lairdandjonelle

Well, we arrived back safely from CT on Friday — we just missed demonstrations blocking traffic there.  We drove up the coast to see the penguin colony at Rocky Point (the same one where a leopard killed dozens of the sweetie pies  a few months earlier), and then on to Hermanus, driven by a rumor that whales had been spotted the day before.  Alas, that was fake news!  Then over hill and dale to get back to the N2 homeward.  Monday, we got in the car again (what were we thinking?!?) and drove back to Stillbaai to feed and pet the eels — this time, the eels were really willing to be stroked, and did I tell you how soft they are?  Back to the Inverroche gin distillery, of course, for more amber gin.  I cannot tell you how GOOD this gin is, just lovely with some ice cubes and a twist of orange –or add just a bit of really good tonic.  Ahhhhhh.

We are planning a gin tasting party for sometime in the near future, though I’m not sure we’ll make it before we go to the Kruger and Laird returns home. Our friend Noekie had shoulder surgery while we were away in Cape Town and yesterday morning, her leg was swollen to about twice its normal size — she had seven blood clots!  So she’s back in the hospital.  Doesn’t put us in the party mood.

On Sunday, Laird, Marita, Cilla and I went to friends for a lovely, lovely braai — the yummiest steak I’ve had in a long time, and the best way ever to cook sweet potatoes, putting them in pastry like breakfast rolls.  Marita knows how, so I’ll have to get her to tell me.  Loret and Helmein were Noekie’s and my cruising companions on the Rhine last year — what wonderful ladies they are — and their husbands are swell also.  We keep meeting the best people here in SA!

Today, off to Bottlierskop, a game reserve, for lunch with Cilla.  Venison carpachio, venison skewers on a bed of veggies and some swell drink called Just Jinger or something like that.  I think it was vodka, Pimms #1, ginger liquer (never heard of that), ginger, ginger ale, cucumber, et al — whatever it was, it was delicious, and so refreshing although it sounds kinda horrible doesn’t it?  We didn’t go on a game drive, Cilla’s back would not have withstood the whipsawing around in a game drive truck, so all we saw was one Kudu (I think we had its companion for lunch) and some red buck.  Oh, we did see lots of cows.  Farm workers were moving two big bunches of young cows, maybe yearlings?, down the middle of the road and we were swarmed.  It was heavenly!  All those soulful eyes, beautiful hides, I wanted to reach out and pet but thought starting a stampede might not be the best move in a foreign country.  I also thought about asking the workers if they thought of themselves as cowboys, but abstained from that as well.

So, get along little doggie (is that the correct spelling for that?) — I’m heading for the barn.  Laird might come along later and add to this, but he’s already asleep, I think.  As Noekie says, “Sweet dreams, don’t let the bees bite!”

Yesterday, we went to Franschhoek to taste wine at Allee Bleue.   We tasted four wines, all of them good, even the white, but what we were waiting for was La’Amour Toujours, the wine the owner made and dedicated to his wife.  Oh. So. Good!  Friends will be happy that I ordered two cases of it (short cases, alas) and we’ll have a wine tasting party when I get home.  The tasting and buying took about 1 1/2 hours, and was accompanied by a great cheese platter. The guy was pouring almost full glasses (well, full glass in wine terms), so we were all pretty looped (except L, the designated driver), but we were determined to have lunch there as well — it was as excellent as we expected.  I had Kabeljou (a delicious, firm white fish — pronounced “cobble yo”), Cilla and Laird had a great curry and Marita had enough control to just order a hummus pita with veggies.  Smart!  We were stuffed, and still looped. as we drove up toward the Franschhoek pass because Cilla had never seen the view from there — it’s amazing and awesome and we got to see some baboons.   Coming home was a big chore, but we finally made it and all collapsed. (We have to figure out how to post pictures on this blog.)

