Luncheon in Marina Da Gama

Ian writing journal by lantern on "Ballerina" 33 years ago

Wednesday, February 13

I've heard about Robin almost since the day I met Ian. Robin was the skipper of the sailboat that Ian sailed on from Cairns to Bali 'back in the day'. He and his wife of many decades live in a suburb of CapeTown. Swashbuckling adventurer are words that come to mind vis a vis Robin. Long suffering vis a vis Lavinia. I was dying to meet them.

We decided to take the train. Julie drove us to the station and came into the station to make sure we got on the right train and knew where to get off. I was happy she did. Unlike trains, subways, sky trains and buses in other places we've visited there is little help for the uninitiated. The trains don't have those helpful schematics that show you where you are and where you are going. No annoying, disembodied, soft spoken female voices that announce the next station. Not easy to find signage at stations telling you where you are. Lots of graffiti and cheap, pasted on ads for penis enlargement though.

The woman sitting across from us had a huge backpack and assorted other bags. She was Asian (Japanese I thought). She wore jeans, boots and a denim shirt buttoned to the top button and wore a white satin bowtie below the second button - kind of quirky. She had tight braids to her waist. When the ticket inspectors came on the train they came en masse. I think there were more of them than    passengers in the car. The head ticket inspector told her she was in the wrong car - she only   purchased a second class ticket and she was in the Metro PLUS car - and she had to pay a fine. She told him it was her first day in SA and she didn't  realize she was in the wrong car. She kind of looked around the shabby, graffitied car and shrugged. It was a standoff for a few moments and then he told her to pay the difference.

Muizenberg is a seaside town (village?) that is popular with surfers. There were a lot of them out
there. We asked our server at a sidewalk cafe about how to get a taxi to take us to Marina Da Gama. She went inside and then the owner came out. He tried to get us a taxi, was unsuccessful and then
said he would take us. "You don't know the place and it could be dangerous.". This is a recurring
theme here.

Robin 33 years ago

Robin today

(Left is Ian's photo of Robin having just killed a deer for dinner. Left-overs were used as bait to spy on a 10 foot komodo dragon.)


Finally we arrived at Robin and Lavinia's. There was a third guest, Jenny, another former sailing crew and we settled down to gin and tonics on the patio overlooking a tranquil canal with a flat marshland on the far side. Lavinia had split open a banana for the birds and they were chirping and chittering while they picked away at it.



Ian and I felt like we'd stumbled onto the set of a Noel Coward play or Downton Abbey revisited.  Robin, like many men and women of a certain age, has written a memoir. He lent it to us and Ian found a mention of himself. Robin called him "a gem".