather suspiciously. The guys we were with introduced us to everyone, which was even weirder, one of the guys had an addiction to tiger balm, which was a new one for me, he took it and stuck it up his nose, fair enough, the guy was a huge rugby fan, and looked like he could probably crumple arne and i, so when he insisted we try it I found myself sticking tiger balm up my nose and inhaling deeply, I don't know if I got high, but it certainly smelled like eucalyptus for quite some time. The next guy I met really brought out the true character of the bar to light "yeah Fish-haven used to be amazing until the ANC (African National Congress) moved all the kaffirs (derogatory term for Black peopple) oh wait i'm not supposed to use that term anymore- Blacks here to win the election" I was begining to get a little uncomfortable, needless to say. Eventually we headed out, only after the guys decided we were spending the night at their house (our guys were much more tolerant and nice than the rest of the bar crowd). We headed off towards their house, although not before cruising through the townships at about 60 hitting speed bumps sending those of us in the back a solid foot off the ground (just what you need after a long day of riding - to fall on your ass repeatedly). "Now you guys I know you think the van is very nice, but our house is rather plain, you see we live in a township, a white township" Now I've heard it all. we arrive at the house and honestly it was rather nice, i couldn't see the other houses, but this one was nice. well needless to say we stayed up way to late, watching one of the guys' dog do trick, which includes holding a cigarette in his mouth while walking around, and for some reason that I couldn't understand we kept listening to Guns n Roses, (no complaint for me) in particular "Paradise City" which everyone belted out in their drunken own way. eventually arne and I were able to excuse ourselves and crawl into bed. the next morning was rough, real rough, I couldn't move my neck at all from clenching my shoulders on the uphills my head hurt for some reason and my butt was really painful. Arne and I made a quick exit in the morning for fear of being forced back to the bar, we gingerly got on the bikes and I immediately realized what a "White Township" was: a trailer park. And then I realized why the emphasis on paradise city, the name of the park was Paradise Park.
We rode home the full 85k hungover and really unable to put our butts on the bike seats, but triumphant not only in the concept of an amazing ride, but also a ridiculous night with real Afrikaaners (hey it was uncomfortable but it was an interesting side to SA) and the glory of staying in a white township.
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