South Africa’s Wild Side
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

“When I lived in Hawaii, I had a neighbor named Ritchie who was killed by a shark,” my father told me as he drove me to a surfing clinic in Cape Town, South Africa. “He and his friends were going snorkeling and a Great White bit his leg off. His father went out afterwards with some men and killed it,” he continued, casually signaling left as I sat petrified in the front seat. “They knew it was the right shark because when they cut it open, Ritchie’s leg was inside.”
By the time we arrived at Downhill Adventures, the sports shop that promised to have me standing on a board by the end of the day, I seriously doubted whether surfing was the best use of my vacation time. But it was too late. A young blond man named Chris came out of the shop, fitted me with a wetsuit and tossed it into the back of a van as my father drove off with a jaunty wave. I clambered onto a seat next to my classmates and arrived 40 minutes later at Muizenberg, a slightly rundown town on the edge of False Bay, part of the Indian Ocean. The sand on the beach was soft and white; blue mountains punctuated the horizon under puffy clouds; and the surfers already in the water didn’t seem to be missing any limbs. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
After giving a brief history of surfing, a workshop on three ways to get up on the board, and reassurance that I wasn’t going to be attacked by a shark, Chris showed us how to fasten our ankle leashes and then skipped into the surf.
Once I had waded out a comfortable distance, Chris grabbed the nose of my surfboard and told me to hop on. Balancing my body weight in the middle of the board, feet splayed slightly for stability, I clutched its edges and waited for his instructions.
Several swells went by before I heard the roar of an approaching wave and heard Chris yell, “Paddle! Paddle!” He walked backward, still holding my board, as I paddled as hard as I could; then, just as the wave caught up with me, he gave my board a firm push from behind and I was off in a mist of spray. With visions in mind of myself as the heroine of “Blue Crush,” I gripped the sides of the board more tightly and pulled my knees under me, shifted my weight to stand, and promptly toppled off into the water. Still, I emerged grinning, eager for another go, and by the end of the day, Chris and his co-instructor, Ryan, had delivered on their promise to have me stand up on the board.
While there are plenty of non-adrenaline related reasons to visit Cape Town – its beautiful natural scenery, fascinating history, nearby vineyards, and spectacular coastline to name a few – it is becoming an increasingly popular destination for people seeking adventure sports at relatively low prices. Just take a walk down the hostel lined Long Street and pick from skydiving, paragliding, scuba diving, abseiling (or rappelling), surfing, sand boarding, kite boarding, mountain biking, shark-cage diving, helicopter riding, sea kayaking or “kloofing” (aka canyoning), a combination of hiking, rappelling, and cliff jumping that involves throwing yourself off of high ledges into pools of water.
I returned home so exhilarated that I decided to try another sport. Sandboarding sounded tempting but when my mother said she’d like to try paragliding, my decision was made: the idea of seeing my mother jump off a mountain was too amusing to resist. Downhill Adventures helped us book tandem flights and, on a 103-degree afternoon, my father drove us to a parking lot near Camps Bay, on the Atlantic Ocean side of the city. Our instructors introduced themselves as Ian and Rob and the four of us hiked up to the launch point on Lion’s Head (part of Cape Town’s famous Table Mountain).
It turned out that taking off didn’t require hurling ourselves off of a cliff. Instead, Ian and Rob led us to the “runway,” a steep, mesh-covered patch of mountain side. Once Ian and I were strapped into our tandem harness, he gave the paraglider a tug to catch the breeze and we ran down the runway until the parachute swept us into the air. A gauge beeped on my shoulder to indicate when we were gaining altitude and, as I wiggled into the seat of my harness and gaped at the view of Camp Bay, Ian steered us back and forth, trying to catch a “thermal” – a current of air that would swoop us up higher. Meanwhile, my mother and Rob were soaring over beachside homes, glittering swimming pools, and bikini-clad bathers.
After about 20 minutes, the wind currents changed and Ian gracefully steered us down toward a landing patch near the water, a green playing field where several young men tossed a Frisbee. About 20 seconds before we landed, Ian told me to stand up in my harness and get ready to run; as we hit the ground, we took a few heavy steps forward together and the paraglider gently sagged behind us, collapsing onto the ground. My father, relieved that his family was still alive, gathered us in an enthusiastic hug.
I couldn’t stop smiling, but I was a bit worried about my mother. Never one to hold back emotions, she had hardly said a word during the entire paragliding experience. “Are you okay?” I asked her, as we recovered with tall glasses of passion fruit lemonade in a restaurant near the landing spot.
“Catherine, I just wanted to get off that mountain; it was so goddamn hot,” she said, pushing her hair off her sweaty face. “But that,” she said, smiling, “That was really neat.”
Sports Resources in Cape Town
DOWNHILL ADVENTURES
Sandboarding, surfing, kiteboarding, mountain biking, paragliding. Shop 10 Overbeek Building, 27-(0)21-422-0388, www.downhilladventures.com.
DAY TRIPPERS
Mountain biking, quad biking, hiking, kloofing. 27-(0)21-511-4766, www.daytrippers.co.za.
TWO OCEAN DIVERS
Scuba courses, boat drives, great white shark cage dives, Seal Island charters, aquarium predator dives, deep-sea fishing, whale watching, cray-fishing trips. 15 Victoria Road, 27-(0)21-790-8833, www.two-ocean.co.za.
ADVENTURE VILLAGE
Tandem skydiving, tandem paragliding, bungee jumping, abseiling, kloofing, sandboarding, quad biking, mountain biking, rock climbing, shark-cage diving, surfing, sea kayaking, scuba diving. 229 Long St., 27-(0)21-424-1580, www.adventure-village.co.za.