Cape Town - Dear tourists, It’s been so lovely having you in our beautiful city over this festering period.
You make such an effort, walking everywhere, taking pictures of pigeons, swigging artisanal gin, getting your legs burnt while eating sushi, patting traditional dancers on the head, lying on beaches in Swedish man-trunks, buying Madiba shirts that make you look like conga players from Finnish jazzercise groups.
It’s also been great to welcome local tourists from exotic locales such as Benoni, Germiston and Boksburg.
Your efforts at blending in – dining on pulled pork, wearing ethnic beads over your puffy white blouses and wandering along the promenade holding hands and dribbling ice cream – are appreciated.
Because of you, more money goes into our city’s coffers, waiters go home with more than peanuts in their pockets, Uber drivers are all smiles and we get to feel like the country’s star performer – a Jedi knight in turquoise garb with pockets of gold and silver.
However (and I don’t mean to sound bitter or cross or horrid), because of you, the past two weeks have been utter hell.
Complete and utter skeleton-burning, Castle-serving, Darth Vaderish, dark-side hell (but I love you, really I do).
Take, for example, the traffic. Yes, Cape Town’s traffic is normally pretty rancid and driving from work can take three days and a lobotomy. But add all of you to the mix and it’s like the constipated bowel movement of a 110-year-old sloth.
Last week, I needed to get to work. Yes, WORK – a place no human should be exposed to when one’s acquaintances are all lying in vats of holiday mojitos.
It took me five days and a brain transplant to drive from the start of the elevated freeway to the traffic lights at the bottom. During that time, I became best friends with a Dutch couple in a rented motor-home who invited me to play the mandolin in their band, listened to a woman from Boksburg recite Tolstoy’s entire oeuvre in Afrikaans and had my brain transplant done right there, in the back of a bakkie driven by a vet from Polokwane.
Then there are the beaches. After a three-day hike across the city’s most challenging mountain terrain (to avoid the cars), I arrived at Muizenberg to find every patch of sand taken up by small children wearing underpants and women romantically squeezing blackheads from man-backs.
Gone was the usual smell of sex wax, hippie sweat and falafels. Instead, the air hung with a disturbing bouquet of coconut suntan oil, vanilla e-cigarettes and new towels.
I saw the same scenes as I moved further down the coast – St James, Glen Beach and Fish Hoek – until I eventually dropped anchor at Long Beach in Simon’s Town. I don’t know if it’s the arms-deal corvettes that give off bad karma (they seemingly don’t give off much else, except the occasional wisp of smoke) or the smell of sewage that puts people off, but I was relieved to find it sparsely populated, calm and sans puffy white blouses.
I lay on my towel for two days, gathering strength for the long trek back.
And because of you (sorry, I DO sound like a big fat meanie), eating out is impossible at this time of year.
Going to overpriced restaurants is a middle-class pastime in Cape Town.
We pride ourselves on feigning awe over plates of trickery and hand-reared trout. We love paying exorbitant prices for wine and we absolutely adore being ignored by waiters.
But when you arrive, with your euros, pounds, dollars and whatever currency they have in Brakpan, we can’t even squeeze into the local KFC, let alone get a booking for Le Major Ouef-Rip de Cabo.
Don’t get me started on the cable car or Lion’s Head or Chapman’s Peak or parking.
It’s so lovely you are enjoying queuing and getting sunburnt and dehydrated.
I DO love you, I promise.
However, how about this for a suggestion: You stagger your visits throughout the year. Some of you come in summer, when Cape Town is at its Jedi peak; others come in autumn, when the force is still strong and the days coppery; and the rest visit in winter, when the dark side rises and the rain pummels and the wind lashes and beers are half-price.
Imagine! You could pride yourselves on experiencing Cape Town as locals do!
And in winter, you could play around with your wardrobe and swap the puffy white blouses for Melton jackets!
In the meantime, I have an appointment in Kalk Bay on Friday.
I’m thinking of attaching two large palm fronds to the lawnmower and attempting to fly across the mountains.
Cape Argus