56 AMERICANWAY
DECEMBER 1 2008
Bird Island, just offshore from the seaside town of Lambert’s Bay
Like a shrunken apple doll, 81-year-old Grietjie Adams’s face is all
cheeks. An enormous pale-pink ruffled bonnet that would havemade
a pioneer woman proud is perched onher head. Her voice is high and
reedy,butshecommandscompleteattention.Asshesings,a lankyyoung
manwearing a featheredhat andholding a pipe inhismouthdemon-
strates a local dance, hismovementsmimicking the elegance of the an-
telopeandother animals that bound throughAdams’s folk songs.
Seven days into a nine-day trip up the west coast of South Africa,
even the people who can’t speak Afrikaans understand the meaning
of those songs. Adams’s passion andmovements and theman’s dance
are infusedwith the beauty, traditions, and cultures of Namaqualand,
named for theNamapeople.
This is not the land of the “bigfive,” the animals that luremost visi-
tors toSouthAfrica.Thewest coast is, inmanyways,quieter thansafari
hot spots likeKrugerNational Park. But from theCape ofGoodHope,
in the south, up to theadministrative capital ofNamaqualand, Spring-
bok, 300miles to thenorth, the country isno less riveting.
AN AFRICAN PENGUIN CHICK,
its downy coat still thick, looks incred-
ibly grumpy. Closer to the water, an older bird cautiously makes its
way down a boulder, sticking its head out after each step to see what
lies ahead. Aboardwalk runs through the entire penguin colony, offer-
ing tourists intent on loading their digital cameraswithmemories the
chance to take theperfect shot from just a few feet away.
A shortdrive from the city centerofCapeTown,BouldersBeachand
FoxyBeach are great places to start an explorationof thenatural won-
ders of thewest coast— and the penguin joy is just the beginning of a
day thatwill be spent looping around theCapePeninsulabeforehead-
ingnorth, away from the city.
But our small white car isn’t going anywhere fast anytime soon. A
African penguins at Boulders Beach
SouthAfrican orange wildfl wers
It’s just cool enough for a light jacket at
night.The SouthAfrican winter is giving
way to spring. Soon enough, summer will
scorch the land again and the shimmering
pink, deep purple, and fie y orange wild-
fl wers that now coat the country’s west
coast will disappear.Dry earth will rule. But
on this night, that’s all far from theminds
of the people gathered atop the roof of
a salmon-colored guesthouse in the small
town of Garies. Instead, the crowd is fo-
cused on a woman not even five eet tall.
