Nov. 19 - 29: Back in the USA and signing off (for a while)!

Yes, we arrived home safely, very exhausted, but happy that everything was fine at home, and that Clare and Josh had looked after things nicely for us during our absence. We were only home a couple of days and then hit the road for Melanie and David's home for the long Thanksgiving weekend. It was wonderful to see them again and our darling little Indigo, who had grown some more and got more teeth since we left. Also, David's mother was there from Los Angeles, so it was good to catch up with her again too. The weather was cold, but we had a great time all together in Washington DC one day, when we went into the city by Metro and walked along The Mall between the Smithsonian Museums, with the Lincoln Monument at one end, and the Capitol building at the other. See picture. We're signing off now for a few months. Hopefully we'll restart our blogging endeavors when next we're going to do something exciting. We trust you have enjoyed our South Africa Travels.

Wednesday Nov. 14th – Sunday Nov.18th (Port Elizabeth and Homeward Bound)

Wednesday we were up early and after a quick farewell breakfast with Rose, we were on our way back to Port Elizabeth, a 500 mile drive from where we were in Grotto Bay. We stopped for lunch at the internet café in Sedgefield and posted the blog while eating lunch, then on to PE and we arrived at Wout & Vilia’s home at about 6.30. They had some wool farmer friends who were in town for the annual wool sales and we all walked to a local Indian restaurant for an excellent curry meal. We got to bed early.

On Thursday we moved back to the flat at Christian Meyer’s home close to the beachfront and in the evening we went to dinner at Brian & Gail Rainbow’s home at Kings Crest townhouses right across the road. Brian also invited Wally & Sheila Shear who live in the same complex. Alison’s first job in Port Elizabeth in 1968 was secretary to Wally’s dad, Abe Shear, or “old man Shear” as Alison called him, at the law firm Shear & Shear. Wally, then “young Mr. Shear”, who is now 72, told us his dad died at 64!

Friday we had a short brisk walk along the beachfront together, after which we had a few “administrative” things to sort out, but managed to get back to the beachfront for lunch. In the evening we went for a second curry evening at the home of Lawrence & Imelda Augustine, but this time, we were joined by Jim & Debbie Gray and Mike & Felicity Campbell. Lawrence, Jim, Mike, Felicity and I had all worked together at Shatterprufe, and we had a fun and somewhat boisterous evening talking about old times and also the future of South Africa. We laughed about a “Whites Only” sign that Lawrence has on one of his internal doors in his home that “disappeared” from a bench in front of the Shatterprufe offices where people would sit at lunchtime, but we all knew that it wasn’t funny back then. Fortunately, once it “disappeared” it was never replaced.

Saturday morning I went for a final walk along the beachfront with Christian and we were joined by Monica, a German guest staying in a second apartment at the Meyers’ home. Monica has limited English but walked well! On the way back, we stopped at Barney’s pub on the beachfront and Vic Wolff joined us for a couple of beers, thus negating any positive effects of our two hour walk! Alison & I then crammed in some last minute shopping and lunch before joining Christian & Vic in Christian’s “media room” (or theatre) where we watched the ATP Masters tennis semi-final between Federer and Nadal coming from Shanghai. After a shower and a quick clothes change, we were back down in Christian’s bar having cocktails with him and Marlies before we all went off to our respective evening functions. From there we met V&C at Chippie & Pam Henderson’s, where we had more “farewell” champagne before we all went to the “Ocean Grill” for dinner. Back to V&C for some more farewell gifts (please not too heavy!) and a couple of ports to round off the evening. We got to bed the day we were leaving.

Sunday was THE moving day! One of the suitcases had been packed even before we went to Swellendam and left behind at the Offermans, although Alison did finalize the contents one more time on Sunday morning. We were invited to the Meyers for breakfast and then Marlies lent us her bathroom scales so that we could check the weight of the suitcases (limit of 20kg per case). I also made the mistake of weighing myself which was very depressing! We loaded up the rental car and made one more stop at the Offermans and dropped off a few things we intended to leave behind. On to the airport and dropped off the rental car and then we checked in for a flight to Joburg. Vic & Carol had headed to the airport and we met up with them in domestic departures for one last drink before we went through security. What a fantastic time it has been and many thanks to Vic for his superb organization. We arrived in Joburg on time and made our way to International and checked in. No issues at all. We boarded early and took off 7.15 pm SA time. We were on our way home!

