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
lairdandjonelle 
*l*
Alexandra is convinced that whales are not an actual real animal, and are just a big joke played on tourists, so I am sure she has sympathy.
I looked up Mossed Bay on Google Maps. What is the Shark Lab?
I have no idea. Maybe a bar. Maybe Laird knows. (Those last two sentences were not connected together in a single thought.) I’ll ask Johan or Noekie tomorrow, see if they know.
You know, she may just have something there. Our only sighting consisted of a little fin, some blowing and what I would swear were brown rocks. Marita vehemently disagreed with me though, so I’m going with the story that we saw whales last week.