lairdandjonelle

Let’s see.  Yesterday we went in the afternoon with our wonderful guide, Yoriko, to a sake brewery.  First she took us to lunch at a place near where she lives for okonomi yaki — an oh-so-delicious pancake stuffed with cabbage, with a great dark, thick sauce on it.  YUMMM!  The Gekkeikan sake brewery was interesting, but, frankly, I would rather have gone back to Arashiyama.  Though we would have missed that pancake, which would have been a shame. I do have to admit, I liked the sake we sampled much better than I thought; it was much better than what I’ve had in US.  Gekkeikan was started in 1637.  We were in Fushimi, the southern ward of Kyoto City.  By then, my cumulative walking/standing had reached beyond the OUCH! stage and I was in a world of hurt by the time we started back to the train.  When we got to Kyoto station, the big transportation hub, I was ready to just lie down on the concrete floor!  But, we were on the search for a soba knife and a miso muddler so Yoriko took us to the big department store.  By big, I mean 7 floors!  Oh, they had such beautiful clothes, kitchen wares, linens, everything.  The store is owned by the Japanese railroad — surely a tidy profit center for them.  Alas, no soba knives.  We took a taxi back to the hotel and I collapsed on my bed.  Later, we went out searching for a near-enough restaurant and walked several blocks on the big main street just up from our hotel.  Didn’t see anything, so I said let’s just go down our street because I knew there were restaurants there.  Laird was skeptical.  But we found a little hole in the wall and had a nice meal — not a great one, but nice.  And the waitress could not have been nicer.  I had cold soba and tempura; Laird had a hot pot.  The cook was definitely NOT in the same league as the chef for our first dinner — his tempura was like something from heaven.  Last night’s, not so much.  Back to hotel, early bed so we could get up this morning and go to. . .

Arashiyama!  Back to the kimono forest (god, I want it in my yard!) and land of many temples and shrines.  Do you know the difference between the two?  Shrines are Shinto and temples are Buddhist.  We went to tenryu-ji, a zen temple that is a huge place, with many buildings that we don’t know what they are.  And two beautiful statues of Kwan Yin, one where she’s surrounded by clouds.  We did not see Buddha.  The buildings have all burned to the ground at least 8 times in their very long history, but the garden and pond look very much the same as they did when they were made in the 1300s.  In the temple, of course, one must take one’s shoes off, so in the women’s restroom (I don’t know about the men’s), there are slippers at the door of each toilet stall.  You slip them on, take one step, turn around and squat; then up, turn around to flush, take one step, turn around and leave them at the door.  But what a sweet gesture.  Sushi for lunch.  Back to town.

Our last cooking class was Izakaya (bar food) and we made dashi (of course!); hojicha pudding, a dessert; soaked grilled eggplant; shiso and chicken gyoza;  yakitori; burdock and carrot salad; and somen noodles with chicken and miso sauce.  Everything was great — the nice thing about cooking class is that they make it so you can’t fail.  Anyone expecting Japanese meal from us might not have the same experience.

Tomorrow we have to get up early to catch the bullet train to Tokyo.  There is so much we did not get to see, we really need at least another week here.  I’m sad to leave all the wonderful women we have met: our coordinator, Heromi; our guide, Yoriko and our five cooking instructors at the two Cooking Sun studios.  Plus the beautiful woman at the dashi workshop and the ones at the tea place in Uji, and the one man, who took us to the tea plantation.  They all made this trip amazing and we are so glad we got the opportunity to meet them.

Here, they say ita wakarimasu = a blessing for good food and good company.  We had both, in spades.

On to Tokyo.  I hope we can get our suitcases closed.  I knew we should have taken the big one.

Hello all you lovely readers, if you exist.  Since no one has commented or emailed, we have no idea if anyone is reading this blog — surely you, our friends, are hanging on every word????