Sunday Nov.11th – Tuesday Nov. 13th - Cape Town

Sunday was another full day. Early in the morning we had literally thousands of walkers passing in front of the flat along the beachfront. It was an annual walk for charity with multiple distances available depending on capabilities of participants, with different distances starting at different places. The 10K, which seemed to be the most popular, started at Mouille Point, less than 1K from the flat. There were 25,000 registered walkers. Fortunately it was a lovely day for walking. By the time we were ready to leave the apartment, the road had re-opened to traffic and we made our way to Hout Bay to meet up with Austin & Pat Lewis’ two “little girls”, Alison and Helen, who are now 43 and 40 respectively. We have not seen them for over 25 years. They are both married with children and we had a braai at Helen’s home where we met husbands & children. We received a warm welcome. Alison and Helen remember very well our home at 9 Maureen Circle and the wonderful weekend braais and parties that we used to have there. We had a lovely time but had to leave by 5.PM because we were expected at David & Tish’s home once more for yet another braai. David’s son Brenton was in town from PE and David’s daughter Michelle came over with her husband A??? In addition, Rob & Jen McWilliams’ daughter Kate (who is my goddaughter) also joined us for the braai. Kate is at the University of Cape Town and in her final year of studying for masters degrees in both Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, and hopes to pursue a career in robotics. It was another great evening.
Monday lunchtime we reunited with another old friend that we had lost touch with over the years – Don Wilson. Don is an Australian who has lived in SA for many years and I met him through marathon training and running in the mid 70s. We spent many hours together pounding the roads and quaffing a few beers afterwards. Don moved from PE to Cape Town, where he became a personal trainer at a gym and we lost touch. Vic Wolff also shared many miles and beers with Don and we decided that we would try to track him down and we ultimately obtained a cell phone number and got connected. He was really pleased to hear from us. Don returned to Australia for a couple of years, went back to varsity and got a degree in environmental science before returning to SA. He is now a consultant for Vodacom on the environmental issues related to cell phone towers and he also consults for De Beers on meeting the government environmental regulations for mine closures. Despite a hip replacement, he still keeps himself in shape. It was great to see him and know that he is doing well.
We had a quick nap in the afternoon and then Belinda Murphy came to the apartment for sundowners and then we went out to dinner. Unfortunately her boyfriend Mark had had a bad day snoek fishing and was not up to joining us. Belinda lives in Cape Town but of course we had seen her the weekend of her brother Shaun’s wedding in East London (see blog for Sept. 8th) but we wanted a second visit while we were in CT. By coincidence, we picked a restaurant within walking distance of the flat, that Belinda said she would have suggested if we had asked. I remember having a Thai red curry which was perfect!

On Tuesday we went to see Rose Betheldo who lives in Grotto Bay in a region that is known as the “West Coast” about 40 miles north of Cape Town. This may sound a little convoluted, but Rose was David’s wife when we left South Africa in 1985 and of course David is now married to Tish. Fortunately, Tish was not even in the picture when David & Rose separated and Tish & David were very pleased to know we were going to see Rose as they are all good friends. On the way, we stopped at the beach at Bloubergstrand and took a picture of Table Mountain across the bay – a favorite post card picture of the mountain, although this day was a lot duller than the days when postcard pictures are taken. The term “West Coast” may stir up thoughts of the glamour and excitement of California for those of you in the USA, but I can assure you that this “West Coast” is entirely different. We had thought that Grotto Bay was the name of a little town or village but in fact it turned out to be the name of a private nature reserve and gated community “in the middle of nowhere”. There are no shops, gas stations, restaurants, etc. within miles, so we knew we would not be taking Rose out to dinner that evening! It is the perfect place for solitude and “getting away from it all”. By decree, all the houses are built “cottage style” and they are surrounded by bush and gorse teeming with bird life which makes for a very picturesque place.
After a couple of hours catching up on respective families and news, we went for a long walk along the coastline and got an idea of the beauty and wildness of the area. Rose had made a nice dinner and we ate, drank wine, talked until we were rudely interrupted by the lady who lived next door who came to complain about the music because we happened to play one track of a CD a little too loud! (classical violinist Lucia Micarelli, “Music from a Farther Room, track 12 – Nocturne/Bohemian Rhapsody – brilliant – listen to it!). We got to bed late!

Nov.8th – Nov.11 th – Swellendam – Cape Town

(Posted in Sedgefield on route to Port Elizabeth from Cape Town) Thursday was another lovely day and after breakfast we took another walk in the Langeberge to a waterfall. When we reached the path to the waterfall (already having walked quite far), the sign said 1K, but this did not describe the steepness of the kloof and the rock clambering we had to do to get there. We felt it was quite an achievement to reach the goal of the waterfall and the rock pool below. We were quite exhausted by the time we got back to the house and we had a lazy afternoon, although we did spend time preparing the blog and dashed off to an internet café in Swellendam at 4.pm to post. A&P met us at the café and we followed them to the bowls club for sundowners. Later in the evening we went to A&Ps restaurant of choice called Mattsens where we all enjoyed steaks and wine that we had purchased at the wineries the day before. The restaurant is licensed but they allow you to take your own wine and locals don’t pay a “corkage” fee – so we were locals that particular night!

