lairdandjonelle

Well, it was Tuesday when it was so. First to the wolves. We’ve all been confused about wolves in Africa and now we know that confusion was warranted. There are no wolves in Africa. The wolves at the Wolf Sanctuary are rescues from North America. I did ask how they got to South Africa but our guide didn’t hear me and the conversation went in another direction. On the way back to Dana Bay, I want to stop by and ask the question again. Most of the wolves had been “pets” and then the people realized that they couldn’t keep them. It is always astounding to me the number of numbnuts there are in the world who are willing to ruin animals’ lives either so they can have an exotic pet or because they think they are rescuing them. Far from rescue, they doom them to a live behind bars. All of the places we’ve been around Plett are rescue places, sanctuaries. At the wolf sanctuary, there are more wolf dogs than wolves, but they do have pure wolves, including timber wolves (I think four; can’t remember). We couldn’t go in with them, but we got to go in with the other packs. Interestingly, most of their wolves and wolf dogs are male. Another question I didn’t get the answer to: why? Also interestingly, they can’t neuter the males because they’d never be able to be alphas or betas if they were. There are two pairs of wolf-wolf dog with young, one with two males about a year old and the other with six puppies about three months old. So cute! Oh, yeah, we didn’t get to go into them either because they didn’t want to disturb them. But the mother, a wolf dog, came to the fence to be petted. All the cages are fairly big, with enough room to run, but they are in the process of building the new family a much, much bigger place. We played with a wolf-wolf dog pair who were both quite friendly and gregarious; generally the wolves were more reserved, as you might expect. Most of the wolf dogs’ dogness is Huskie, though the have at least one that is probably part german shepard. Interesting to feel the difference in the coats; wolves’ coarser, of course.

After the wolves, on the way back to Plett, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch.  Odd place.  There is the restaurant that only serves breakfast; there is the Cheese Man, obvious what it is, but also some other items; there is a garden shop and nursery with beautiful plants; the Radical Raptors sanctuary; and two home decor stores that have some of the most beautiful furniture and textiles I’ve seen in SA.  NOEKIE, if you haven’t stopped there on your many, too many trips to and from Port Elizabeth, you really must.  They have some beautiful wood swings (with and without backs, with and without the hanging supports) and concrete-made-to-look-like-carved-stone garden seats that would look wonderful on the farm, or even out by Castalina’s pool.

We went to Radical Raptors, Laird eagerly, me just to please him, but it was wonderful!  Again, these are all rescued birds, most from people who took them as chicks.  Those can never be returned to the wild because they don’t know how to BE wild, or they had their wings clipped or, in one case, the bird was kept in a cage too small for it so it could not even open its wings all the way so now it will never be strong enough to wild fly.  It can fly, but not far or long.  This should make you cry:  these birds do not know that they are birds.  They think they are human.  They get other birds people bring in who are wild but damaged somehow and they rehabilitate them and send them back out to the wild.  Those birds are not on display, of course, because they want to keep them wild.  Mark, whose brother owns the place, showed off a kestral, a Harris hawk (not indigenous to South Africa), a great horned owl [LAIRD fill in the South African name, please, along with the jakel’s buzzard or whatever it was.  GALAXY, you would have really liked the place!  And, then, the BEST PART.  Mark’s dog, Gustav!  What a wonderful, magnificent dog he is!  As black as the Formosa Bay bunnies, he’s a Gernan wirehaired terrier (?) and lab mix.  He LOVES golf balls, to hunt and to chew.  Depending on the command Mark gives him after loosing the ball, he either stalks it or hunts it.  He’s amazing to watch him “hunt”.  If you throw the ball way away when he can’t see the throw, he has a very organized hunting pattern he follows to sniff out or see the ball.  The last time the ball was thrown, Mark had put his hat over Gustav’s eyes and kept blowing into his face before releasing him.  Between that, the wind and the golf ball’s smell from other throws, the poor sweetie pie was having to go through pattern after pattern after pattern over and over again.  Laird, who had thrown the ball, said he thought it might have gone in a hole, so finally Mark walked out to see and help Gustav.

Today is going to the Big Tree, a 1,000 year old yellowwood tree.  We dedicate today to Marita, who LOVES the Big Tree!