Yesterday started with soba noodle cooking class.  It’s HARD.  Laird was the star, since he’s a bread maker.  I think the only time I use flour is to make gravy or thicken stew.  {L note: we found out from Yoriko — on the Uji trip — that 100% buckwheat flour noodles are really hard to do. Our teacher yesterday let us use a 30% bread flour/70% buckwheat mix. It was very similar to activating the gluten by kneading for bread dough. But no yeast.} It was great fun, though, to try to get the ball of soba dough to be really, really smooth and then to roll it out to the thinnest possible square.  Learned a cool trick of folding edge of dough over the rolling pin and then pulling the dough.  After we finally got the dough as thin as thin is, like an i thin, we folded over and began cutting.  Wow, what a major knife we had to cut with!  We used a guide, but the trick is to cut straight down, then tilt the knife to move the guide back just the right amount to ensure all the noodles look the same.  Boy, did I fail that part!  I kept having to reset my guide, I think for each noodle.  I felt a little better that Laird’s weren’t so much better than mine.  {L again: the soba knife is key. We will try to buy one or two if we can find a store. It’s ground flat on one side and the taper on the other. In my mind, I can see a brace on the end of the knife so you can quickly replicate the angle. Once an engineer, always an engineer, I guess. } We then unfolded them and what had been short noodles became long noodles.  For lunch we had our cold soba noodles and tempura onion/carrot/parsley.  It was yummy, but I believe I prefer commercial noodles to my homemade ones.  Then we went to the great market, whose name we can’t remember and can’t find the right map to tell you.  Turns out, the taxi driver kept that map.  Laird says call it Nishkei until we find out otherwise.  Daniel, do you know?  It’s like the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul, only newer and cleaner.  It has everything you could possibly want, except perhaps a present for Theo who we know will not wear a yukata or eat strange food.  Still searching for you, my dear one.

We came back to the hotel and decided pretty late in the afternoon to go to Arashiyama.  Oh, my, it is what one thinks of Japan:  on the river, backdrop of mountains, many, many temples and bamboo forests.  And thousands of tourists.  We took a rickshaw ride and our guide, Ryo, was marvelous — very cute and VERY fit.  He spoke pretty good English, lived in Italy for several years, had been a professional skier.  What a beautiful, beautiful place Arashiyama is!  Beautiful traditional houses — and land, space, sky.  The first real scenery we’ve seen in a wide sky — like all big cities, Kyoto’s sky is hemmed in by buildings; Osaka’s by container ship gantries and buildings.  Also so lovely in amongst the bamboo, oxygen pouring into us.  We wanted to go to the Tenryuji temple, but there was not enough time, alas.  I wish we could skip the sake tour and go there this afternoon.  Town is famous for tofu because the water, the air are so pure.  Rightfully so, for dinner we had tofu and more tofu and teoke yuba.  OMG, it was so good!  I don’t mind tofu, but I’ve never raved about it before.  I cannot tell you how wonderful it was — and yuba, the skin skimmed off when making tofu, is amazingly good.  Not a fan so much of the custard with a piece of fish at the bottom.  Or the “dessert”, some weird gelatinous thing that feels like uni (sea urchin) in the mouth, or like tongue, only softer.  These are not textures I like.  That’s a yuck for me.  Laird liked it, thought it was the best thing on his tray.

There was an amazing, soul-thrilling exhibit in the train station called the Kimono Forest.  It was hundreds of light tubes scattered around the station with what might have been papers inside — all like kimono fabrics.  Sia, you would have been SO HAPPY to see it!  Talk about color and pattern!  Just walking among them made me want to stay there all night.  I wished for a sleeping bag and the absence of tourists.

We finally got a taxi for the ride back to hotel.  Some of them have automatic door openers on the back doors but the driver was a bit too ready to go and pushed the button too soon and tried to shut the door on my ankle.  When we got back to the hotel, it was quite swollen.  Luckily it went down overnight, but, boy, is my body over walking and standing and sitting.  I may or may not get to the sake factory today — it takes an hour to get there and I don’t even like sake.  Time to take some drugs.

Yesterday we went to cooking class with two Australians, one Austrian and one Swiss and had a great time making the little dishes for bento boxes.  We learned how to make tomago, rolled egg (gotta get the pan!); gomaae, a Japanese spinach dish; maki sushi with the rolled egg, processed crab, kombo and maybe something else; teriyaki chicken and tempura.  They made the miso soup.  We made dashi and I will have to clarify what I said yesterday about dashi when we have our Welcome Us Back dinner.  We also learned some terrific tricks of the cooking trade to make everything turn out much better — like flouring your tempura ingredients and letting them sit before dipping in tempura batter and frying.  And we learned that “teri” in Japanese means shiny.  And other things.  It was all MUCHO DELICIOUS!  We felt very pleased and accomplished by the end of it.  I loved all their dishes and cooking chopsticks and they had the cutest little soy sauce containers that you pressed on the top for each bit of soy sauce — much easier to control than using regular container.  Oh, yeah, and you put a few drops of soy sauce on the spinach and then massage it before putting it into the sesame dressing.