Laird is the Cape Town driver and is doing a marvelous job.  For all of you who know him, I know you don’t doubt it — he’s been able to get us around mainly by remembering where and how we went in years past.  What a star!   Yesterday, we got stuck behind a terrible accident; today, trying to get out of Cape Town almost meant our lives.  CPT drivers are real buggers — they won’t give an inch, but insist on taking at every opportunity — they are crazy. Think of the bad word of your choosing.

Today, we went back to the waterfront — yea, shopping time!  Jonelle is trying, once again, to rescue the South African economy with her purchases. Then we took a taxi to the Lord Nelson hotel, now called the Mount Nelson for some unknown reason — other than maybe new owners who wanted to mess with a circa 200 year old iconic symbol of CPT — for high tea.  I have wanted to do this for years and years, even before I came to CPT the first time.  It was everything I imagined and more.  Beautiful old hotel, completely pink, with white balconies and adornments.  We were early, so we went out on the patio by the bar and had sherry, of course.  The high tea room, called the Windsor room, I believe, is like most of them, with living room sets — a sofa and two wing chairs for us, right near the dessert table.  The centerpiece of the dessert table was a huge old silver bowl holding TWO HUNDRED pink roses!  We could have had seats in the conservatory if we had so desired.  Luckily, we were the only ones inside, so we had a lovely time and didn’t have to try to hear what someone at another table was saying. The food was magnificent. We spoke with the young chef who bragged on the recipe book presumably collected over the last hundred years or so. The food was delivered to the table in four tranches. First, we selected among about thirty varieties of tea. Laird chose the Mount Nelson six-tea African teas blend … quite bold with berries on the palette — oh, no that was the previous day at the winery. Jonelle and Marita had the Chinese White tea, while Cilla chose the Oolong infused with Jasmine. Jonelle and Marita decided that Cilla was the winner in the choice parade. The tea came in a stainless steel basket that nicely fit into the clear crystal tea pot. Our waitress, Tully, swished the tea basket in the four separate tea pots. The second tranche was the three-tiered silver plate tray with the cucumber, salmon, cream cheese, egg and other savory finger sandwiches on the top two tiers and chicken pie (magnificent taste), fried cheese balls (our least favorite) and a bunch of other wonderful finger foods on the bottom tier. The third tranche was the scone course, complete with strawberry jam and clotted cream. Of course, among the lower caste of international foodies, clotted cream is known as whipped cream. We had clotted cream. Just as we were going into coma, we realized that we had to rise and partake of the sweets at the Windsor table. Marita had enough good sense to pass, but the rest of us recognized our duty and filled our plates with magnificent sweets: vanilla crumpets, carrot cake, black forest cake, lime and mint macaroons,, petit fours, mini milk tart and L’s fav — lemon meringue tarts. Having done our duty, we were still able (mostly) to rise from the couch and depart the venue.

Having arisen successfully, the ladies went to the Ladies Cloakroom, which has an entry room, the sink room, with, of course, real hand towels to use, and several “facility rooms”.  In one of the jewelry cases going there, we saw these wonderful ceramic animal angels — rhino, elephant, zebra, etc, with wings, hanging from the ceiling of the case on clear fishing line — yes, I DID want them!

The place is HUGE, with several buildings and cottages — we went into one of the cottages, called Rose Cottage, consisting of two suites, each with living room, marble bathroom, a half bath and a gorgeous bedroom with a high king size bed, private patio off the bedroom.  The front of the cottages have a porch and some kind of climbing, flowering vines across the front.  I have to save up and stay there sometime before my traveling life is over!  The gardens are lush, with animal sculptures scattered around.  I want to stay for about a week until I’ve seen everything there!  And, it’s not that far from a Turkish bath, which I love.  We found that Laird’s brilliant idea of parking once and taking a taxi is the way to go, so we have booked one for tomorrow on our next adventure.  Our driver’s name is Haille Salassie and, why yes, he is Ethiopian.  When you’re not driving, or riding even, Cape Town is so very beautiful and interesting.  All the palm trees, the banana trees, gum trees, flowers.  I recommend it highly — and I know a great place you can stay, as well!