Friday was another moving day, but first Alison & I had to take our last local walk to the “microwave tower” which (naturally) sits on a high point overlooking the whole of Swellendam. It was another beautiful day and we took more pictures of the views and of A&Ps house. We returned to a “full on” breakfast of eggs, sausages, baked beans, etc.. and fortified ourselves for the relatively short 150 mile journey to Cape Town. The journey was made a little longer by the fact that we hit three different “one lane at a time” traffic stops, each with wait times up to 20 minutes. In an earlier blog (Oct. 17th), we mentioned that we had finally met up again with an old friend David Betheldo. When David heard we were coming back to Cape Town later in the trip, he insisted that we stay at one of his “rental” flats on the beachfront in Cape Town and when we arrived, David arranged to meet us and we followed him to the flat and settled ourselves in. David came back and picked us up at 6.30 and we went back to his current home for drinks before driving back into town and having dinner at a very smart restaurant called Riboville which is in an old bank building in the middle of the city. We were joined by other friends of David & Tish, Brian & Cathy Kerry. At the restaurant, if you are inclined (and we did), you can go down to the old cash vaults in the old fashioned elevator to view and/or choose your wine from all the racked wine stored behind the giant vault doors. Despite the late hour, on the way home we called in at the Xtreme Hotel for an ABF so that we could see why it was called “Xtreme”. We got the picture. We got to bed past midnight after a great evening. Fortunately David’s wife Tish never drinks alcohol, so we were assured of a designated driver to get us home!

Saturday we lazed around in the morning and enjoyed the views from the flat of Table Bay, Robben Island and Bloubergstrand across the Bay. If we walk to the back of the flats we see Table Mountain and the cable station. David, Tish and their 13 year old son Corbin picked us up at noon and off we went again to the Cape Winelands. We drove through Paarl and on to Franschhoek, this time tasting wine at Rickety Bridge, Moreson and finally ending up at Boschendaal where we had a five course buffet lunch and of course, a nice bottle of wine. The weather, setting, atmosphere, company and the food all cooperated in making it a perfect afternoon. It was after 5pm when we were dropped at the flat and fortunately we had no plans for the evening and just “crashed” and watched TV until we could legitimately retire for the night!

Saturday Nov.3rd – Wednesday Nov. 7th (PE – Swellendam)

In the last posting I mentioned a task I had asked Melanie & Clare to undertake and I will try and tell this story as concisely as possible. The “famous” doors at 9 Maureen Circle (see Nov. 4th post) were from an old building in Port Elizabeth Market Square called the Richardson Building. They had beautiful brass plates embossed with R B (Richardson Building) and I bought the complete doors when the building was demolished and installed them in the house I was building. The R B now stood for Robert Brookes! When I was transferred to the USA in 1985, I removed the plates from the door and took them to the USA with the crazy idea that I might one day own a home where I could install them on another set of doors. When we arrived in PE this trip, coincidently, Hugh Baakens weekly column (general interest) in the newspaper started off by apologizing that the previous week he had written about the Richardson Building in Market Square and of course it was demolished long ago. It came into my head that I should call him and tell him that while the building had been demolished, I knew where the front doors were. However, as all my photographs were at home in USA and I had not yet made contact with the current owners of the house, I did not contact him. After I had met Danie Steyn and taken pictures of the doors, I decided that, on my return to the USA, I would write to Hugh Baakens and send him pictures of the doors in the original building and as they now look, and also send him pictures of the brass plates as I would like to “reunite” the plates with the doors. On Thursday morning, I mentioned to Alison at breakfast that I had woken in the night and had been composing my letter to Mr. Baakens in my head. Wout and Vilia asked me what I was going to write to him about and when I told them, Vilia said “We know Hugh Baakens, but actually his name is Robert Ball – he writes the column – why don’t we invite him for tea on Saturday morning, which they subsequently did. This caused a flurry of activity, as now I wanted to show “Hugh” a photo of the brass plates that were sitting in our home in Myrtle Beach. We emailed Melanie & David (who were visiting Clare in MB) and asked them to find the plates, clean them, take a photo and send it to us before they went to bed on Friday night. We than called home and asked them to pick up the email. Due to some confusion as to where the plates actually were, there was a late start on the cleaning and photographing task but a valiant effort was made by the MB “team” and a photo of the plates was sent at 11.34PM on Friday and was waiting for us on email on Saturday morning. Robert Ball duly arrived at Wout & Vilias home (a little late) and made copious notes as we told him the story. It remains to be seen whether anything comes of it.
Wout is a Sudoku addict so we spent much of Saturday afternoon on a joint effort at solving “more difficult” puzzles. The evening was finished off with a lovely roast fillet dinner.

