On Tuesday, we went to Grot Constancia, the oldest winery in South Africa. Oh, the museum building is the most beautiful Cape Dutch I’ve seen — even better than what I think that house in Wilderness might look like (and I LOVE that house!) So much yellowwood, which mostly doesn’t exist anymore, or at least not in any quantity, certainly not commercial quantity — though we did buy a small (as it’s very young) yellowwood tree for our friends — though it will take a couple of hundred years for it to get impressive. Anyway, what a lovely, lovely house, built sometime in the 1650s, I think. Part of it, mostly the roof and the furniture burned up in 1925. The whole winery belongs to the government and someone leases the vineyard and wine production facilities. We went on the winemaking tour and then had the wine tasting — VERY good wine! If you ever see it, buy it (though I don’t think it is exported to the US). That building has a beautiful art collection. Our lunch was Cape Malay, an assortment of curries, in another impressively wonderful building. While we waited for our taxi driver to come get us (a very nice man from Congo by the name of Bled — all three of our taxi drivers in Cape Town were from Congo), we thought we would freeze — the day turned bitterly cold and we were dressed more for summer. Yes, yes, we know the CT weather changes rapidly, but we underestimated the time it would take Bled to get to us. While waiting, Marita saw a man with a gun and asked what he was doing. He said he was off to shoot baboons. We were horrified. He came back relatively soon after and I looked at his weapon; it didn’t look like any gun I had ever seen so I asked him about it. It is a paintball gun that they use to scare the baboons away, not kill them. We immediately felt much better! The critters apparently eat the new leaves emerging on the grape vines, which significantly cuts down on the grape crop.
On Wednesday, our holiday club resort provided a lovely morning tea for the guests and we met several very interesting people. One woman, maybe in her late 70s, told me about her father, who was something of a Renaissance man, into astronomy, engineering and several other things. He and she have minor planets named after themselves — how cool is that?!? She grew up in Cape Town and lives in Joburg, which she hates. She was showing an English friend around South Africa. I don’t know, but I bet she’s a terror on the roads!
We moved over to City Lodge next to a big casino preparatory to going off on our Namaqualand flower tour tomorrow — it rained this morning and has been cold and dismal all day, so really hope the sun comes out tomorrow (hey, that should be a song!) Speaking of that, we went to our friend Jannie’s school last night (Wednesday) for a most terrific student and teacher concert. The public school’s name is Gene Louw elementary. Concert was lip synced, but the dancing was AMAZING. Cast of hundreds, great costumes, and incredible choreography that required everyone to be doing the same thing at the same time. Selections from several musicals, including Cats, Chicago, Annie, the Greatest Showman, Grease and Mama Mia among others that I have forgotten. The students were 4th through 7th graders and they were fantastic — always spot-on with the very complicated choreography. Very impressive. Even the teachers were pretty good! We saw the THIRD performance of the day, and after at least one other day, maybe two, and their energy was high the entire time — at least two full hours, no intermission.
Today started cold and rainy, so we hung out at the hotel until 11:30. Our driving goal was to visit the Franschhoek Motor Museum. We were there a couple of years ago and were gobsmacked by the quantity and quality of the vehicles. They keep them in running condition (except for one race car that had to have its entire motor replaced before each race). Alas, we spent most of the day driving the R102 — stop and go and robots (the SA word for traffic signals), then trying to find the Russian Tea Room for lunch and discovering that the restaurant was closed for a private function having something to do with the Cape Town International Airport. After a delightful lunch of pizza (I jest re: the “delightful” part) at Belleville winery that ended at 4:00 pm, we gave up the idea of the Rupert Museum (aka FMM) and kept wandering around the roads near Stellenbosch until we finally hit the N1 highway and managed to make it back in one piece to the hotel. (Sidenote; our server at Belleville was named Hetso, which is Shona for “Unique”.
We’ll be happy to relinquish the driving for the next three days on our tour — driving (or even riding) in Cape Town is one of the scarier things to do in one’s lifetime! Laird astounds me with his driving, along with his uncanny ability to figure out where and how to go. The taxi drivers wear headbands with Kamikaze Japanese pictograph symbols that express their desire to die in a high speed car crash. (Just kidding about the headband — the desire, probably true.)
Fingers crossed for beautiful weather; otherwise, the daisies won’t open, which would be a total bummer! Forecast is for cloudy Friday and Saturday, but sunny on Sunday. We get back Monday at 6:00 pm (or 18:00 in local parlance.) Here’s hoping the forecast is overly pessimistic! Hopefully yours, jm & lg
lairdandjonelle 
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