Falling in love with the slow cycles of Zanzibar

Originally published in the Mail & Guardian

Easy Rider - Zanzibar is generally flat with well-maintained tarred roads. (Andrew Thompson)

Zanzibar, well known for its feet-up package resorts, long white beaches and spectacular marine life, offers far more than the 10-night-per-personsharing deals that dominate tourism brochures, particularly when you tackle it without a plan and from the seat of a bicycle.

LoverGirl and Refinement are fairly unlikely names for bicycles. But, surprisingly, they were a particularly good fit for two that Babu, the shifty Stone Town tour operator, wheeled out before us.

Far from the multispeed, shock-absorbing mountain bikes he had promised us earlier, these hefty, classic bicycles were things of mass-production beauty, brimming with practicality and fully deserving of their elaborate titles.

I hopped on to LoverGirl and took her for a quick test ride down the busy beachfront road. Her matt-black steel tubes dipped and flowed effortlessly between her curved handlebars and oversized spring-supported foam seat; a shrill bell resting just before my left thumb harmonised with the screech of the brakes, and looked strangely appropriate alongside a grey plastic carrying basket below. A sturdy luggage rack above the back tyre would be just big enough to carry my daypack, and the kickstand below the perfect pedestal from which to show off her ironic beauty. I was sold.

Most importantly, though, the single gear allocated to us by the Chinese bicycle factory was just right — loose enough, it turned out, to get us over most inland hills, stiff enough to coast comfortably along the sandy beaches and coastal flats. These were bicycles to behold and, after bonding with LoverGirl all the way to the southern tip of Zanzibar, over nine days and 100km, I simply didn’t want to give her back.

Dead Ringer – The Art of Reconstructing A Dead Body

‘That’s Beukes. B-E-U-K-E-S,’ says a soft-spoken woman into an office bordering the funeral parlour waiting room, typically overcompensated with smiling, doe-eyed receptionists, soft paintings on pastel walls, hard, but strangely comfortable couches, and large vases filled with synthetic flowers. ‘Passed away peacefully.’ She pauses. ‘Aged 90 years. Will be lovingly remembered by all her family and friends,’ she says, before gently returning the phone to its cradle. Next to me on the small pine side-table, the Cape Times headline reads Dead Judge’s Wife Arrested.

Your place or mine?

Originally published in Mango in-flight magazine

Feeling the financial pinch but still want to get away these holidays? Or perhaps you just love the idea of home comforts at your holiday destination? House-swapping is now a big thing in global travel, and South Africa’s not trailing too far behind…

Touring the Townships

Originally published in Mango in-flight magazine

Before 1994, townships were generally regarded as off-limits to tourists. Most guidebooks described them as dangerous slums overrun by poverty and despair – to be avoided at all costs. But over the last 16 years these myths have slowly been debunked, thanks largely to a new breed of innovative entrepreneurs who’ve made their own back yards surprisingly enticing and accessible.

Damien

There’s a guy slouched over the hostel bar in the corner. Damien. He’s from Ireland, and, suitably, he has a balding head of red hair. His gaze slowly lifts from the small Coke he just ordered at the bar to the large flat-screen television hanging on the wall, and then eventually back again. He’s wearing blue jeans and a smart white and blue striped long-sleeve shirt. It’s scraggily tucked in, not in a hasty fashion, rather in one of disinterest. The shirt is stained and wrinkled; it has a resigned look about it.

He’s been staying here for two and a half weeks. Which is probably the reason he only bothered to get out of bed at 2PM today. “Starting Tuesday,” he tells me, “I’m going to look for an apartment. I hope to find a lady, settle down, and then start working.” But he says it with this unconvincing, lost look in his eyes, which struggle to fix onto anything for more than a few seconds. “So far though,” he continued, “I haven’t had any action.” I wasn’t exactly sure what he meant by action. “So…” he paused. “It’s not going so well.”