Sunday morning Alison and I posted the blog for Graaff Reinet and then we had an early Sunday braai to which Tony & Christine Oshry were invited. Tony was already working at Shatterprufe when I joined them in 1968. He subsequently started his own business of growing cucumbers, tomatoes, etc in tunnels, which was run by Christine until it took off, and, as Christine says, he fired her and left Shatterprufe to run the business himself. Tony had just returned from an adventurous “boys only” self guided safari, driving a couple of four wheel drive vehicles through Botswana, Zambia and Mozambique. The following week they were off to another private game park adjacent to the Kruger Park where they have “time share” and go for a week twice a year. We just have to let them know the year we want to join them – an invitation that we will be doing our best to accept some time in the future.
In the evening we went to Wout’s brother Eric’s house for drinks which started with champagne and chocolate coated strawberries, and later the most fantastic bread with great cheeses and cold meats. A nice end to the day.

Monday was another moving day. We packed the car and started our journey to Swellendam, a journey of about 500K. We stopped in Sedgefield for lunch and arrived at Pat & Ausin Lewis’s home at about 3:30, having made very good time. Austin & Pat are a Welsh couple that we met within a couple of months of our first arriving in SA in 1968, so we have known them for almost 40 years. They lived in Port Elizabeth until 2001, when they retired to Swellendam. They live right below a section of the Langeberg Mountains and we went for a walk along the bottom of the mountains before dinner. We retired early, which we have continued to do on all subsequent nights!

Tuesday, Austin & I took a long strenuous walk up the mountain, about 3½ hours in all. The ladies walked into town to do some shopping and then came to find us as we ended our walk. In the evening we went to the local golf club for sundowners and the views from the club are spectacular. We returned home for another home cooked dinner and good South African wine.

Wednesday morning we drove along the Langeberg foothills to the town of Robertson and had brunch at “Birds Paradise”. After breakfast we walked in the town for a while before driving back along the wine route and stopping for tasting at a couple of wineries, one being Bon Courage and the other Van Loveren. Bon Courage was particularly beautiful and had a very nice restaurant which A&P had been unaware of. They intend to have lunch there soon. Both wineries had excellent tasting facilities and there was absolutely no pressure on you to buy any wine, even though the tasting was free (and plentiful). Of course, we forced ourselves to purchase a couple of bottles. When we returned to Swellendam, I took another walk up the Langeberg so that Alison could get a shot of me up there, but it was very difficult for her to spot me and I am so small on the photo that I cannot be seen! Didn’t realize I had walked so far and high. We concluded the evening with another home cooked meal of spaghetti bolognaise.

Monday Oct. 29th – Friday Nov. 2nd : East London and Graaff Reinet

Firstly, a note from us both. We understand that some of you have tried to leave comments but were unable to. Our profile was set so that the blog did not accept "anonymous" comments (you had to have signed up for Google). That profile has been changed, so we would really appreciate it if those of you who have been reading the blog will post a few comments over the next two weeks before our vacation comes to an end. Just click on the "comments" at the end of any posting and read other peoples comments and add your own. It is nice to know people are actually reading all this stuff! (besides the family!).

Thanks

As most of you will realize, most of Monday was spent preparing the blog for the previous four days at Mazeppa Bay. However, in the background, we spent the whole day watching the 5th and final ODI (one day international) cricket match between SA and Pakistan. The series was 2-2 so this was the deciding match for the cup. SA batted first and never really got the run rate going and set a fairly easy target for Pakistan to achieve. Pakistan were cruising to an easy victory and we would have left to post the blog had it been ready, assuming the cricket result was a foregone conclusion. Fortunately, the blog wasn’t ready so we were still working on it when SA took a couple of quick wickets and then Pakistan totally collapsed and amazingly SA won the match and the series to great jubilation all around. Later that evening we went with Barry & Anne to Miranda & Riaan’s for dinner and we were joined by Shaun & Nikki for a “Potjie” (try Google!) farewell dinner. A reunion (a day later!) of the Mazeppa Bay team. It was a fun evening.

