I am pleased to say that we here in summertime South Africa are 2 hours ahead of you there in 'fresh' Britain and i think we are 7 hours ahead of the US. This gives me time in the morning to get something up on the site.
As you will have noticed from all my previous blog entries, the Cape Town leg of our South African surf adventure is 110% action. The group's 12 day intro to Ticket to Ride is all about seeing and doing everything, finding their feet and then as we continue around the coast settling into their own style of Ticket to Ride.
One of the fundamental roles we instill upon ourselves is to guide our Riders through what is for many their first travelling experience. We hope that everyone who 'graduates' from our course leaves not just as a surfer, but also as a well rounded traveller that has been somewhere, experienced a different culture and lived a unique lifestyle.
This for me is the essence of taking on a travelling experience, taking everything in and returning home with lasting memories and experiences to refer back to as I continue through life.
(Please excuse my temptation to go off on tangents, I have deliberately put lots of different sections in making it easy to skip sections where I repeat myself or take you on an unnecessary journey to nowhere as you take time out of your day to read this)
There are 11 official languages spoken in South Africa and for the those not sure what kind of language I am (grammatically) writing in I should mention that we here at Ticket to Ride are evolving our own....
Things to report on yesterday's activities would be the morning's wine tour of Klein Constantia (one of South Africa's most historical vineyards). Adam (head wine maker) always shows us around because our man Tim did a season on the vineyard before joining Ticket to Ride. We are hugely grateful to Adam for taking time out to show us how it all works.
Something I find particularly interesting when talking to Adam is that if you gave two accomplished wine makers the same grapes and the same manufacturing tools, the wine that each maker will produce will most probably be different due to their respective styles of making wine.
These guys are so passionate about what they do, and it is great for our guys to get this kind of personalised treatment on what for many is their first wine tasting experience.
With the wine tour in the morning and the largely ignored calls from trip leaders Sam and Chris to 'swig and spit,' we were back with the Kahuna surfing academy in the afternoon. Dene's experience as South Africa's most qualified surf coach is really showing through with everyone surprising themselves about their own improvement over the last 9 days.
Steve Pike's wave and weather prediction course is something that the guys will use for the rest of their surfing life, whether it be out here in South Africa, back home or perhaps on their next surfing adventure. Everyone received a signed copy of his latest edition of Surfing South Africa. This will be a great tool for scoping out South Africa's endless surfing opportunities not to mention act as a great souvenir of the trip.
After all this, all eyes were on Max as we celebrated his birthday at Cape to Cuba.
As days goes, yesterday had it all.
Today starts off with a surf lesson, with a plan to scale table mountain in the afternoon. Those of you that have been to Cape Town will understand what I mean by saying that there is presently a table cloth on the mountain. Blue blue sky with a medium SE wind today, not a cloud in the sky except the one neatly lying over table mountain. Fingers cross that it lifts, because when it does the views are spectacular.
I feel that i should also mention that without exception everyone on this trip continues to be an absolute pleasure to travel around with. Everyone seems to be happy and relaxing nicely in the Cape Town routine which for us is great because this is 'what it's all about.'
Its off to Plett for trip 1 on Sunday meaning new place different routine. Leslie and Mirjam (their hosts in Plett) are looking forward thier arrival. Surf is looking pretty good for next week aswell. How can we tell?? Because we were listening last night......