I was hoping to get one of those myself, a massage, when we got back to the hotel, but they only come at night.  We walked to cooking class and overshot our location by a couple of blocks and then stood most of the class time, so I was ready for someone to help me out.  We waited until ofuro (bath) opened at whatever time, Laird worked on some data project he’s involved in and I read and napped.  He went first to reconnoiter and I went afterwards.  The baths at the hotel are sex-separated.  Because we were going early, Laird’s side was empty for him and there was only one other woman when I went.  It was lovely and relaxing, but I think I prefer Turkish bath.  I love that wonderful large heated stone circle to lie on — though to be loofa’d by a Turkish bath attendant is a skin peeling experience, believe you me!  Afterwards, I tried the massage chairs they had in the reception area but it was all in Japanese and I finally had to give up because when the back massager worked it was way too hard.  Apparently the down arrow didn’t mean NOT SO HARD.  But I loved having calves and shoulders squeezed.  It wasn’t until the end that I discovered the the hand holes, so I didn’t get them squeezed, or whatever would go on in there.

We walked around for awhile and found an Indian-Nepalese-Kashmiri restaurant.  All the independent restaurants appear to be very small.  Must be hard to make a living with so few tables.  The food was good and we happily did not overeat.  Our time there was accompanied by a silent TV showing flirty amorous dancing with lots of pops and locks and pelvic thrusts while looking soulfully at each other.  Oh, god, I’m old!

Today is soba cooking class.  Hmmmm.  Me.  Cutting soba noodles.  Well, maybe.  Hope they have a cheater grid or my soba will be very ugly.  I could not cut a straight line to save my soul.

Yesterday was a full one to say the least.  We took buses, trains and feets to go see a tea “plantation” (not like you saw in Elephant Walk, more like an in-town big garden) and its matcha factory in Uji, the 2nd biggest tea-growing region in Japan.  We had a lovely tea ceremony.  Everything is Matcha in Uji!  I was so proud of myself because I recognized that the tea bushes in some rows were different than others.  They were hybridized from original.  They had one tea bush that was at least 300 years old, might be 600 years old.  While walking down by the river (beautiful place, too bad we aren’t here in cherry blossom time), there was an old, old weeping cherry — probably knew that tea bush when they were both young.  What a labor intensive and skill-based business tea is!  From leaf pickers to stem pickers to grinders — though now they have machinery to do the grinding, we got to try our hand at grinding by hand.  HARD WORK.  Our hosts have won national awards for their tea.   After lunch at a little place that makes its soba noodles by hand using 100% soba flour, not like most soba that has about 20% wheat flour to make it easier to work with,  They also hand cut the soba noodles and they all look the same, and like factory cut ones.  I can’t imagine that skill at all — since I can only cut big chunks of anything.  I think we came back to Kyoto, but neither of us is sure of that, and I think we were in Inari (pronounced in-a-ri, not E-na-ri as I have always said) area, but, really, how would a roundeyes know???.  Anyway, we went to a dashi workshop.  Now, we talk about another labor-, time- and skill-intensive business.  Dashi is broth made of bonito flakes and kombu.  We learned how to make bonito flakes and you would not believe how hard bonito becomes after boiling, drying and infecting with mold (like blue cheese mold, she said).  The piece we were given to try our hands at making flakes was literally rock hard.  You would never identify it as fish or food.  And it is hard to flake, too.  Yet another skill that we don’t have down.  Here’s what we learned:  you don’t boil dashi.  You make it at 60 degrees C.  First, you must steep the kombu (seaweed) for at least two hours, or even overnight if you want.  When ready, you bring the kombu water up to just under a boil and add the bonito shavings and turn off the burner.  Take out the flakes, strain the remainder and you have dashi.  Add some miso paste (Daniel, she did not have a miso muddler, she used a fine strainer and a kitchen utensil whose name I cannot remember at this moment, it has rubber tip (I’m not sure hers was rubber) on a handle — what the hell is its name?!? — to melt the miso) and there you are:  miso soup.  Miso soup the way it is supposed to be, not miso soup made with water, but with dashi.  Both Yoriko, our guide, and the woman teaching us (we didn’t get her name) were scurrilous about young people who make miso soup with water.  Bah!, they said, lazy people!  This workshop makes an instant dashi that while not as rich and deep as real dashi, still is way more flavorful than water.  Daniel, we got several sheets about kombu, bonito, etc, etc, and it appears we left them there.  We will have to see if we can get them back somehow so you can see.

