Day 134 – Cocktails and animal skins
Much to S’ pleasure, this day did not start with J visiting another doctor. He also skipped breakfast and had a bit of a lie in while J dealt with Calvin and ate.
We met Mansur in reception and headed off to see ‘his guy’ and look at another lion skin. His guy warned us that we might not be able to import this into the UK. He also mentioned that one of his other clients bought two lion skins for import into the US and they were seized at Customs, so he won’t guarantee delivery to the UK. Apparently, ever since the outrage over the hunting of the beloved Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe by an American sport hunter in 2015, many countries are banning the import of lion products, even though they are not on the CITES endangered list. Mansur’s guy called his agent, who said he didn’t think we could bring the lion skin into the UK. We decided not to buy from this guy.
We headed back to the Chinese restaurant for more soup dumplings. We ordered the exact same thing as last time. It was good but not quite as good as last time. We then walked to the V&A waterfront to visit the African Trading Post. On the way, we stopped at a bar in Mouille Point called Bobo. It had an extensive selection of wines by the glass and classic cocktails. J liked the sound of the cocktails as they seemed to use traditional ingredients. Nonetheless, she ordered two glasses of Pinotage as she didn’t feel like she got to taste enough of this during the wine tastings. S had the Bramble cocktail, which was good.
Once we got to the waterfront, we went to Cause Effect, a well known cocktail bar which Ashley the bartender at Atlanticview recommended. It was pretty impressive. The bar was playing 90s hip hop music which J loves, but S was not a fan. S’ first drink was housed in a very tall, beaded rocket ship. The drink was so tall, S had to stand up to take a drink from a straw, which protruded through a small hole at the top of the rocket ship. J had the creamsicle, which came with whipped cream and chocolate shavings. It was delicious. Our next round was a traditional old fashioned for S and a sakura cocktail for J. J didn’t like the second cocktail as much as the cherry flavour was overwhelming. S got a bonus third cocktail, a negroni, because two bartenders accidentally made the same drink order. One bartender sat the drink in front of S, who said he didn’t order it. The bartender said S could have it anyway, since it was a duplicate order. This was a pretty cool place where the bartenders even use liquid nitrogen for some of the drinks.
One might think after stopping at so many bars, we weren’t in a position to make sound decisions at the African Trading Post. However, all we were doing was putting aside items that we had seen on the prior visit. S set aside two drums, two Zulu spears and a shield, two masks, a female lion skin, a gemsbok head and a pair of kudu antlers. The shop is going to confirm that we can import all of these products before we buy them. We do not plan to import any products that are not legal and have them confiscated at the border.
We made it back to the hotel in time for most of aperitivo hour(s). J had been looking forward to ordering Korean food from an ‘authentic’ Korean restaurant. However, she learned that the minimum order for delivery is $40 or around 6 of the dishes / half the menu. S was very sceptical as this restaurant has shut down and the owners are cooking out of their house and only taking cash during COVID. S questions how there can be adequate refrigeration for proper storage of the food. S had a bunch of canapés and we ended up eating popcorn for dinner back in our room. We learned that two more rooms checked in and the hotel is now half full. However, none of the other 4 rooms came to aperitivo hour(s).