Tuesday – Moving day. Goodbye to Anne at 7.30 – she was off to work. Packing and breakfast with Barry. We were meeting Wout & Vilia at “The Glen” north of Graaff Reinet, but they were traveling from Port Elizabeth, while we were going direct from East London. We drove via King Williams Town, Alice, Fort Beaufort, Adelaide, Bedford to Craddock where we had lunch, checking in via cell to see how W&V were progressing. The land we were traveling through is known as The Karoo and is mostly farming of sheep and goats (for mohair). We arrived at the farm about 1 minute before W&V, both of us having driven about 250 miles! We moved into our “cottage” on the farm and our accommodation was delightful. Our hosts were Anthony & Marion De La Harpe who had built and lived in the cottage when they were first married and Tony’s parents lived in the main farm house a hundred yards away. T&M now live in the main house and have turned the cottage into a small commercial venture. In the afternoon we took a walk through the veld and returned for dinner – bobotie traditional SA dish. We were woken in the middle of the night by the crash of thunder and intense rain but by morning, the sun was shining again and there was hardly any evidence that it had rained at all.

Wenesday we got up for an 8.30 breakfast. I should mention that although there is a self catering option, we elected to go with the dinner & breakfast option so we had our own “chef” who came down in the morning and cooked a full breakfast for us and in the evening also came and cooked dinner, leaving it in the “hostess tray” so that we could eat at our leisure. The “fully catered” option was R20 for breakfast and R60 for dinner about $11.50 per person!
After breakfast we made our way on 26 miles of dirt road to Nieu (New) Bethesda, described as “an oasis in the Great Karoo” (http://www.nieubethesda.info/). The main attraction is “The Owl House”, where an eccentric lady named Helen Martin made hundreds of cement sculptures of owls, camels, lambs, sphinxes, serpents and naked men and women, which (in my opinion) would be considered as rubbish when viewed individually, but collectively are considered to be an art form. By chance, we also happened upon “The Brewery”, which must be the smallest brewery in South Africa if not the world. The draught tap comes out the side of a fridge (see photo). We had lunch at the “Village Inn Restaurant and Karoo Kitchen” and then toured the village on foot. We returned to the cottage and I climbed to the top of a high vantage point to take some video of the area. There was no path up the side the koppie, so it was a bit of a hard slog and harder coming down. We had a very nice chicken pie and vegetables for dinner.

Thursday – another full breakfast – diet will start on our return. We drove into Graaff Reinet, which is fourth oldest town in South Africa (Cape Town, Stellenbosch and Swellendam being the first three). We dropped Vilia off in town, where she would spend time taking photographs of old buildings, and Wout, Alison and I drove on to “The Valley of Desolation” a national monument. The main feature of the valley is a series of precariously balanced dolerite columns which rise as much as 120 meters above the valley floor. These rock pillars have withstood 200 million years of erosion by wind and water. We walked the trail, returning back to GR where we met Vilia for lunch at “The Drostdy”, a hotel since 1878, but originally (for about 40 years from 1806) the administrative quarters of the landdrost (magistrate). Vilia was not impressed by the fact that they did not have a menu in English, only an Afrikaans menu! After lunch we went to see an art exhibition of the Johannesburg Station Panels by well known SA artist, JH Pierneef. This was followed with a visit by us to the Military & War Museum, where we were particularly interested in the Anglo Boer War section. Meanwhile, Vilia enjoyed another part of the museum complex, and Wout went to refuel his car and then rested in it while waiting for us to be done in the museums. We were all tired when we got back to The Glen Cottage, and spent a relaxing time on the stoep watching the sun go down. Our final farm dinner just had to be roast Karoo lamb, and we were not disappointed when a lovely shoulder was produced along with a variety of veggies and gravy. A good sleep was had by all, with no thunderstorm to keep us awake this night.

Friday morning we were up for an 8 o’clock breakfast and soon after 9:00 we were on the road heading back to Port Elizabeth. We stopped for “elevenses” in a little place named Kleinpoort at a “padstal”, and in addition to our having tea/coffee and rusks, Alison purchased some mohair hiking socks for me in a small special mohair products section of the shop. We arrived at Wout & Vilia’s home in PE early afternoon and had a restful afternoon—Wout & I working on Sudokus, and Alison and Vilia sorting clothes and doing laundry. In the evening we went to an old favorite restaurant for dinner, the Old Austria, which is close to W&V’s home. Great Austrian style food.

(Incidentally, Friday PM, we were intermittently in touch by email and phone with Melanie & Clare at our home--Melanie, David, Indigo Wen, dogs and cat are currently visiting Myrtle Beach--regarding an unusual task, which we will write about in our next posting, but meanwhile, thanks "kids" for all your efforts).