Over Spray

Originally published in Nike Iam1 Magazine

Bruno Brown sees the world through the nozzle of his spray can, and with the help of his alter-ego Rasty, he’s transformed countless dull walls and buildings into mind-blowing, thought-provoking artworks and murals. Along with his crew, Pressure Control Projects, they’ve single-handedly moved graffiti out of the shadows and into respected public spaces around the country. And even though Rasty spends many days doing commissioned graf work, he also finds the time for the odd artistic intervention or bombing spree. Maybe it heralds the end of an era, but traditionally snooty art-scene types are starting to take notice. Originally a Durban boy, Rasty now feeds off the raw Jozi energy and transforms this into living, breathing works of art that are impossible to ignore.

Eat this!

Originally published on Mahala.co.za

This is all just too weird. I mean, totally fucking bizarre. There’s a woman on stilts, mammoth creaking stilts, probably 3 metres off the ground, precariously carving her way through the tables and chairs, careful not to crush the trendoids wearing small rectangular framed specks and loud shirts, however tempting it might have been. She’s dressed to the nines, and holding something in her right hand that she gives short sharp tugs on at regular intervals. A leash. One of those goddamn retractable dog leashes. And at the end of it, is a poodle. A man-sized poodle, on all fours, also 3 metres off the ground. In white garters that, from behind, looks more like a adult diaper. “Cume en Fifi”, she scolds the poor hound in a thick French accent. “Cume en!” And she gives the leash another sharp yank. On the ground below her, a young lass in a full wedding dress skips through her legs down the narrow aisle, sort of weeping, sort of flailing, into the dark depths of the hall, past a woman with 8 exposed breasts, towards massive black and white projections of vintage flicks of beautiful ditsy blonde broads with perky tits.

Hot Rocks

To my dismay, there were no kids on leashes. There was a disappointingly low number of people lying face-down off their heads on drugs, and only a few dozen paralytic drunks stumbling over the uneven ground – most of them were respectably throwing up and sobering up in the rambling stream. There was, now that I think about it, a very small number of ageing tie-died hippies. I spied one though, living out of his rusty 60s Volksie bus in the campsite, who, apart from the leash-less kid, looked like he was trying his best to relive the Synergy glory-years. But he really just looked tired and jaded, defeated, and not wired and free and ready to spin circles on the dance floor. But then again, this wasn’t the Synergy of the 90s, those wild, drug-fueled dance parties; this was Synergy Live, the original’s softer cousin. So there were plenty of school kids, lots of hipsters, lots of Afrikaners, a few more souties, less than a handful of black kids, spectacular heat, a theme park, thousands of tents, a river, and way too much dust.

Travel Smart in the USA

I spent 9 hours in Las Vegas’ McCarran International Airport. 9 hours listening to the clanging slot machines in the centre of the small US Airways terminal. 9 hours trying to get comfortable on the faux leather airport seats. And 9 hours gazing across the runway to the world famous Strip, until eventually the sweltering orange sun dipped behind the buildings, and the bright flashing neon lights signalled the start of the nightly debauchery. But after a couple of fast-paced days in Vegas, and a week roadtripping through the Arizona and Nevada deserts, the 9 hours was a small price to pay.

City that’s cool on a hill

San Francisco, that beautiful, eclectic city on America’s west coast, owes a fair deal of its popularity to a cheesy family that lived in a postcard-worthy house just a short stroll away from the picturesque Alamo Square.

But San Francisco has a lot more to offer than that corny minute-and-a-half introduction to Full House. In fact, a solid five days in the city only just gave me enough time to scratch the very top layer of this complex and fascinating city.

Much like New York, San Francisco is often defined by its public transport. Tourists queue for hours just to hang precariously off the side of the world-famous cable cars, which groan up and down the steep roads between claustrophobic suburbs; the busy streets are packed with stately historic street cars; and in-between this all are the near- zero emission buses which, if necessary, will drop you off at one of the various ferries.

