On an adventure such as this, it is easy to get lulled into a false sense of security… and that’s exactly what happened shortly after my arrival in Cape Town. When you watch a film, the characters seldom know what they are going to do next, what horrors, dead-ends or surprises might be sprung upon them, or what delights they may encounter. Real life isn’t like that on a day to day basis. Real life is more or less predictable. You usually know what you’ll be doing tomorrow, where you’ll be sleeping, what you’ll do at the weekend. But I’ve opted out of real life in favour of freedom and adventure…. I have no idea what I will be doing this afternoon, let alone next week.
Having settled at my backpacker’s lodge, acquainted myself with the ‘inmates’, got to grips with the central area of the city and a tiny bit of the coast, I decide on day six to move…. except I don’t know where….
My intuition tells me to go somewhere near the ocean. In my mind’s eye, I see a spit of land sloping down to a long sandy beach. I have no idea where it is, but I choose this direction.
Within hours, I receive an email from a total stranger, who is a friend of the sister of an old friend who lives in Sydney. A tenuous link. The contact lives in Kommetjie – a small surfer community grouped around a long sandy beach about 45 minutes south of the city on the Cape Peninsula. A friend of a friend has a beach house where I may be able to stay…. if she can find the key…..It doesn’t look hopeful. I struggle to envision myself inside. I try to dispel the picture which keeps materialising of me huddled on a park bench. I remember that my focus creates my reality so I concentrate on being able to find my way to Kommetjie without getting lost or worse. I realise I have no idea how to get there….
Tote, the renegade painter from Roma, logs onto Google earth to show me his room in Rome, his squat in Notting Hill and his protester’s tree house in Newbury. He tells me he is sad that I’m leaving. He makes me PROMEEESE to go back the following Sunday afternoon as there is reggae music in the park. “Eeefa you donta come, I KEEEEL you!”. Dan the Man from Malawi, who works at the Lodge, smiles and tells me I must come back… I’m all set to leave next morning but I still don’t know where Kommetjie is.
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