Our next jaunt was to Fushimi Inari-Taisha monument — a shrine dedicated to rice and sake.  The shrine goes all the way up a mountain with the walk filled with torii, kind of memorial “gates”.  They were built to commemorate donations to the shrine, with the name of the donor (probably nowadays most likely companies rather than individuals).  Getting there, we walked a long street filled to the gills with food vendors and tourist shops.  All over there were young women and men dressed in traditional kimono and whatever name of men’s outfit is (Yukata).  They rent them!  There were several businesses vying for customers to come rent their outfits.  For women, such rental comes with a hairdo, too, that includes hair decorations.  Beautiful colors and patterns, but Yoriko said they were not good quality.  I guess if you’re only renting it, you don’t care that much about quality.

Another train, another bus and we were back at our hotel, dead-dog tired!  We were going to take ofuro (bath) at hotel, but we couldn’t make ourselves move that much.  Perhaps tonight.  Today is cooking class and it is almost time.  We have to walk to the cooking school, so will have to take extra time to ensure we find it.

OK, we started to doubt we would ever get here. Here’s Laird’s email on the subject:

The trip to Japan was, on the whole, brutal. Our initial flight out of ABQ was delayed almost two hours by weather in Dallas. We were transferred to another American flight to LAX, where we stayed in the airport for about 6 hours waiting for the flight to Honolulu. We sat on that flight at the ramp for almost two hours, until the thunder showers had passed. So we didn’t get into Honolulu to the hotel until 1:00 am local time (about five hours behind Santa Fe.) We had to be at the airport by 8:15 am. The Scoot Airlines flight to Osaka was uneventful, but long – about 8+ hours in the air. It took a little time to figure out how to get to the hotel, and eventually decided to take a taxi. The cost of the taxi was 1 ½ times the cost of the night in the hotel. I did a very poor job of selecting a hotel near the airport. Jonelle’s back is hurting a lot, but we wandered out into Osaka last evening and found an udon shop, where we had a light dinner. Scoot is a “non-frills” airline – noticeably cheaper for the Honolulu to Osaka flight, but we paid for everything else, including checked luggage, water, food. We are supposed to be picked up by the program at 12:00 or 1:00 to be driven to the hotel in Kyoto. Last night, our clocks were totally unset, and we did not sleep well.

Now me: by the time we got to Osaka we’d been awake since 6:30 a.m. on Thursday the 12th. We got to Osaka on Sunday, crossing the dateline. Turns out, we’re way to tiredly stupid to tell how long it was other than A LOT of hours. After “dinner”, we went to bed. Well, I did. After taking one or two of every sleep aid I brought with me (that would be about 6 or 8 packages of assorted aids), I finally went to sleep. In the middle of the night, Laird gets up, tells me he needs me to hold the door open because he has to go get the car. I’m going: what the hell are you talking about?!? OK, no, I didn’t do that because he was freaking me out. He kept mumbling and I kept saying, Laird, we are in Japan. We do not have a car. Are you dreaming? Are you awake? He shushed me, but finally, having found his pants, sat back down on the bed and saying he had to go find Molly. I told him again we were in Japan, didn’t have a car and Molly was at home. Finally, he said. Oh, I guess I don’t have to go get her and fell back into bed asleep. Whew! Sometime also in the middle of the night I had the most wonderful dream about Hilary Clinton — it was so real, I am now sure that I have, in fact, met her. We had a long, long talk and she was just so friendly and present with me. She started out with a puppy, but I don’t know what happened to it during the time we were talking. As we were having a great time, Laird and a friend, I can’t recall who, came in and started building some weird ladder thing that they used to climb up to the top windows, way far up on a very high wall. They just stood there looking down on us. Laird does not remember meeting Hilary, though I introduced them.

Now, we have had a wonderful Japanese breakfast buffet and are waiting around for our ride. I think I have done permanent damage to my right butt cheek after being on planes and in airports for the hours and hours it took to get here. Every time I try to move it screams. Turns out, butt cheek screams are REALLY, REALLY LOUD.

From what Laird said, he might not have liked Scoot airlines as much as I did. Everyone we dealt with, from check-in through cabin crew were really friendly, nice and wanted to be helpful. We’re pretty low-maintenance travelers, don’t ask for much, but I liked that they would bring you anything you wanted, even if we did have to pay for it. I recommend traveling on Scoot. I was also relieved to know that when we got to Honolulu, our shuttle driver knew Scoot, that it was actually an airline (used to be Tiger airlines) and not some joke played on us by Travelocity.