I’m publishing this, but come back to it after Laird has a chance to correct my mistakes.  Since I’ve lost entries TWICE, I’m afraid to get out without publishing!  Laird is doing the laundry (talk about the best kind of husband!) and there is wi-fi only in reception and the restaurant and I’m not about to leave my computer to go to the laundry or our chalet.

Predatorily yours, jm and lg

It’s Monday, so it must be Birds of Eden. But first, the news: yesterday, Laird read a headline in the paper that said “Make homemade condensed milk in shell jewelry”. We were quite confused all day long. First off, why would someone want to make any kind of anything in shell jewelry???? Anyway, it wasn’t until I was looking at the paper last night that I saw that Laird had mistaken “and” for “in”. How, I don’t know, but it cleared up a lot for me. I don’t think we saw anything in the paper today, but if so, I’ll report tomorrow.
Before the adventuring, let me tell you about the beautiful BLACK, very black bunnies all over the resort — they are quite cheerful making.
Breakfast at Mugg and Bean, which isn’t my first choice of place to go but at least they have good coffee and a terrific breakfast bowl (that isn’t served in a bowl) that is quinoa, spinach, tomatoes and poached eggs. It’s served with a terrible hollandaise sauce so after the first time I learned to order it without. Then on the road to Birds of Eden. Kind of ugly day, overcast, sometimes chilly, sometimes not, like it wants to rain — which would be fantastic, of course, but it hasn’t so far. At Birds we saw my favorite bird, a Knyesna lourie (pronounced NICE-nah instead of what I want to say, which is Ness-nah). It starts out at the top sort of a grass green then moving down gets darker and darker green until it becomes a deep navy blue. When it flies, it flashes the most startling scarlet red on its underwings. See if you can google it to see what it looks like. Oh, they also have “eye make-up, white around the red circle around their eyes. We saw lots of them, but at one point there was one right in front of us and as we stayed still and I had my hand on the post, he walked up to me, then up my arm and onto my shoulder so he could peck so gently on my ear! Reminded me of the lorikets at the casino near Joburg that swarm you and want to eat the earwax out of your ears (a very weird feeling, let me tell you!). He hopped down, hung around some more and then hopped up on my shoulder again. I was thrilled, of course! Speaking of scarlet, Birds of Eden also have lots and lots of scarlet ibis, also quite beautiful. But a pinker scarlet than the lourie underwing. We also saw blue dikker, a very, very small buck. I can’t remember what is bigger, a dikker or a dikdik, also a small buck. I’ll get back to you on that. I got my first order of boboutie at the restaurant there — one of my favorite South African dishes.
Noekie, please tell Loret I wore a pair of my WONDERFUL pants she made for me and I felt SO TERRIFIC. I wore the circle ones. I’m going to try to figure out how to spell the African fabric that they are made of: phonetically it’s something like schway-schway. It might be spelled something like Tswai-tswai, but so far I haven’t asked anyone who knows how it is spelled. It’s a waxed cotton that loses its wax in the first washing unfortunately, though it does make it a far more flexible fabric than when you buy. But, oh, those amazing African patterns in shiny wax — so fantastic! First wash must be in cold salt water to set the color. Why they don’t do that when they make the fabric and before they wax it is beyond me, but there you are: they don’t. Daniel and Sandy, you would go nuts at the colors and the patterns! The store Loret took us to has shelves and shelves of the stuff, sorted by color: reds, oranges, blues, turquoises, greens, yellows, purples, pinks, browns, on and on, in regular patterns like polka dots and then the craziest patterns you can imagine. Some of them are like being on an acid trip in the ’60s! I wanted to buy out the store, of course. Loret and Helmien made me TWO pairs of bell bottom pants — I can’t wait to wear them to the capitol! Thank you, thank you, thank you to both of them.
So I guess that’s all the news I have. Hippiely yours, jm

