lairdandjonelle

What is it about us and whales?!? Our waitron at the Bistro yesterday said she sees whales every morning playing just beyond the surf line from her balcony from 6:00 when she gets up to 8:00 when she has to go to work. I thought, OK, she’s too young to lie about seeing whales, surely it must be true. Marita gave her phone number to call when she saw whales, but we decided to not even wait. Up at 6:30, still dark, get dressed and brush teeth (Marita, of course, having been up since 4:30 per her usual time, was showered as well; me, no time, we must be off) and out the door. We figure it will get light soon after getting to the beach. I remember Nikita (waitron) said she lived above 2nd beach; Marita remembers her saying she lives on the street we go to above 1st beach. Hmmmm. You know how this is going to end, don’t you? We went first to 2nd beach, nothing but cold and beautiful, beautiful surf coming in and in and in. So hypnotizing it is almost possible to forget what you are there for. Only a little light, but whales are quite big so we should have been able to see something if it were out there. Marita decides we are too low, so we go back up one street and get out again into the cold to stand and stare hard all along the bay. I have my trusty black jacket my sister Sandy gave me, plus a heavy jacket I bought here last year and left, wool scarf wrapped around my neck and ears, gloves, thick pants, long socks. Good thing I didn’t fall down, I’d never be able to get up again. I’m sure I looked like the little Dough Boy, except dark. Nothing, but Marita has decided that tomorrow morning we can make our way onto someone’s balcony to look. She says no one lives there because it looks like it’s being built. Far along, I think to myself. Maybe, I say. Off we go to the street above 1st beach. We look and look yet again and yet again the sea is empty except for waves. We are not going to see whales, ever, I mutter to myself as we get back in the car for home, looking for buck along the way because this morning needs to be saved somehow. Not saved. Home, I fall back asleep reading the newspaper. But we ARE going to the penguin rehab center this afternoon, so maybe it will be even more exciting than seeing whales. Maybe. We can only hope!

YES, it was swell! We took William, the son of the leather worker/shoe repairman; he’s 11, I think. Once we got there, no easy task, we saw penguins, two young ones who let us pet them; an Atlantic petrel; and one sea gull. There were babies, but we couldn’t see them, they were deep in the nests. We watched everyone being fed. With penguins, you have to shove the fish down their throats because they don’t know anything about a plate of food. All of them had been hurt, a couple bitten by sharks, one, a rockhopper (the ones with the long yellow feathers on its face) from Antarctica, had a big hole in his head when he was found and brought in. He just came back from the vet today. He was one of the ones we got to pet, so cute! His name is Rocky. Still a baby, he was fed very small squids and fish pieces — shoved down his throat. It’s amazing to think he lived long enough to end up in Mossel bay from Antarctica, don’t you think? After that, we decided to go towards Herbertsdale to see if we could see the giraffes and zebra we had seen once before. You might have seen pictures from Laird of our giraffe/zebra sighting. We couldn’t find the spot until we went way past it, turned around and drove back a few miles. No giraffes, but a fantastic kudu, a herd of eland, some springbok, lots of impala and a few hartebeest. It was a swell day! Monday we’re going on another game drive.

Wishing exotic animals in your future, too — jm

Yesterday, Marita and I were lounging in our afternoon beds, reading — or some of us finally writing down phone numbers from her phone because she mistakenly put her phone in the washing machine and received a MIRACLE FROM THE UNIVERSE that her phone worked after being dried out by the lovely people at Vodacom (and all who know me do not for one instant think that I would be so technologically savvy as to have hundreds of phone numbers on a phone) — when the call came: WHALES AT BEACH #2! On with my jeans and shoes and out the door and into the car within one minute. It didn’t take us more than three minutes to get to Beach 2, I swear. The ocean was so beautiful, all sorts of blues, white horses rushing to shore in a high spring tide, but, alas, the ocean was empty. We each had binoculars and we swept south to north, back north to south, over and over. Empty. Back in the car, we rushed to Beach 1 and repeated the binocular exercise. Nothing. Empty as Beach 2. Marita phoned Noekie, who had called her in the first place. Noekie said someone on WhatsApp said there was an orange boat, whales and a lot of dolphins. How can that be? How could an orange boat, whales (you do know how big they are, neh?) and a lot of dolphins disappear from the totality of beach to horizon as far as the eye could see at not one, but two beaches, within three minutes in the first instance and maybe five in the next?!? No, no, no. someone is playing tricks on us, for sure. Is it Noekie or the Universe???? VOTE NOW!

