Day 69: Ceramics in the Morning, Rugby in the Evening

Two big activities on this balmy Friday in Cape Town: a ceramic studio experience found on Airbnb in the morning; and our first ever rugby match in the evening.

We got up and out, driving 35 minutes to Macassar, a small town in Western Cape with about 30k population. We arrived at Macassar Pottery — a studio and business incubation space and were greeted by John Ross — our exclusive guide for the day. Nobody else had booked the experience so we had “JR” to ourselves. Our first stop was at the Muslim kramat (shrine) of Sheik Yussaf of Bantam just outside and overlooking the town, one of the South African Muslim community’s holiest places. We spent the rest of the morning at the studio with John Ross. We made our own clay creations, did some painting of clay flutes that had already been made and then participated in a little drum circle with JR and one of his friends from the studio. JR and James had a little bromance — which is becoming a trend. Everyone loves “Famous James” (as Willa calls him) and James always seems to bond with our male tour guides. They brought in lunch — a massive “Gatsby” sub sandwich made of friend fish, French fries and tangy sauce. It’s a local fast food favorite and was delicious.

When we got home, James carried his freshly painted ceramic flutes up the front steps. On the top step of the porch he stumbled — and fell to the ground, taking his flutes with him, shattering to the ground. It was honestly one fo the saddest things we’ve ever seen. Even Willa said, “I feel like I want to cry. I feel sorry for James for once.”

We recovered to hang out at home for the afternoon. Mom and dad napped (!!) while the kids did some art work. Then the kids and I hit the splash pool at the house for the first time. After showering up we uber’d to the famous Newlands Rugby Stadium for the family’s first ever rugby match.

The local Cape Town Stormers were playing the Jaguars from Argentina. Some of our best friends (Rooke, Peun, Simpson, Forbes, etc.) are rugby fans but I knew very little about the sport before today. We actually watched a 5 minute Rugby for Dummies YouTube video on the way to the stadium. It was enough to give us a sense for what was happening when the game started.

Random observations from our first experience with Rugby:

• Holy shit these guys are savages — some of the toughest human beings on the planet. No idea how they don’t all have CTE already.
• In many ways the game is more entertaining than American football… it’s a running clock at 40 min per half and the game just keeps going. So everything is over in 2 hours max but you got WAY more action than you would in a 3+ hour football game.
• The whole in-stadium fan experience is pretty terrible… Stadium has a lot of history but is ancient
• Ushers are clueless —- seems like many were hired just for today
• They only sell beer at the vending counters (not in the stands) and there was ONLY ONE on our entire half of the stadium with about 50 people in line at all times — I can’t imagine what this is like when the stadium is full. Thankfully (and surprisingly) it was super efficient… about 15 people working hard and the line moved really fast
• However… they do have vendors in the stands with big boxes of full-sized doughnuts;
• We hit the team gear shop (hard) and got a bunch of stuff but the product offering and graphic design was similar to that of a high school athletic department in the US.
• Big DHL sponsorship for the stadium and team; the water bottles and kickstands are zipped out on the field by a yellow remote controlled DHL truck

The Stormers won in a blowout!

Overall a really fun experience and we’ll try to hit some other sporting events along our travels. I’m already working to get Real Madrid tix for May.