One thing I love about Japan: they don’t know about tipping. Another thing: the toto toilets.

Can’t wait to get to Kyoto, get unpacked and start our real adventure. Our room here in Osaka is VERY SMALL. I have the fear that so is our room in Kyoto. Tokyo may be even smaller. It instantly reminded us of our room in London after coming from Laird’s year in Ekaterinburg and my month there. We had to walk on our luggage to get to the bathroom. Really.

So more later. Love from the Far East, jm and lg

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

Uncritically, Marita and I listened to Noekie tell us that if we wanted to see whales we had to get up early in the morning and we could see them playing in the surf. So, next morning, we got up at O-dark:30 and sped to the beach in Mossel Bay. We got there, parked in front of the ocean and then it dawned on us: it was too damn dark to see anything! All the whales in the southern hemisphere could have been in Mossel Bay and we wouldn’t have seen them! What could we do — we just looked at each other, said, “Bloomin’ hell!” and burst out laughing. We sat staring at the ocean in the dark. Occasionally, Marita would get out of the car and look through binoculars. I think she was looking for the sun. After awhile, a long while in the freezing cold, we got out of the car and walked down to another parking lot to see if they might be there. It wasn’t as if we could see any better, but it was something to do. So we sat on the wall and stared some more at the ocean. The longest sunrise in the history of sunrises was that morning. We got there at 5:45 and it must have been at least 7:30 before we could see ANYTHING more than a foot in front of our faces. In the freezing cold, remember? Sitting on cold stone. A couple of cars drove up, a couple from India walked near us, looking as intently as we out to sea, and then those most hateful of people, early morning joggers, went back and forth in front of us. Them we could see. But no whales. After waiting in the dark for whales, and the cold, don’t forget, they didn’t show up. Marita went over to talk to a man in one of the cars; he and his wife live there and they come to the beach every morning. He reads his kindle while she walks the dog. He said he saw whales a week ago. Later, much, much later, we went to lunch at a restaurant on the beach and Marita tried to bribe them to call her when they saw whales. “Just yesterday,” our waitress said, “about 1:00 in the afternoon, we saw them just out there, blowing and breaching. It was wonderful!” I seriously considered not tipping her. She took Marita’s phone number and she and the owners swore they would call us. We haven’t gotten the call.

Yea, I’m finally back on line! I had to go buy a new computer because Laird’s got crosswise with windows 10 and stopped wanting to work so he took it back to US. I’m now on my own in Computer Land (eeekkkk!) WITH windows 10. I’ve learned some Afrikaans swear words, but don’t know how to spell them, alas — I could use them now!

What a fantastic time we had in the Kruger! I finally saw a leopard in the wild! It was amazing. Astounding. Breathtaking. So now I’ve seen all the Big 5 for real (they are elephant, lion, leopard, rhino and cape buffalo). Took long enough, years. We saw lots of impala, of course. We almost stopped even noticing them aloud. Elephants! Giraffes! Cape Buffalo! FIVE rhinos (though mostly the behinds of five rhinos, as they ran away from us)! Oh, and god, tragically, saw a poached rhino, just from the day before; Olaf was one of the first to find him. Just there, right beside the road, shot and butchered for its horns. Made me cry. Our only lion sighting was of two lions waiting in the bush for that rhino to rot a bit so they could get through the tough hide — they were staking it out so the hyennas and buzzards wouldn’t try to usurp them. On the way out of the park on our last day, we saw another rhino, but very far away. Good! And the best sight of all was a Mama elephant getting ready to attack a car. It got between her and her baby and was she PISSED! Her ears were flapping as she stamped her feet up and down in front of/side of the car, then she began trumpeting. That means, “you’re in big big trouble now, Buster!”. She kept getting closer, then back, then forward. Finally, she started to turn away and the car took its escape, but then she started to chase it! She gave up as it at last sped off, but she was still so cranked (and rightfully so) that she trumpeted at the long line of cars, us included, leaving the area.

On our first trip to the park, just past Orpen gate where we entered, we saw three ground hornbills in a dead tree, a successive line. Calling. We, of course, thought they were singing to us, but at the end of the day, we saw four hornbills nearby and assumed the first three were calling to the fourth. A rare and beautiful sight, and sound.