Yesterday morning we did a little exploring in Mossel Bay, found Ocean Blvd, lots of high rise apts and hotels and small, dwarfed self-catering units, but all in front of a beautiful beach. Also a new coffee shop to go to. And another swimming pool for Noekie — though the warm pool at Hartenbos is very, very nice. We didn’t go to the pool to ask if the water is warm. She’ll have to be much better after her surgery and blood clots and the season will have to be High Summer before she will want to go into a cold swimming pool! We went to an art gallery — maybe the only one in all of Mossel Bay (how weird is THAT, Santa Fe folks???) — and couldn’t stop myself. Sorry, Laird. I bought the most beautiful small painting of a lilac-breasted roller. That’s a bird. A magnificent bird of South Africa. Google it and see. You’ll be gobsmacked, I promise.

When we took Noekie to the Hartenbos swimming pool, not only did I have to bravely take off my cover-up and bear the humiliation of being in a bathing suit in public, but when I tried to swim, at the first kick, I was done. Hips, knees and ankles all cried out, “What the bliksis (great Afrikaans word for any cuss word you want substituted) do you think you’re doing?!? Stop that right now!” And more words to that effect. I stopped. Even treading water hurt, but I at least stayed in for the warm water, crossing the pool like someone really old who had just been flung from Dias’ sailing ship. If there had been sharks in that pool, I’d’a been done for sure!

It is really cold here, like winter really means to come and sit here for awhile. It rained the other day — and boy, do they need rain. South Africa is having a terrible drought. Cape Town’s reservoirs are at their last 10%, basically. It snowed there late last week, which is why it’s so cold here — the cold air pushes up to us here, or so says Marita. Weather is just another mystery to me. But I saw the most beautiful cloud lying on the sea last week, or maybe the week before. It laid there for hours, not needing to go anywhere, do anything. Have I told you about most of houses in South Africa not having “built-in” heat? It’s true. Why, I don’t know, since they have winter many, many places here every year. Like Dana Bay. It’s bliksis cold here right now, like 14 C. And colder in the flat. Marita brought over her BIG gas heater she had to buy when she lived in Bulwer — now THAT is winter, there in the Drakensburg mountains. I’m still baffled by that reliance on space heaters fueled by electricity (expensive here, and not all that reliable) or small bottled gas canisters, which means you have to change them frequently, which means more trips to the store.

Yet another mystery in the world is why the hell every city, town and hamlet along the Indian and Atlantic coasts of South Africa don’t already have functioning desalination plants. The drought has been on now for two or three years and had been forecast for longer than that. Cape Town needs to get Dutch and Israeli water engineers over here ASAP to help them figure out what the hell they are going to do. Right now the strategy is to tap the acquifer. How dumb is that?

Have y’all all heard about the Larson ice sheet that is calving in the Antarctic? Scientists, etc don’t know what will happen when that humongous chunk separates from the sheet, but they aren’t ruling out catastrophe. At least we’re on the second story here. Just kidding, but I wouldn’t be if I was living on any of the Island nations in the southern hemisphere.

