Sardines for Father's Day

It took me three years but I finally got Vince to dive the Sardine Run! 

Theoretically, the Sardine Run happens in South Africa every June and July when the sardines migrate from Antarctica. They swim along the southern coast of the Indian Ocean along the Wild Coast to Durban through a trough where the continental shelf steeply drops off into the deep ocean.

I say "theoretically" because during some years, the sardines are a no-show. Apparently the sea temperature needs to drop below 21 °C because sardines prefer water temps between 14-20 °C. If not, the sardines do not run. 2013 and 2014 were dismal, but the sardines started running this year by mid-June in KZN. By all accounts, 2015 is gearing up to be a great year for the Sardine Run!

surrounded by dolphins

I have to admit I had never heard of the Sardine Run before Vince mentioned it to me three years ago. I am not a scuba diver and really have no interest in meeting a shark face to face underwater without a cage to protect me.

But the Sardine Run happens to coincide with something I do care about - the return of the Humpback Whale to the Wild Coast - and I was told there would be a good chance to see whales from out on the boat.

And we would definitely also be able to see dolphins since they are the key to making a sardine "bait ball."

This is the way it works. Once dolphins find a large school of sardines, they circle around part of the school, cutting off a large number from the rest of the school. They create a whirl pool around the sequestered sardines who spin around and around in circles until they form a tightly packed ball of bait. Then the crafty dolphins feed on the captive sardines. This phenomenon does not go unnoticed by others however. Out of the sky come gannets and cormorants who dive deep into the bait ball and eat their fill as well. Then there are the whales and the sharks who come in for some sardines too.

Humpback whales, like sharks, are feeding opportunists. If the dolphins take the trouble to make a bait ball of sardines, the whales are more than happy to join in and take advantage of a free meal served up by their friends.

circling dolphins

Jill watching the diving gannets

Vince getting ready to go overboard.

there he goes!

I brought snorkeling gear with me on the boat, but I wasn't sure if  I could actually go into the water if there were confirmed sharks swimming around. And in fact, Vince saw two sharks just swimming around the boat almost as soon as he entered the water. He said one actually circled back to get a better look at him before heading out to catch some sardines instead. No thanks!

I didn't need to snorkel like Jill to see the sardines anyway. The sardines were visible from above the water swimming around and under the boat. Besides I didn't come for the sardines; I came for the whales and dolphins. And I could see so many of both from the safety and security of the boat! They were putting on quite a show too. The whales were peduncle slapping the water with their tails and pec slapping with their fins, rolling on their backs like a puppy dog and clapping their fins together like a seal, breaching, lunging and spy hopping. And we saw a ridiculous number of common and bottlenose dolphins all swimming around and under the boat. We even saw a couple of loggerhead turtles!

humpback peduncle slap

I didn't take many photos of the Sardine Run though for a couple of reasons. First of all, Vince was busy with the GoPro and took hours and hours of footage of the sardines and sharks below the surface as well as the dozens of frolicking whales and dolphin pods all swimming around us in the boat. I had only brought my little Canon on the Zodiac and not my 35mm Nikon. (I didn't have a waterproof casing for it.)

Secondly, we were so lucky to have a world famous underwater photographer on board. I gave him precedence and a wide berth in our little Zodiac. (Between the diving equipment and the people, we were packed in like sardines!) No matter how good my photos might have been had I elbowed in for a better vantage point, they would never have been as good as his. I sure hope he got a photo of a dolphin breaching too!

Photo by Greg Lecoeur

photo by Offshore Africa

photo by Greg Lecoeur

photo by Offshore Africa

Vince surely earned his Sardine Run tee shirt

For his next adventure, Vince wants to dive with the fur seals and sevengill sharks off of Simonstown in the Western Cape. He can do that in July when I am safely back in the United States for the month. Have fun honey!

All in all, it was a great Father's Day. And as a result, we now have a new Father's Day tradition. From now on, Vince will remember and celebrate his Father's Day Sardine Run by eating a sardine sandwich for all his future Father's Day lunches.

Happy Father's Day, Vince!

Face painting @ Moyo

Moyo @ Kirstenbosch

I like to take visitors to Moyo, a restaurant which serves Pan-African heritage foods including many of my favorite South African dishes like Bobotie, Potjie, and Malva Pudding.

There are currently five Moyo restaurants in South Africa: one at Blouberg and at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens in Cape Town; at Melrose Arch and Zoo Lake in Johannesburg; and at Ushaka Marine World in Durban. The restaurants are fun and festive and they have great gift shops!

We had lunch at the Moyo in Kirstenbosch

One of the things that makes Moyo so festive is their face painting ritual. Hey, you don't have to be a kid to like face painting!

European Film Festival

The European Film Festival is in town at the Cinema Nouveau in Rosebank (and in Cape Town, Pretoria and Durban.) Here was my chance to see many of the films and performances that had been nominated for Oscars at the 87th Academy Awards on a "big screen", including 2014's Best Foreign Film winner, Ida.

The theme of the festival is "A Woman's World" in tribute to the role of women in film, both behind and in front of the camera. The 12 films were selected for the way they reflected their female directors' unique insights and perspectives on film or the way their female actors translated on screen dramas of everyday life or extraordinary destinies in a very powerful and unique way. I could get behind that! Each film was from a different country in Europe and, except for the UK's My Brother the Devil, were delivered in a foreign language.