It’s going to be 17 degrees C tomorrow, so perhaps our sunny, capri-wearing days are over.  Even though we don’t have raincoats or umbrellas, I do hope it rains and rains and rains in CPT — they need it so badly!  There are signs everywhere about the drought and the water restrictions are down to cooking, drinking and essential washing (we’re not sure what that entails, or limits).  Where we are staying at the beach, the place has its own borehole, but sucking water out of the ground has its own problems.  I can’t believe they are just now starting to design a combo desalination and wastewater purification facility — they are way behind on their vitally needed water solutions!  There should be desalination plants all along the coast.  Dana Bay gets its potable water from such a plant — I assume so does Mossel Bay, the larger municipality that Dana Bay is part of.

Atlantically yours, jm, with miscellaneous marginal comments from L.

We’re here in beautiful Cape Town, right across the beach with stunning views.  Yesterday, we went to the V&A waterfront, got on the hop-on/hop-off bus and went to the Kirstenbosch, one of the national botanical gardens.  The audio on the bus said it was ranked 7th in the world, I thought I read 3rd in the world.  Whatever its rank, it is a stunning garden!  Sandy, I couldn’t stop being sad that you weren’t here with us — you would have loved it.  We’re going back on Tuesday, I think, to see more of it.  You have to come with me in a spring when the whole place is flowers, flowers, flowers!  You’ll just have to take a Valium or ambien and get on the damn plane!

After that, we were too tired to get off at the next stop, Constansia wine — the oldest winery in South Africa, started in the 1700s I think.  Maybe Tuesday.  So we just stayed on the bus and rode to Hout bay and back through Clifton and other seaside hamlets — narrow road, with houses plunging down the hillside to the rocks or grasping the hillside above the road.  Some people have personal funiculars to take them up the hill to their house.  Rich, do you think?  Why, yes, they are!  Nobody poor lives along the coast, I don’t think.  For one thing, they couldn’t afford the cost of infrastructure — those houses have to be pinned to the deepest bedrock, I think.  We still have to go down to the waterfront to buy some art and go to Woolworths for, please, please, I hope, several packages of Mother-in-Law’s spice.  I bought some last year, but never got to try it because Molly found it and tore it up and scattered all over the rug.

Today, we’re doing a braai for our Capetown friends, Jannie and Freda.  Unfortunately, they couldn’t round up their daughters on such short notice, but we’ll have a lovely time nonetheless — lots of laughing, for sure.  They are the multi-talented family I’ve written about in other trip posts.  Singers, musicians, painters — they do it all.

Tomorrow, who knows.  Maybe we will go to Franschoek to the Allee Bleu winery for lunch or dinner and to buy their magnificent wine.  Or maybe to see something else somewhere else — the week is spread out like a blanket on the beach!

Hope your day is as swell as ours!

Last week we went to Stillbaai to feed the freshwater eels.  They have about nine (claimed — we only saw and fed four).  When they get to be about 25 years old, they leave the pond, go down to the river, then the open sea and off to Madagascar where the lady eels lay millions of eggs each.  When they hatch, they start swimming back to the pond.  Alas, in 2014, only one made it; in 2015, only two got back.  Talk about overfishing!  But the ones we fed are still safe, they live under the rock overhangs in the pond and come out when you trail chicken liver through the water.  They are very polite eaters, take the liver gently from your hand.  And soft!  They are so soft, they feel something like stingrays.  They have blue eyes.  Well, they have blue around their eyes, almost the same thing.  They live in the tourist bureau’s pond, which is an old Cape Dutch farmer’s cottage.  They have two rooms full of information on early man and the Great Migration of the human sort, out of Africa.  Many of the beaches at Stillbaai are very rocky and it’s beautiful to see the sea crashing up; others are lovely sand beaches with much quieter water.

