At Clifton Beach in Cape Town on Wednesday I watched as the last of about a dozen swimmers emerged from the blue-green water on a 78-degree afternoon. The group had been swimming freestyle, about 25 yards from shore, traversing the four beaches that link to one another in this strand that sits just north of Camps Bay. “Maybe only 10 or 12 days a year when the water’s this warm,” one of the swimmers told me as he shook water off him. “It’s like the south of France.”
By then it was early evening and the beach was dotted with clumps of teenagers and families on blankets. A circle of boys passed a rugby ball to one another. Parents held babies. An old man wearing a pea green polo shirt and yellow headphones used a detector to scavenge for whatever metal might be buried. Three Indian guys played beach cricket.
Behind the beach and across a strand of road loomed Lion’s Head, a mountain that rises nearly 2,200 feet with ribbons of houses chiseled across its lowest section. The mountain provided a background to the action on the beach, where Odo, a 20-something Zimbabwean who came to Cape Town at the age of eight, sold hats from a selection he carried under his arm.