Branded Sunsets

“Ja bru, let’s hit La Med for a few” has pretty much been the staple, post-Clifton comment for the last 7 years. There was a stage when it barely needed to be said. You’d just scoop your frisbee out the warm white sand, sling your towel over your shoulder, and amble sedately up the stairs in the orange glow of the imminent sunset towards the idyllically set bar.

There, you could sit in your soggy boardies, with sand in your hair and a cold beer in your hand, chowing a legendary La Med pizza, and gaze silently over the shimmering Atlantic, reflecting on all those foreign boobs you’d spied on 4th beach. Sure, even then there were annoyingly pretty people flitting around, prancing in their latest boardies and bikinis and Von Zipper shades and toit vests, and wanting to be noticed, like everywhere that side of Cape Town, but, most of us were just there to wind down another perfect day in Cape Town.

Klap him bru! Klap him!

Finally! I thought, as the thick red blood pulsed out of the furious fighter’s right ear. Blood! I’d sat in this sweaty unlit gym hall for nearly 2 hours without so much as a drop of the red stuff. But now it was thumping out by the gallon-full, in time with his solid heart beat. He lifted his glove to his unprotected ear and let out a Fuuck! loud enough for the whole crowd to hear, despite our cheers and jeers. But this skin-head bastard wasn’t swearing because he’d have to swing past the ER on the way home. No sir. He was pissed off because he thought it meant the end of his fight, that the over-zealous ref would call it right the fight right there. But his trainer in the corner quickly pulled him aside, diluted the gash with water, wiped it off with a sweaty white towel and pushed him back into the ring, ready to throw another punch.

Return of the Prodigal Sons

If ever there was a recipe for the perfect home-grown music event, the kind that leaves your ears ringing and your heart warm, this was it. Blk Jks, playing their first gig on African soil after months touring and recording in America, at House of Nsako, one of the jewels in the tarnished crown of Brixton, Jozi.

Nsako is the kind of place that screams good times from the moment you stoop through the curtained entrance. But drop the Blk Jks into the mix, everyone’s favourite culture jammers, and you’d be forgiven for openly salivating on the polished concrete floor.

Blk Jks Storm the States

Somewhere in the bowels of San Francisco, at a cold little venue called the Independent, on the exclusive bar, boutique and gourmet restaurant-lined Divisadero Street, just a cheesy hop-and-a-skip away from the Postcard Row and the Full House house in Alamo Square, a confident young bloke with a guitar hanging loosely around his neck leans into the microphone to do one last sound check at the request of the stage director. Rather than the “Two..two…two…” that the supremely average local warm-up acts used, he opts for a series of Xhosa clicks so solid and ear-achingly clear and quick that even Ma Brrr would’ve glanced up from her G ‘n T. They bounce and reverberate violently off the cold walls, through the rising smoke and deep violet mood lighting, and before the thinning ‘Frisco crowd can even begin to comprehend what’s just happened, drum beats so powerful they would’ve rattled Bob Saget and co’s windows a whole block away blast through the club.

The Truth Isn’t Out There – UFOs In South Africa

June 26, 1972. 10:00AM. Fort Beaufort police station, Eastern Cape. Station commander Philip Van Rensburg is sitting with his feet up on the counter, whistling to the sickly SABC treffers floating from his wireless into the cool winter air. As he does most mornings, Van Rensburg ponders how he’s going to whittle away the hours until he clocks off later that evening.

The station doors burst open, startling Van Rensburg; enough to make his feet drop off the counter. Sergeant Piet Kitching, desperately out of breath, wheezes something about an oval craft. It’s hovering over Breaside, a local farm. Mr Bennie Smit’s farm, to be precise. Phil is a little bit sceptical. A UFO? In Fort Beaufort? Surely not. But he realises he has nothing to lose – this isn’t an opportunity he’s going to let pass him by – and he hangs the “Back in 5” sign up on the door.