We, Laird, Marita and I, stayed at N’sele Lodge for two nights — how wonderful it was to see our friends Olaf and Stephanie again and be back there, oh the food was divine, all so lovely — and had a daylong drive in the park with Olaf who had lots of game lore to share and many, many BAD jokes to tell! You know the ones, where you can’t help but laugh just at their awfulness. If you’re ever coming to the Kruger, I can’t praise them enough — definitely stay with them!

Then we went to meet Marita’s sister Sonya and brother-in-law Keith for a night at Swindini, outside the park, but then a drive through the park again on the way to their home in Barberton — that’s when we saw the elephant cussing out the car. They like to laugh as much as Marita so our stay there was fantastic. I missed out on the Geology Tour (Barberton is a gold mining town and famous for its other rocks and strata) because I was worn out and slept very late. We went for a braai at their daughter Suzette’s house — that was delicious and fun. ) We had potjiekos (stew in a three-legged pot; yummy, of course). I believe that all the Afrikaans people I’ve met over the years simply LOVE to laugh — they really are a jolly people! Maybe it’s from eating all that lekker food they make.

Laird is gone and I miss him terribly, we all do. But Marita has moved in with me and we have as our task to do a thorough inventory on all the flats where we’re staying. Four of them. We have lots of Laird’s photos put on canvas — boy, do they look so wonderful! The flat we’re staying in I’ve named the Big Five, because all of them are represented in pictures by Laird. Flat 2 is Flora and Fauna until I can think of a catchier title. Then there is the Penguin Suite and maybe Old South Africa, because it has antiques and old pictures, some of which I bought at the nursery down the street. We’ve actually only gotten one done so far, so we’re going to have to buckle down one of these days. We’re still planning our gin tasting party and Marita has found someone else to invite. She met the Scotsman who is a leather worker/cobbler in our little “shopping center” — he turned out to be a world traveler, with an Afrikaans wife and an 11 year old son. The son and our young friend Carlene, my miracle worker Corinna’s daughter, can taste juices with Matty and laugh at us adults (we have decided that this party will have to include some real food, like mutton curry pies, not just cheeses and crackers or everyone will go home pie-eyed (or is that pi-eyed????)). It’s just as well to invite more folks — we have five bottles of gin and one of rum, not to mention many bottles of wine, to get drunk before I leave. We might have to have gin-tasting at least twice a week and invite all of Dana Bay! Meanwhile, we keep drinking the huge bottle of Amarula we have. So lekker!

So that’s it from cloudy morning but no real rain and we’re still looking for whales and haven’t found them with sunny afternoons (that’s all hyphenated, which is a pain to put in after you’ve typed) — though today was pretty chilly and my afternoon nap didn’t happen because my room was too cold. Did I tell y’all that they build houses in South Africa without heat or air conditioning? What the hell, man?!? It’s HOT and its cold here! Don’t get smug, Sandy, thinking you made the right decision not to come to SA — it was LOVELY until just a couple of days ago. Marita brought her big gas heater she had to buy when she lived in Bulwer (in the Drakensburg mountains, also in a house not built with heat and air con — I understand the no air con, but, really, no heat?????)

To see the whales, apparently we have to be on the Mossel Bay point at like 5:30 in the damn cold morning. I just tell Marita, who wakes up at 4:30 every morning, that I’ll get up whenever she wakes me up. I do so want to see whales before I leave! They come and play in the surf around dawn/sunrise, then go back to deep ocean.

Laird, please feel free to go in and add everything I left out. Nothing much to add. Here at home, its been 95 degrees F every day (35 degrees C). Molly is pretty stressed. So I’d best get the bills paid and finish the installation of the mini-splits.

Keep on truckin’ — your SA correspondent

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

Bummer, the cruise is almost over. Today in Cologne with the most fantastic cathedral I’ve ever seen! Amazing! Sorry for all my friends, but I’ve bought almost nothing — a little something for Theodore and Sia and three books about the cathedral and that’s about it. I don’t see anything changing in Amsterdam.

Tonight is the gala goodbye dinner, so I got my hair cut. And creamed and curled, teased, bunched and sprayed. I look pretty cool!

Tomorrow we’re in Amsterdam, have a canal tour, a windmill village tour and Amsterdam by Night tour, including the red light district — who doesn’t do that??? Next day off the boat. We’re all hoping getting to our hotel will be a hell of a lot easier than getting to the ship at start! I leave Monday with a really stupid schedule: back to Zurich for overnight, fly to Frankfurt, Atlanta, Denver and ABQ. We’ve had a great time cruising down (up) the river — I’ve loved being with Noekie and I love her friends — a great vacation, except for that flight home, or rather those five flights home.