I watched my first subtitled foreign language film in college. Fellini's Amarcord. I went at the suggestion of my friend Mariana. Mariana was surely one of the worldliest friends I had made in my short and thus far largely sheltered life. And the perfect person to accompany me to see my first real foreign film. Already well-traveled, Mariana had grown up on a huge plantation in Ecuador where her father was the Country Minister for Cacao Export and her mother was from some deposed branch of European royalty. Mariana had boarded at a finishing school in Switzerland before she started college at the University of Florida which was at the time full of the offspring of wealthy South Americans, many of whom were my friends. So she led and I followed.

Mariana, and it seemed like everyone else in the cinema but me, laughed hysterically throughout the movie. Like laughing-until-you-cry laughter. But I didn't get it. I tried; I really did. I concentrated really hard. But the jokes were just as foreign to me as the language requiring subtitles.

It was baffling to me. I was half Italian and I grew up watching movies. My parents loved movies and so they took us often when we were little. When I outgrew my parents' needing to take me, I would go to the cinema as often as I could with my friends to see all the latest movies. I watched old movies on Channel 5 and 11 and The Million Dollar Movies on Channel 9. Before VCRs and On Demand, I would set my alarm for 3:00 am just to get up and watch Fred Astaire dance! I loved movies!

After my Fellini failure in Gainesville, I decided to sign up for a college film class as an elective. Along with the requisite classic English language films, we watched a lot of foreign language, mostly European, films. And with each one I watched and a little help from my professor, I started to unlock the mystery behind enjoying them until I became a true fanatic. It was an acquired taste for me, but I certainly acquired it in that film class.

And I slowly stopped feeling bad about my initial cluelessness too. Once, a few years later, I saw the Woody Allen film Manhattan for the first time - in San Francisco. My date - who hailed from Brooklyn - and I laughed hysterically from beginning to end. The room however was practically silent. It might as well have been a foreign language film. Same thing happened in Australia. On a lark, Vince and I bought tickets to see Wayne's World after a wave of homesickness hit us both as we walked past a cinema in Sydney one night after dinner. We laughed and laughed at Wayne and Garth and their very inside jokes until we started to feel self-conscious. It wasn't subtitled but the context and situations must not have translated very well to much of the Australian audience. Comedy separated by a common language.

I guess comedy is just tougher to translate even when it is presented in your native language. Just like tragedy, comedy is based on universal human experience. But some of the nuances and contexts of comedy are less culturally relatable making it therefore harder to share in the joke.

Ida was pretty tragic. Set in a bleak black and white Poland in the winter of Communist 1962, it was full of lies, murders, good jazz played badly, loneliness, betrayal, alcoholism, loveless sex, nicotine addiction, what looked like really bad food, a suicide, and a fall from grace. All pretty universally tragic; no nuances there.

Just a few years ago, Fellini's Amarcord was playing at the Film Forum in New York. I had seen all of Fellini's other films over the years and loved them at first sight but I hadn't seen Amarcord since that first disastrous night in Florida so many years ago. I decided to go by myself and see if it was as funny as Mariana had said it was. And yes, I laughed until I cried.

When in Durban ...

... you gotta get some bunny chow.

Polo: South Africa vs USA

It was the Polo event of the Joburg season - maybe even the entire South African Polo season. The second and deciding match of the two day BMW International Polo Series. USA vs South Africa. The first match was held last Sunday in Durban and it was a draw. So everything was on the line on this, the second day of play.

Vince and I had gone to the Prince of Wales Cup about a month ago, partly to watch some polo and partly to figure out all the ins and outs of attending a polo match in South Africa.

With all the publicity surrounding this international series - the billboards were everywhere! - we knew it would be a bigger draw than the Prince of Wales. We had a bunch of American joining us to root root root for the home team and one of them even had a tent they wanted to erect to keep us all in the shade.

We needn't had bothered doing a recon at the Prince of Wales as they changed all the rules on us in the interim.


Last time we were able to drive onto the bank inside the gate and park, unload and set up on our spot right in front of our car like a proper tail gate. This time we were told we had to park across the street and carry our stuff over to the field. No no, that will not do. We had a ton of stuff and the tents and coolers were heavy.
 
Luckily I was able to convince one of the VIP golf cart drivers to ferry our stuff over for us. "Yes this will do just fine, thank you."



We chose a spot halfway between the Grey Goose Prive tent and the Sky Vodka Lounge. Nice.

We put up our double-wide (a tent and a tarp) and set up our chairs.

It had a perfect view!

Next change of rules. No dogs allowed. We brought Lou & Serge to the BMW completely based on the number of dogs we counted at the Prince of Wales. Lots. There was nothing on the SA Polo Association's website - for the Wales or the BMW - advising us that dogs were verboten. So we assumed we were good. You know what they say about assuming, right? Poor Vince had to take the laddies back to Valley Lodge and return an hour later. They were at least nice enough to save our early bird parking space with a bright orange cone for his return.

Wait ... What's this? Are those dogs inside at the BMW International Polo Series? Hmmm.

We donned enough Ralph Lauren to make us almost look like an ad for Polo, poured a glass of Malbec and waited for play to start.

 All American girl ...

...  by way of Mexico, Russia and South Africa!

so cute!












Vince brought the big lens and the tripod to take some action shots from the sideline. Just like the old Pingry football games when our boys played in high school.













He got some great shots ...

Then it was time to stomp the divots.

The ground is so dry here. The divots aren't very deep but we played along.

 
Unfortunately for us, the USA lost 10 to 6. :( But it was a gorgeous day, a good time was had by all and we saw some incredible play.

South Africa took their victory lap and we cheered for our host country.












Some of the great fashion and table decorations:

 Nice phone!

We found this lone American in a sea of South Africans in another tent nearby. All you have to do is look for the red white and blue.

photo by Anne Walsh Wertz

After the prize ceremony we took our little oasis down and headed back to our cars. The way we came.