First things first, though. In today’s news we learned that an ostrich’s eye weighs 60 grams; its brain weighs 40 grams. Some days, I can sympathize.
After a lovely breakfast at a coffeeshop — which had a beautiful green wall, Sandy, and we’ll send you pictures — we decided to go to Birdland/Monkeyland, which is north of Plett. Well, we turned onto that road and saw a sign for walking with elephants, so, of course, we turned in that direction. What a terrific time we had! By the time the tour started, there were three couples, counting us, and there were three elephants: Marula, the matriarch (though she was not the oldest), Jabu and Thandi. Marula and Jabu both had defective trunks (they had lost the “fingers” on the end of their trunks in the wild), which meant that we gave them treats on the inside of the outside of their trunks and they then put them in their mouths; Thandi’s trunk was OK, so we put her treats in her trunk, which she then blew into her mouth. But Thandi has no tusks, so the others help her out when tusking is necessary. Elephants are very good about helping each other out as needed. We got to walk hand in trunk into the forest and got to pet them and learn about them up close and personal. What a swell time it was! They made a video of everyone and the elephants — the videographer, a man, spent most of his time taking video of a beautiful young blonde woman. Of course! Alas, I don’t understand how I lost 35 pounds and STILL look as fat as I did before. What the hell is that shit????
For lunch we stopped at Moss and Maple farmstall, where we met a lovely young man who was our waiter. His name is Janoh and he will be a high school senior next year. I had a great drink made of passion fruit juice combined with lemonade. Yummy.
Nice drive back and much quicker than going, and we found where there is a grocery store for future reference. Like Marita, we’ve decided to try having our dinner at lunchtime, very Georgia-farm-folk for me, and eating less at night — gotta do something or I’ll have to lose that damn 35 pounds again when we get home! Last night we just had plates of sauteed veggies, though I did sort of ruin the hoped-for effect by having about three glasses of wine. Small glasses, but even so, not helpful for dieting purposes. Who the hell thought it was a good idea to make wine fattening?!?

Even so, I think I’ll go have a glass — I’d rather skip the damn veggies.

Elephantly yours, jm.

What a glorious day in Plettenburg Bay to see whales. And see them we did! Lots of them! All humpbacks, having so much fun — though there were a couple that the guide said were males fighting. What do we know???? I was up on top with the guide and saw a whale glide RIGHT BY THE BOAT and turn over — I was gobsmacked! We also saw lots and lots and lots of the 8 to 10 THOUSAND cape fur seals that live on the Plett penninsula. Funny, they sound like sheep, except the deeper growly barks of the males. Laird saw one guy climbing straight up the cliff.  When we got back to shore, to bring the boat back to shore, i.e., the beach, they come in sort of close and wait for the folks to move any beachgoers away from where they want to land, then go out aways and turn around then GUN IT until they hit the beach — talk about all our butts yelling OOOPH!  So our main reason for coming to Plett has been satisfied; next we’ll go to Birdland and Monkeyland and walk with elephants. For lunch we were looking forward to sushi and went to a sushi restaurant we had seen earlier. It was a disappointment, particularly in light of Laird’s fantastic tuna sashimi the other night in Mossel Bay. The only real fish they had was salmon, which is not my favorite by any means. And fake crab, which I like, but not as my only fishy sushi. Oh well. That’s the news for now.  Whale and seal pictures to come when we get back to Dana Bay.

We had a double date with Noekie and Johan last night; went to Gannet in Mossel Bay for dinner — one of our favorite restaurants there. During the day, you look out at the ocean, at night into the lovely dining rooms. Good food was had by all. For appetizers, Johan and I had snoek, pepperdaw and something springrolls that were quite delicious. Noekie had a mushroom in phyllo something that looked really good and Laird had very beautiful tuna sashimi. I had Inverroche amber gin — a double — with very little tonic water. They served it with strawberries and pink peppercorns, but peppercorns in a drink are just ANNOYING. They are not drink, so the urge is to spit them out. So I did, but discreetly, y’all, discreetly. Noekie joined me in the gin for dinner, but we both said, no peppercorns, please! She had hake, Johan had another fish that I can’t remember, Laird had Thai seafood curry and I had (surprise!) cauliflower and chickpea coconut curry after agonizing over more exotic dishes like kingklip en croute. Everyone loved their dishes and we had such fun talking and laughing the evening away. Yet another lovely bathroom, folks!  Drove by the ocean on the way home — high tide and gorgeous.  I reminded them on when Marita and I went to the beach in blackest night looking for whales and had to wait about an hour and half for the sun to come up.  Noekie learned an expression from Marita’s late husband, Koos:  “you get zero for brain cells or something like that.  That’s what I got for hunting whales!