Daniel, I’ll try to remember to tell you what dinner is tonight. I got your email. Others had trouble commenting, I don’t know why.

Have a Gala evening!

This is especially for Daniel, it’s what we ate at German Bistro night. So, let’s start — and we had ALL of them:
1. roast beef on tartar sauce and arugula leaves; wrap of smoked salmon, cream cheese and mustard-dill sauce; and quiche lorraine. 2. grilled bell pepper, eggplant and zucchini in tomato ragout with pesto and feta cheese; and potato soup. 3. veal cheek with root vegetables and veal jus; fillet of plaice (fish), filled with pommery mustard with saffron sauce; cheese noodle with sauerkrqaut and roasted onion. 4. black forest cake; chocolate and hazelnut mousse with mirabelle plums; and white passion, which is raspberry jelly and passion fruit jelly with white chocolate mousse.
It was QUITE delicious. The first wine, a pinot noir, not so good; the second wine was good, though I don’t know what it was; and I passed on the third wine since I’d also had two gins and tonic before dinner.

I skipped going to Heidelburg, hurt enough that I couldn’t get interested in it. Stayed on ship and read, drank lattes and slept. It was foggy all day long and cold. Just hope the weather is beautiful when we go through the Rhine gorge on Thursday, I think — that is supposed to be spectacular. Continued cool tomorrow, maybe rain — hope enough leaves stay on the trees to glow in the blue sky and sunshine that I’m sure the Universe will let us have through the gorge.

Missing the classical concert, so will sign off and go in. Thanks for reading!

Flew from ABQ to Houston, then had premium economy on Lufthansa. OMG! On an A380-800 (?) and their premium economy is like business class on any other flight! Wow, was I comfortable — amazing. Waited on like business class, it was soooo, soooo wonderful — only drawback was there weren’t enough movies I wanted to watch. Sure hope they change when I’m flying back. I was going to write how much I love Lufthansa, except that when I got into Zurich, I was alone. No luggage. Damn, I said. And more. Had to go to 2 places to put in a report and then late to meet Noekie and her friends, Loret and Elmin, but finally got there — wheelchair in every airport, and damn good thing I had one in Zurich, which is a looooong airport with almost no one in sight. Or so it has appeared to me both times I’ve been there. Anyway, met everyone and we took the train to our hotel, in what seemed way hell and gone from anything. Elmin had made a notebook of all the trip details, very good thing! A European Best Western, small rooms, but very clean and with a restaurant and friendly people. We went to Mount Pilatus on Saturday. Truly OMG territory! Stunning ride up the mountain from 450 feet to about 8,000 on an old-fashioned cog train (or whatever it was called). The most beautiful sights imaginable. Very overcast where we started from in Lucerne, we passed through the clouds and it was bright blue above, with the clouds hiding all but the tops of mountains below, looking like islands. Oh the views from on top! Plus, we went into the dragons’ lair inside the mountain. Theodore and Sia, you would have been impressed, I think. Legend says that a miner fell into the mountain during the winter and it was the dragons who saved him and flew him home in the spring.
Sunday was a total comedy of errors. We were trying to get to the hotel from which the river cruise would start. We got into city center, dragging eight, count ’em eight, suitcases, three of which were quite large (one of mine included). Someone said take the S7 four stops. So we did. We ended up in a little village that did not have any hotels, much less the one we wanted. So back to city center (CC from now on). Then someone told us to take the S6, which we did and did not find where we were supposed to be. We did this about FIVE times, really. We got so very good at throwing all the luggage on and off the trains, we could do it within a minute! Up the escalator, down the escalator, throw on, throw off, up the escalator, down the escalator. . . . stop and ask, even go to the information desk and ask, but down and throw, throw and up, over and over. I kept saying that the name of the street we were looking for did NOT appear on any of the train signs we took. I suggested that we just go back to the airport and take the hotel shuttle. Finally, they agreed and finally we found Fluganhagen, or whatever airport is in Swiss and off we went finally in the right direction! And lo and behold once we got out of the bowels of the airport and up near the outside there was the Avalon waterways desk! We were there! The lady at the desk laughed and laughed at our story of getting there and took us by our hands to the hotel van. Said get in and don’t get out until you are at the hotel! And don’t forget to get on the bus to the ship! Laughed and walked away.
So now we’re on the ship, we floated on the Rhine through several locks to Strausbourg this morning. Off we went on a tour boat trip to the old town for a tour of the cathedral and then wandering around before taking a taxi back to ship.
The ship is quite nice, our room is European small with twin beds pushed against walls. Where do you put your knee or leg when you want to stretch out??? The food is delicious and the crew very attentive. As I write this, there is French chanteuse (spelling?) with an accordian player in the lounge I’m listening to with one ear.
We’re all having a great time! I really like Noekie’s friends and we all laugh A LOT. What can be better????
So, this was an exhaustive report, but it doesn’t really matter because many of you have already admitted you don’t read this blog or only read part of an entry. I’ll just think of it for me, since I’m losing my memory and need to be told what I’ve been doing.
As Marita always says: HAPPY DAYS — jm

