Cape Town

Setting an early alarm while on vacation never comes easily to me, but making time to wander Babylonstoren’s fruit and vegetable garden before the day’s searing heat took hold was no problem. One of the oldest Cape Dutch farms, set at the foot of Simonsberg in Cape Town’s Franschhoek wine valley, it’s a sprawling, fantastical, technicolor utopia — positively Eden-like, with a lot more than apples to tempt you. Scarecrows made from terracotta plant pots wave from fields teeming with 300 edible crops, fat pomegranates growing alongside tangy tamarillos, willow trees swaying in the breeze.

Thirty feet underwater, somewhere on the False Bay coast near Simon’s Town in the Western Cape, South Africa. I’m getting battered by a strong current, deep in a kelp forest. I squint upwards and spot a pair of flippers. Kicking... upwards. My friend Abie is in a pickle. First of all, she’s vertical — not desirable in diving gear — and I can see now, she’s tangled. Brown kelp fronds the girth of beer cans shoot up all around us, forming a confused mass. I panic but try not to show it. Being buddied up with an old mate for a genuinely dangerous sport — you’re expected to know what you’re doing — has its downsides. I realize we are the responsible adults I’m looking around for.

Blazing sunshine. Endless traffic. Horns honking. Wine bars heaving. Trance music blasting. Street hawkers calling. Coastal wind (called the "Cape Doctor" by locals) whistling. Grit in one eye, the other looking over my shoulder. Hair flying in every direction. To explore central Cape Town is to be gut-punched: by an evolving backdrop of sublime nature and the complexity of the human condition. To visit the city’s world-class restaurants, concept stores and co-working sites is to share a street with the sick, hungry and homeless. Look up, and you’re hypnotized by the monolithic mountains beyond; a brief distraction from the painfully obvious disparity. From some angles it feels like the Mother City is being wrapped in a tight hug.