We are off to Plettenburg Bay for about a week of adventure, courtesy of Noekie, where we are sure to see whales.  Alas, Marita is bedbound on orders of her doctor until at least Monday, so when she is well, we’ll come back and get her for what remains of the holiday.  In Plett, as well as whale watching, there is walking with Elephants, Monkeyland, Birdland (with the most beautiful Knysna louries and other fantastic birds frying sort of free in an enormous enclosure that is 150 feet high and about 4 acres of forest.  3,500 birds of 280 species.  Monkeyland is 450 primates, also enclosed in a huge forested area (brochure doesn’t say, but we’ll report back).  We’ve been to both; Birdland is my favorite.  There is also a wolf preserve!  Who knew there were wolves in Africa?!?  Though, all that area used to be deep, deep forest, so it’s not as unusual a though upon reflection.  But, still, it is a little disconcerting.  Anyway, we’re going there, too.  So time to pack — in a tiny backpack????  How will I do that?!?

You’ve read the “stories”, i.e., conspiracy theory, of people going somewhere and waking up without a kidney, etc. Well.  The other day, the front page story was two South African teachers, men, missing in Vietnam. Vietnam thinks they may have run afoul of organ traffickers! Apparently the country just busted several organ brokers for trafficking. There goes my desire to see the country!

In today’s paper: a column in the Cape Argus (same source for above) reports that the average German is said to have 10,000 separate items at home. Hmmmm. Laird and I must have multi, multimillions if that is so! I bet if we started counting, we’d run out of numbers! Laird opined that we probably BROUGHT 1,000 on our trip. Even though much of what I brought were presents and have mostly been given away already (still have presents to deliver to Cape Town), I’m pretty sure I won’t be coming home with fewer than I brought! One whole suitcase was filled with presents and I assume the same will be true on the way back.

That’s it for the news. for now.

Forgot to tell you, the ducks are English Whistling ducks. So let’s try this:

OK, I’ll try again, now that I have cussed and sulked for a few hours. Words cannot express how much I HATE this damn laptop!! I told you all about our very lovely day at Bottlierskop (bottle cap hill) game reserve. We got there for the 10:00 game drive, but Marita stayed in the lodge because she’s still recovering from her 7-week flu (her doc said 5-week, but I remember some of my friends and it’s more like 7). We saw gnus, including a golden gnu; impala; Cape Mountain and Burchell’s (now called Plains) zebra; rhinos; giraffes; elephants; lions; cape buffalo; eland; waterbuck, bontebok, two blue crane couples (they mate for life and is the national bird of SA). . . maybe that’s it. A beautiful day, but damn cold up on the mountains. We met a lovely couple from New Jersey and had fun talking to them. They said they would follow our blog, so I hope that’s true. She also said she’d buy my book, Cruisin’ Passion Boulevard, and I certainly hope she does that! It’s on Amazon (plug, plug). Our guide was fantastic — a great wealth of knowledge about the animals we were seeing and we learned quite a bit of new information even after all the game drives we’ve been on.
When we got back, we went up to the main lodge for lunch. What a beautiful place it is! I want to live there. And if I can’t, I want to have a bathroom like theirs. It is the BEST bathroom ever! You walk into an anteroom, with a sofa and chairs, a large shower room off to the left and the handwashing station ahead. The next left are the toilet rooms, men to the left, women to the right. After washing your hands, you take the terrycloth towels and then throw them into this antique thing that looks like a trough and looks like it was originally used for something to do with cooking or agriculture; lovely piece. Over the sinks, another one was turned upside down and copper pendant lights hang from it. Of course there is lovely soap and hand lotion. I love this bathroom! I made Marita come let me show it to her as soon as we got to the dining room.
So we started with drinks and I had a sex on the deck, which is vodka, peach shnapes (god, I can’t spell anything anymore!), tropical fruit punch and whatever else. Ohso yummy. Basically I’m just going to tell you about my lunch because mine was the most interesting. Laird had Italian food (really?!?) and Marita had curry. But I had springbok carpaccio (I gotta learn how to spell this if I’m going to keep having it) and it was mouthwateringly delicious. Then Chef’s Venison Platter, which was crocodile, ostrich, something, warthog and kudu. Crocodile tastes like alligator tastes like chicken. Ostrich, ehhh. OK, but nothing special. The thing I can’t remember was good, but the warthog and kudu were superb! You have to feel very sorry for yourself if you haven’t had it — well, I guess you vegetarians get to skip that feeling. It’s a blessing that warthog doesn’t taste like it looks! After one last trip to the women’s room, we were ready for the trip home. Marita and I walked down the walk to the car while Laird came by the stairs. He reported seeing a small buck, bigger than a dikdik, smaller than an impala. I rushed up the stairs to see and there he was, such a lovely little animal, with stripes down his sides. Marita said it sounded like a cape rebok so that’s what we’re saying we saw.
After writing all this much more entertainingly the first go-round and finishing my cussing and feeling sorry for myself and a lovely visit from Noekie, here I am at the end again. It’s night here, almost time for bed, so goodnight one and all. Oh, I forgot to say: zebra, particularly cape mt zebra because they are smaller, are called pajama donkeys. Everyone knows the Big Five, but today we learned about the Big Ugly Five: hyena, warthog, maribou stork, vulture and gnu. Personally, I would take out the birds and put in rhino and hippo. Anyway, that’s it for us. Oh. We tried to put in a picture of the baby giraffe, but then we lost stuff so I’m afraid to try. Think we’ll try a new entry for pics.