.Monday morning we left Ljubljana for Novak Lodge kind of near Novo Mesto.  We were met by Boris and Miriam Novak, who drove us to our week’s visit with them.  We went first to Scopkja Loko, a beautiful medieval town where we took a tour from a lovely young man who, in addition to being a licensed tour guide, is a lawyer (take note Chris et al, if you need extra income).  On to another beautiful old town to visit a honey bread factory — which while edible, is mostly made into highly decorated cookies that are keepsakes.  They showed us one piece that was 65 years old, first bought by a boy for a girl he was interested in; they were married for over 50 years.   Upstairs from the factory (really just a bakery), we had  a terrific typical Slovenian meal.  Oh, so yummy!  Then almost to the other side of the country to Lake Bled, where we were rowed (well, actually it was the boat we were in that was rowed, not us) out to the island in the middle of this breathtaking glacial lake to a church and tower.  I climbed up the (fairly steep) hill to the church, but wasn’t pain free enough to climb the 99 steps to the top of the tower.  But I rang the church bell and was assured good luck would follow me.  Back down, rowed back and we come back another long drive to Novak Lodge.  Pulled up, walked inside and it was like being home.  What a wonderful old building that had been Boris’ family’s fishing lodge and is now  considered to be the best restaurant in Slovenia.  Really.  So warm and inviting, the Novaks welcomed us in and showed us our rustically charming rooms.  Dinner last night gave us an amazing taste of what will be this week — one of my life’s greatest food joys!  What Miriam does is make simple food with the best ingredients she can find or source.  She knows the diets of the cows and pigs that  make it to their table, she forages in the forest for mushrooms, nettles, greens of all sorts and they grow their own vegetables.  What she cooks is the absolute best of what is available that day.  She cooks with love and joy and you feel it in every bite.  And, oh, the wines they pour!  Slovenians have been making wine for thousands of years and it shows.

Today, after scrumptious breakfast, we go off  to visit a Cistercian monastery where a famous monk-healer lived and worked with all the plants in the region.  I bought creams and tinctures and oils and clay to fix my back.  We went for lunch in a castle and talk about a magnificent meal — OMG!  Started out with a small ball of deer pate, served with three kinds of bread, a tiny quarter of a quail’s egg and a wild apple that wasn’t as big as a grape.  Beautiful, beautiful presentation and the table gleamed with silver, crystal and white.  White roses for decorations.   Next the soup course, pumpkin on one side of the bowl and zuchinni soup on the other side, married with pumpkin oil drizzle and seeds.  entree was pork, with the fat crackled like the best chicharones, fresh young peapods and something else that escapes me in this moment.  Dessert was hazelnut cake with apple ice cream with cinnamon.  I’d never had apple ice cream.  IT IS SO DELICIOUS!  And again, the wines were fabulous.

Home and nap.  Then workshop with Judyth before dinner.  How could we eat after that lunch, you ask.  And we did, too, but then we had trout carpaccio with foraged greens and we knew we could eat.  There are two women in our total group who are taking cooking classes and they helped prepare our dinner.  Next came salt-crusted trout served with boiled potatoes and nettles.  Fresh horseradish cream.  You have not had potatoes like Slovenian potatoes unless you’ve been here — delish!  I skipped dessert, apple strudel because I finally had had enough food and wine for the day.  Dinner finished about 9:45 — much later than is usual for me, but that seems to be the pattern here in Slovenia, I was eating much later in Ljubljana. too.  Luckily, tomorrow is a stay-at-the-lodge day.  Time to recoup, time for a couple of classes.     Everyone, get your reservations to Slovenia!