That’s the news from here from your roving and chatty reporter, jm

Yesterday, Marita and I went up past Plettenburg Bay to see the Big Tree. It’s a 1,000 year old yellowwood, quite stately and very, very tall. Marita doesn’t think very many people go see the Big Tree — hell people in Plett don’t even know about it! — but there are plans to build a huge visitor center. Hope they do more advertising. It is part of the Knysna forest national park, I think — it’s part of some national park.
After that, coming back, we went down, down, down a very steep mountain on a very twisty, windy road to Nature’s Valley, a little community of mostly holiday folks by the sea. We found out about a new game reserve to book a tour at and had an ostrich hamburger. Very tasty, but the meat was not tough so much as it was hard. Very dense. Had to use a knife and fork. Back up we came and raced home before dark because Marita does not like to drive at night. She was not willing to risk her little car with me driving, even though it was a complete straight shot — only three turns at the end of the journey that I’m sure I could have done correctly.
Today we saw whales! Or maybe whale. The problem with whale watching from shore is that you can’t see them very well. We saw blowing. We saw flippers. We saw tops of heads. Noekie just called us to tell us they were there, but now the fog is so thick we might as well still be in Mossel Bay at 6:00 in the morning. Marita said, “we’re sorted, already saw them”. But of course we won’t stop looking for better and better sightings.
Reporting from Dana Bay, this is your intrepid reporter, jm

So, no whales yet. Alas. But on the day of the gin tasting, Marita and I went over to Lip Lekker and had ostrich neck stew. So yummy! Astounding how much meat there is in an ostrich neck! If you ever see it in the store, buy it and I’ll give you pointers on how to cook it — it’s so lekker! (that means good) But you don’t want to hear about food, I hear, so shall we talk about gin? There were 12 of us, I think, though not everyone was in on the tasting. We started with Hendricks, because one of our guests was Scottish and because Hendricks is sort of the father of the artisanal gin movement. Then we moved on to the Main Event, which was tasting the local, astounding gin from Stillbai, Inverroche. We started with Inverroche classic, which is a more traditional style of gin, though all Inverroche is made with local fynbos as the botanicals and with Italian juniper. It’s a clear white, made with limestone water; after first tasting, a bit of grapefruit peel was added, which changed the taste dramatically. Next was the Inverroche Verdant, which has a green cast to it, made from valley water, fynbos in a different recipe; served with lime peel. The last, my absolute favorite, Inverroche Amber, made from mountain water, a different mixture of fynbos and also made a little differently than the others, but after having 13 shots of gin during my real Inverroche gin tasting in Stillbaai I can’t remember how. Maybe Laird remembers. It is served with orange peel. According to Inverroche folks, NEVER squeeze juice into gin. All these years, having gin-and-tonic-double-lime and squeezing. Oh, how wrong I was! Amber needs only a very little of tonic (that would be good tonic, not schwepes) and orange peel to make an excellent, though short, drink. Surprising to me, all our guests asked for the classic when it came time to have a G&T. We had one guest, Jeff, the Scots South African, who tried a sample of the Inverroche rum, made with black strap mollassas. He was the only adventurer in the group and tried more pairings. Marita and I had quite an impressive table of party food, but folks hardly ate anything. We had rearranged the furniture to get the adults close enough to the tasting, but then we thought they’d get up and move around. A sedentary crowd for sure! Next day we gave half the leftovers to Johan’s workers downstairs in the hardware store, followed up with more each day afterwards. They were very happy that no one ate anything but biltong at the party! However, everyone at the party had a great time, so what’s a few leftovers?
The two days of preparation/party pretty much did me in. Luckily I had an appointment with miracle worker Carina for the next morning, but still, I was pretty much in the throes of pain for the next two days, hardly able to walk. Yesterday, we went to the beach in Dana Bay, today, the beach in Mossel Bay. Daniel, we got you some shells — though they are all quite small. Pretty, though. I also went to see our friend Hein at Township Angels to look for presents. Theodore and Sia, I am at a loss for what you might like from South Africa — please, please, give me hints! Really, I’m serious, I need directions! Chris, I got you a very cool present, even though it will mean another object in your life.
Clearly, I didn’t do enough shopping in Cape Town! Now there’s nowhere to go. Bummer.
Tomorrow the plan is to go see the Big Tree in Knysna forest, depending on the beauty of the day. I’ll tell you all about it if we go. Hope it cools down in Santa Fe and everyone has a lovely time until we meet again — jm