What a great party we went to last night. We went to our friends Carina (my miracle working physiotherapist), Stephen and Carlene’s house for dinner and there were lovely friends of theirs there as well as Laird, Marita and me. I love Afrikaans people — they are so willing to laugh and have a terrific time. And they all have such large, wonderful laughs — really engaging. We had an offal stew, a very traditional Afrikaans dish, chicken and borwors (sausages grilled perfectly) and LOTS of wine. Well, I don’t know about anyone else, but I had LOTS of wine! I was actually surprised that I was able to go to sleep after so much wine. I don’t know whether it is age or altitude, but I have had a couple of nights drinking lots of wine without any ill effects — and I didn’t make anymore of an ass of myself than normal, so that’s always good. Or at least I think not. Could be wrong of course because. . . did I mention I had LOTS of wine? Anyway, the dinner was scrumptious and the company divine. Speaking of wine, SANDY, pay attention: August 31 is International Cabernet Sauvignon Day, so all you wino friends, stock up. I told most of my drinking friends, but I remember you said you don’t look at your email, Sandy, so I’m passing on the message to you, and to anyone else I forgot to inform of this important date. GET PREPARED NOW — there might be a run of cab at the store and you won’t want to miss out celebrating this best of all possible “days”.
We’ve closed out the weekend and tomorrow we are off to Stillbaai (unless a cold front comes in, which looks like it might be) to feed and pet the eels. Oh, how soft they are! You won’t believe it. They eat chicken livers. Just think how exotic chicken livers must be to eels. I wonder what they think they are eating — do you suppose that every unknown taste tastes like chicken (it’s what people always say about things like snake and alligator and wild meat — I have absolutely no idea what eels say about exotic tastes), even chicken livers, whether you know the concept of “chicken” or not? It’s a curious world, isn’t it? On that note, I’m going to end, finish my Amarula (god I love this stuff~!) and get ready for bed. Good night, friends.

