lairdandjonelle

Well, alas, it was not a lekker day for petting eels. Turns out that they are still traumatized after being attacked by otters two years ago. They now have an electrified fence around their pond, but they are not the happy-go-lucky-do-anything-for-chicken-liver guys we used to know! I asked if the eels had been killed. The young woman who was on feeding duty said “No. The otters bit off their heads.” Uh…. what am I missing? I’m pretty sure otters aren’t into figurative or metaphorical biting. And I’m also pretty sure if any of us had our heads bitten off we’d be pretty damn dead. Maybe eels are different, but I somehow doubt they are THAT different. [Oh.  Laird thinks she was answering the question “did they eat them?”  I guess someone was further along in the conversation than I was.]  Anyway, Carina was lucky enough to get one to come out of hiding to take the chicken liver she offered. But otherwise, the day was quite swell. Marita, Laird and I adventured there and elsewhere with Carina and her mom, Rulene. After disappointing eelventure, we stopped by Inverroche gin distillery on our way out of Stillbaai and had a marvelous time trying three gins made by three famous South African bands (I’ll have to get back to you on the names). Inverroche has a gin school there and in Mosselbaai, which we still need to do. Anyway, each band made really great gin! I think my favorite was the pink one, but that might have been because of the color. Of course I bought a bottle of each! Of course I can’t bring them back! Of course Marita will have to be drinking at least one G&T a day for the next year or so! Though we thought we’d have a going away party so maybe we can unload some then — also the several bottles of wine we have. We will be taking everything with us to Cape Town, but Laird simply doesn’t drink enough to make a dent in what we have to consume. Unfortunately neither does Marita, so it might all be on me to lower the stockpile. While I am sometimes up for a challenge, I might not be up to drinking down our supply.
On Sunday, a bunch of us went to a lovely buffet restaurant a ways south of Dana Bay. There were the usual suspects of Marita, Noekie and Johan and us and our other friends Carina, Stephen and Carlene; Loret and Johan; and Helmein (her hubbie had the damn flu, poor guy). I wore my not-shwe shwe pants. Lovely Afrikaans food.
OK, back to eel day. After we shared Gs&T made with the famous bands’ gin, we stopped off at the giant Aloe Ferox statue — when Carina emails the pictures of Laird and me and the giant ferox, I’ll post them. Then we went in and this very lovely lady explained the benefits of aloe ferox — 27% more powerful and beneficial than aloe vera. You can drink it, snort it, rub it in — it’s all fantastic. So of course I bought aloe skin products! No one was wondering if I had, right? But I did draw the line at snorting it (that’s not a pun). I could not believe how instantly soft my hands were after trying their serum and creams.
Today it rained! It didn’t rain hard but it rained. You could hear everything small rejoicing, just like in New Mexico.

All of a sudden, it’s May 9. We’re now in Dana Bay. Look on the map of Western Cape Province. Find George — about half-way between Port Elizabeth and Capetown. Shift southwest a bit and find Mossel Bay. Then a short way south and west to Dana Baai. From June through October, the whales run along the shore migrating to the somewhat warmer areas near the equator. The dolphins are birthing their pups in the bay. That last factoid was provided by our dear friend Noekie Steyn. “Noekie” is a diminutive of “Wynona”. So later today, we’ll explore the immediate surroundings of our flat — which is brand new and located above the hardware store owned and managed by Norman and Juanita and Johan. Johan is married to Noekie. Norman is Noekie’s and Johan’s son. Juanita (pronounced, yew-nita) is married to Norman. The trip from Pretoria to Dana Bay was pretty long — almost 1,400 km — around 900 miles. The first day, we drove across hectare after hectare of pretty much vacant grazing land and some crop fields. Farmers grow a lot of corn (maize, here), wheat, what we think may be either millet or amaranth (we need to do more research). Except for portions of Limpopo province, the whole of South Africa is sub-tropical. We’ve passed the marker for the Tropic of Capricorn on the road between Gabarone and Francistown in Botswana. And the Free State (formerly Orange Free State) is high veldt — mostly over 1,400 m above sea level. The rule, by the way, to convert from meters to feet is to multiply the meters by three, then add 10%. This is close enough for guv’ment work. Thus, 1,400 meters is 4,200 feet plus 420 feet, or 4,620 the best part of a mile. Dana Baai is on the Indian Ocean — so pretty much sea level.

Although long, the trip through the Free State, Eastern Cape and Western Cape over two days was quite interesting. Free State is agricultural, but mostly crop farming. Apparently, cattle rustling was very popular so close to Johannesburg. Most of the dairy and beef ranches have shut down. On the whole trip, I guess we saw more sheep and goats than beef cows. In the Free State, we saw a few ostriches, but not much other game.

We stopped the first night at Xhariep or !Gariep or maybe just Gariep Dam. We stayed at a very nice resort in a two bedroom suite. Marita was told that !Gariep (variant spelling ‘Xhariep’) is a San word meaning “place of extreme dryness.” That was somewhat hard to understand, since the Gariep dam was the view from our veranda. Jonelle, Marita and Elsa had gins and tonics. We had dinner at the restaurant run by the resort. There was a big box on the counter that said, “name the restaurant; win a weekend for four at the resort.” I was up early the next morning and started looking up words in Xhosa, Zulu and Soto. I found ‘Koponong’ — a district in the Free State — which means a place of meeting of people. I also found ‘Umoya’, a Zulu word meaning ‘wind, air, spirit or soul.’ We went to breakfast and asked the ‘waitron’ for the Xhosa words for place of meeting of people. She gave us ‘Indibano’ and ‘Inhlangano.’ After a modest amount of discussion, we asked the waitron for four checks. On each check we wrote one of our four names for the restaurant. We’re quite certain that one of the four names will win.

The second day we missed the paved road to Nieu Bethesda and took a 30km gravel road. The goal was to visit the Owl House — we’ll post a few pics of this extraordinary effort to produce art in the middle of the Karoo. Daniel will really like the camel yard, complete with wise men and Jesus in th manger. On the way into the Owl House, we saw a herd (too many for a flock) of Blue Herons. After looking at the somewhat fuzzy, distant pics, we decided we had seen about 30 herons in one place at one time.

We also stopped at Graff Reniet, with a magnificent Dutch Reformed Church. This town was one of the starting points for the Voertrekkers on the Great Trek.

All of these adventures put us over the Otiniqua Mountains somewhat later than ideal. The cold front was moving through the mountains at the same time we were. Visibility was about 20 feet and the road narrow and winding. Fortunately, there were turn-outs occasionally, and we managed to get down to George safely.

Jonelle will write about our meeting in Istanbul with Pinar and about our adventures in Dana Bay. Today is the 13th, and we’re on to Stellenbosch.

L.