UPDATE: Looking for pictures of the 30-31st August 2008 storm? Try here!
As I stared, bleary-eyed, out of the bedroom window into the cold and dark of the Cape Town morning, I was once again blown away by the sight of the lights of Muizenberg glittering on the ocean. What a view. Despite the atrocious weather of the past 24 hours, I am very fortunate to live here.
It was only a few minutes later, standing under a very welcome steaming shower, that I realised that we live about 10km up the road from Muizenberg. Something wasn’t right.
It turns out that rain over the past 24 hours had turned my back garden into something akin to the ocean. As the gloomy, grey morning struggled to be slightly less gloomy and grey, I caught sight of an aging hippy in a wetsuit with his longboard next to my braai, anxiously looking across the lawn for any sign of sharks before he paddled out towards the birdbath to wait for the next big breaker.
It’s true that it has been a pretty torrid couple of days weather-wise for the residents of Cape Town. One of those times that you are glad that you aren’t living in a shack in a township or a tent in a temporary refugee camp (sorry – “displaced foreign nationals site”). Glancing at the SA Weather Service website, I see that Kirstenbosch – home of the famous botanical gardens and just around the corner from us – had 135mm of rain dropped on it in the last 24 hours. That’s 5½ inches for you oldies out there.
Kirstenbosch: Rather damp
Still, this is winter in Cape Town so we really should be expecting the wet and the cold. Interestingly, in exactly 2 years time, the entire world will have descended upon the Mother City for the 2010 World Cup. I’m already buying up Pak-a-Mac’s by the lorryload which I will sell at a vastly inflated mark-up to ill-prepared Europeans who think it’s hot and sunny here all year round.
The profits will be used to install some sort of drainage system into my garden before high tide floods my living room.
It’s moments like this – where i’m reminded how great joburg is.
Shall you be purchasing PINK Pak-a-Mac’s?!
@JHBPRINCESS: Ja. Fortunately, once our two month winter is over, we have the other 10 to remember just how cr*p Joburg is. 🙂
And no. Not pink. Need to get them in footy-type colours.
Thankfully i guess… for 6 of those 10, it’s blown out of you just how great CT is.
JHBPRINCESS’s last blog post was: Getting what you ask for. (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)
@JHBPRINCESS: There’s always a beach that’s out of the wind.
Much like Joburg, where you can always find the shady side of a mine dump…
While you two are fighting about CT or JHB I am sitting in PE smiling. We have one month of wind – December, just to fool all the tourists and then it is back to perfect weather.
Pamela’s last blog post was: Run Pamela Run (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)
@Pamela: And you’ve got a village shop and everything. And sharks picking off the local triathletes, I recall?
Well, I might not go as far as calling it a shop as such…
Pamela’s last blog post was: Run Pamela Run (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)
At least we’re not fussy in Melbourne. We had all of the above yesterday: rain on the way to work, howling (Ant)Arctic wind in the morning and beautiful sunshine in the afternoon before the mist and rain settled in for the night again!
Actually, sounds a bit like where I grew up… George!
DelBoy’s last blog post was: Gone West (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)
I have to confess to a slight wince at the mention of an aging hippy in a wetsuit… I saw an image of myself wading into the sea in Cornwall last week in my 15 year old wetsuit….
Fleet of Worlds’s last blog post was: The Great Bear (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)
There’s only one thing that irritated me about the rain this week…and that was going into work and listening to eight hours of bitching about it from the midget next to me…I’m thinking she might have been upset that she lives on the twelfth floor and thus has no garden for aging hippies to surf in.
Goblin’s last blog post was: Do not want. (Note: 6000 miles… is not responsible for the content of external internet sites)