Woke up to rain. Of course, we’re all happy when it rains, wherever we are. Well, unless we’re in the US midwest or Durban, South Africa. Durban had terrible flooding this week, but here in Danabaai, I think people are quite happy with this rainy Saturday. Marita is quite stir crazy by now — she’s a very energetic woman and having to lie around sick is getting to her — so yesterday, we piled in her little Ford Figo and went off to Jakkalsvlei (Jackel’s marsh) winery near Herbertsdale. We love their wine and we like being there as well. Really lovely place, but, alas, their really good food is done on weekends and weekdays it’s mostly pizza and burgers. Though Laird and I had wine pairings, his was different kinds of prawns and I tried dry meat, thinking I would get more red wine. Nope. Whites outnumbered the reds and as y’all know, I don’t appreciate white wine. But I soldiered on and drank them. The meats were bokkom (dried fish, not quite as hard as bonito, but it did take some energetic chewing), biltong, cracklin’, bacon and something else I don’t remember. I was surprised at how well a slightly sweet white went with the quite salty bokkom, but I still don’t like it. The wine, not the fish. Laird’s shrimps were all fried — he let me have most of the one made with beetroot, which I quite liked. Have to figure out how one gets beetroot in powdered form to make a fry coating. If I find it, I’ll bring it home and we can have a shrimp fry. I also had ostrich carpacchio (spelling?) and brie with the most wonderful fresh-baked bread. I drank my pairings, then had a glass of their very tasty cab, so I was quite done in by the end. It was our turn to cook dinner so we went to get ingredients for lemon chicken with garlic and olives — our first purchase in SA was a One Pot — but poor Noekie, who had been in Port Elizabeth all week had come home very late on Thursday night and had to go to work on Fri AND work late so dinner was canceled. Perhaps Sunday. Tonight we go to our friends Carina and Stephen’s for dinner. She is my miracle worker physiotherapist who did wonders for me when I was in so much back and (unknown to me) hip pain. They have a dairy farm, but I don’t think I’ll be very interested in petting calves in the rain tonight! Otherwise I love that, and having them suck on my fingers — they’re so very, very cute! Maybe off to TekkieTown to get some shoes that I can wear socks with. It’s quite cold. Whether it’s day or night where you are, have a pleasant time!

Well, nothing to write home about yet. We are very happy to be here, but poor Marita has teh vile 7 week flu and is not in the mood to play (who can blame her?!?) and Noekie is off to Port Elizabeth working herself into the ground. So we’re on our own. Even sick, Marita can’t help bring amazing and she made the most delicious fish casserole for lunch yesterday and is making lamb for today. It looks like another cold front came in, not terribly cold, but very, very gray. Yesterday, though, the sea looked so beautiful and blue, big waves. Thanks, Chris, for the picture of Sia and her last first day at Atalaya. More leater when we escape jet lag — this week is what happens when one for gets to take No Jet Lag throughout one’s journey!

Well, that was brutal! From the time we woke up on Monday morning until late Thursday afternoon, we had almost no sleep, so you can imagine how ecstatic we were to have the journey part over with.. We got almost no sleep on Monday night before the trip even started and it went downhill from there. Laird can sleep on planes; I cannot. I finally got an hour or so in OR Tambo, waiting for our flight to Dana Bay. Oh, how glorious it was to get off the plane in George, knowing we were done with flying for months! So very, very happy to once again get to hug Marita — and, oh, the first sight of the Indian ocean on the way to Dana Bay was magnificent! The weather is cool, but the flat is cold because for some weird reason many houses and flats in Dan a Bay don’t have heat or air conditioning — even though it gets quite hot and quite cold here. Makes no sense, but that’s the way it is. We have a couple of heaters, but I’m very happy that I brought a couple of heating pads as presents (another mystery is why South Africa doesn’t have heating pads, though they do have electric blankets). A nap until dinnertime then we; went over to Noekie and Johan’s house for dinner — Marita made oxtail and samp (no known analogue in US) for us and it was DELICIOUS. A couple glasses of wine and we went straight to bed when we got home and slept until about 3:00 the next afternoon — ahhhh, bliss! Today, we planned to go to Mossel Bay for the 2nd annual Soul Day festival, but when we got there, I couldn’t stand the thought of being in a crowd of people so we went off for late breakfast instead, then went to a couple of stores to get some life supplies and now I ready for a nap again. At least we now have shampoo and conditioner and will get a hairbrush from Noekie so Laird might be able to brush his hair in minutes instead of trying to comb unconditioned hair. But what the hell was I thinking — I didn’t get any wine. Marita had Inverroche gin waiting for me, which I haven’t had a drink of yet — might take it over to Noekie’s tonight for before-dinner cocktails. Still, I need to have some bottles of wine here. So I’m off to the liquor store across the street to get some and a bottle of rum for Marita to have hot toddy for her cold — guaranteed to fix her right up! After that, dream time. Talk to y’all later.