After petting and feeding the eels, we started back and stopped at Inverroche, a gin distillery.  YUMMY!  OMG, it is such beautiful gin!  There are three varieties, a crystal clear (from limestone water), a more yellow (from somewhere in the middle) and an amber gin (from the mountains).  Ahhhh, that amber one, sooooo delicious.  Oh, but I said that about the crystal clear one, too.  All are made with juniper from Italy and fynbos for the botanicals.  Fynbos is the local, only-in-Western-Cape plantscape — many, many varieties, including aloes, protea, shrubs, small trees, almost all of which I don’t know the names of.   Turns out I’ve been drinking gins and tonics wrong all these years.  You’re not supposed to put the juice and fruit in them — it diminishes the gin oils –just a piece of the skin, a twist.  They served one with grapefruit, the clear I think; one with orange and we can’t remember about the third.  Anyway, she suggested to get all sorts of things, cardamon, cinnamon, etc and try different combinations.  It is amazing what a grapefruit twist does for gin!  And after our first two sips, one pure, one with twist, we were then given really good tonic (very low sugar content) — ohsogood, all ways!  They hope to start exporting to the US in the next few months, so I have to get them all my contact information so I’ll know or can have them send me some, then we’ll have a party!  Forgot to do it while I was there, I  was way too drunk after the tasting.  Turns out, everyone was passing me their glasses and I just kept downing them!  We bought all three, but I’m sure I am not willing to try to carry them home.  They also make rum from blackstrap molassass and Laird bought that one too.  I’m not a big rum drinker, but it is quite good.

On Mother’s Day we took Marita and Matty to Jakkalsvlei winery (means fox’s pond, I think), second time for us and Marita as we had gone for a tasting earlier in the week.  We had ostrich carpacchio with strawberries and balsalmic vinegar and parmesan custard with bacon jam (OMG good, that was!  We bought extras to take home) for appetizers; we all had the hummus chicken for entree and chocolate mousse for dessert.  And a great pinotage — very dark, coffee taste along with the deep fruit taste.  We now have a big collection of Jakkalsvlei wines — we gotta get a lot of drinking done, because there are so many wines to buy in Cape Town!  We go there on Friday.

On the way home from Mother’s Day, we saw seven giraffes, a couple of them babies, just peeking above the tree tops, and a bunch of eland and some gnus.  Ostriches, of course — we don’t even remark about them.

Marita and Matty are wonderful cooks, and we take our turn, too, but I’m pretty sure we’re not losing any weight.  That was Laird’s main goal — he had said he wouldn’t come if he couldn’t lose weight.  I said “Sure — of course you can”, but I didn’t really believe it.  Marita made oxtail the other night — so good.

Today, we’ve booked for a game drive at the Garden Route Nature Reserve. This is close to Albertinia, where we went last year a couple of times for an amazing 12-course traditional farm dinner. We had an equally amazing game ranger guide for the game drive. He showed us how the animals didn’t interpret the game drive trucks as predators, but when the guide stepped out from the profile of the truck, all of the animals instantly read his profile as predator. So I’ll take the big Nikon and see if my game pics improve.

Love to all. We are having a great time.

Here we are back in Dana Bay, and finally on the internet after a hell of a time trying to get connected. But in the meantime, we’re having a marvelous time with our friends, Marita, Noekie, Johan and Matty. My only bummer news is that the house I really, really wanted has sold — that just doesn’t seem right to me, after all, I looked at it all the time during the legislative session, dreamed of sitting on the balcony with a great South AFrican red wine, looking out to the blue, blue of the Indian ocean; I looked at it after the session, at home, it was still for sale and NOW IT’S NOT. Shit! I think I’m going to call the real estate company just to make sure, maybe knock on the door and ask why some stranger is living in my house.
The stupidest thing I’ve ever done when traveling has happened: I left my damn credit card at home! Can you believe it?!? Dumb squared! Luckily, we have a teriffic house/dog sitter and she is sending it to me. Her name is Galaxy Dancer, and Molly loves her — in fact, I’m sure Molly’s going to be really cranked when Laird comes home in June (I’m not coming home until end of July). We haven’t done much yet, still are suffering from jet lag, i think — I also forgot to pack the No Jet Lag and boy, can I feel the difference.
So we’ll write more as soon as we have an adventure — surely sometime soon! Oceanically yours, jm