SOUTH AFRICA TRAVELS 2007

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

2007-11-29T16:28:00.005-05:00

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)

2007-11-23T13:26:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-16T08:56:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-14T06:55:00.000-05:00

(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)

2007-11-08T09:36:00.000-05:00

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

2007-11-04T03:19:00.000-05:00

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).

Thursday Oct 25th – Sunday Oct 28th – Mazeppa Bay

2007-10-29T11:04:00.000-04:00

Firstly I have to report up front, while we have had a wonderful time over the last four days and took lots of “fishing” photographs, there are no photographs of an actual fish!
We arrived at Mazeppa Bay early afternoon Thursday after a 160K drive from East London via Butterworth, of which the last 60K is all on dirt roads and not particularly well graded – a bone shaking ride without a four wheel drive. We were renting a five bedroom cottage just a short walk down the hill to a sandy beach and also nearby rocks to fish from. There’s also a great view from the cottage of “the island” which is shown on a few of our photos, and reached by means of a narrow, swaying suspension bridge. We filled the cottage with our party of 10 + 3 dogs [ourselves, Barry & Anne, Shaun & Nikki, Miranda & Riaan, Miranda’s 3 yr. old (Nathan), Riaan’s 7 yr. old (Matthew), Shaun’s Rottweilers (Captain & Morgan), and Nikki’s Staffie (Chilli)]. On our arrival, the southeaster was blowing, the sea was wild and Shaun was pessimistic about our possibilities of catching anything. After unpacking and working on the philosophy that you can’t catch anything unless your line is in the water, we made our way down to the rocks and started to fish, all to no avail. We were up at 5.30 AM on Friday but the sky was gray and the southeaster was still blowing and didn’t let up all day. Nevertheless, we moved from spot to spot and fished hard all morning but still nothing. By lunchtime, the gale was blowing so hard we called it a day. In the afternoon, the tide was out and the two B&As braved the gale and walked to the island to “blow the cobwebs away” which it surely did. Alison had put her swimsuit on and said she would have a dip in the surf. She made good on her bold promise on the way back from the island.

Saturday’s weather was petty much a repeat of Friday except that the sky was blue, blue, blue. After our early morning fishing session and breakfast, Alison and I walked out to the island and took some pictures and video before continuing our walk a couple of miles eastwards along the coast to some massive dunes that come down to the beach and sea. It was a lovely walk and the views were spectacular. In the afternoon Shaun, Barry and I continued fishing while the remainder of the group swam and sunbathed in a sheltered spot below the cottage. A number of them got somewhat sunburned!

On Saturday evening, we were having a braai when we heard a helicopter overhead and then realized it had landed a few hundred yards to the right of our cottage, which are basically “cow” fields above the beach and certainly not a helicopter landing pad. (There is a helicopter pad almost directly behind the cottage we were staying in, used by guests of the hotel). Riaan went to observe without getting too close and reported that men in a pickup truck came to the helicopter and had a conversation with the pilot/crew. After about 30 minutes or so, the helicopter took off again and then with its spotlights shining down, moved around and landed at the back of the main Mazeppa beach. We all wondered what was going on but went back to our beer, wine & braai. During the evening, the southeaster had died down and then changed to a gentle westerly – things were looking up!

We woke up early morning Sunday to a glorious looking day and Shaun, Barry & Bob went early to fish from the island for the first time. As we walked across the main beach we could see the huge helicopter that had us wondering the evening before, sitting on the grass at the back of the beach. Although the conditions seemed favorable, there were no fish caught. We were walking back to the cottage for breakfast across the beach and Anne and Nikki were admiring the helicopter and taking pictures. They had also gleaned the story of the copter from a lady who was staying at the hotel. Apparently the helicopter and crew had been up in Swaziland fighting fires and were on their way back to Port Elizabeth. Due to the strength of the southeaster headwind, they had run low on fuel and needed to stop to refuel (they had their own 44 gallon drum in the cargo area of the copter). They also didn’t know precisely where they were as they were just following the coastline to East London and then on to PE. They saw lights on the coast and found a place to put down. The pickup truck belonged to the lady’s husband – they were staying at the hotel and had seen the helicopter land and he drove over to see if they needed any help. They refueled the helicopter in the field and then when they found there was a hotel, decided to stay overnight but first moved the helicopter to the back of the beach (don’t know why they didn’t use the hotel pad—we guess the pad wasn’t big enough for such a big copter). As we were hearing this story, the crew of the helicopter came onto the beach surrounded by a bunch of adults and children. The crew took off the helicopter doors and the people piled in, then one of the crew called to us “We’re just going to have a quick spin around the Bay, we can take two more if you’d like to come”. Five minutes later, Nikki and I are strapped into the copter with about ten other people and we take off and are hovering above Mazeppa Bay. What an unbelievable thing to happen right out of the blue. We flew over the cottage and some of our group were standing outside and waved to us as we went over. They could clearly see Nikki as she was on the outside (and the door was off!). We flew over the Bay and right up the side of the dune where I had photographed Alison the day before. It was all quite magical.
With the weather being so good, we abandoned breakfast around the table and decided on fishing and a picnic beyond “One Mile Beach”, which is a long walk in a westerly direction, crossing firstly the fields where the helicopter first landed and then a mile long stretch of beach to more rocks (where we fished from) and another beach past the rocks (where Riaan, the women, the boys and dogs paddled in rock pools and played in the sand, and Riaan, Alison and Nikki also swam in the sea). The conditions were almost ideal and it was just terrific to be there – but we still didn’t catch a photographable fish (Shaun caught a couple of small blacktails).
At 1:30 PM our allotted time was up and we walked back to the cottage, packed up and drove back to East London. It has been a fabulous few days that will be remembered for a long time.

Monday Oct. 22nd- Wednesday Oct. 24th – East London

2007-10-24T06:11:00.000-04:00

Monday morning, after preparing our text and photos for a blog posting, we drove to the car rental agency at the EL airport and reported our incident at the traffic stop the day before. They phoned PE where we had picked the car up, and were told they had the new license and would fax a copy (which is now on the car) and overnight the original. From the airport we made our way back to town to head to the internet café but it soon became apparent that all the traffic lights were out and there was great confusion. It turned out that there was a city wide power outage due to a “failed” transformer. The outage lasted from 10.30am until after 3.30 pm – no posting on Monday so we returned home. Barry was already home and Ann came home shortly after due to the power failure. I went with Barry to watch him play doubles squash (similar to racquet ball) at the Beacon Bay Club then after a beer, we returned to dine at home and catch up on our respective happenings.

Tuesday we were able to make a five day posting which made me feel good if not anybody else! Barry and I did some shopping (beer and wine) for our Mazeppa Bay excursion, before we watched the Springbok cricket team lose a second one day international to Pakistan and they are now losing 2 to 1 in a five match series. While we were watching we suddenly had a very unusual occurrence – a hailstorm with hailstones of quite large proportions. It was over very quickly, but not before Alison had snapped a couple of pictures as proof of this phenomenon. In the evening, we went out to dinner to a local fish restaurant and Alison and I had a local SA fish that we used to enjoy, Kingklip – it was delicious. We returned home for coffee and after dinner drinks and watched a musical DVD, Celtic Women, recorded live at Slane Castle, Ireland – quite brilliant.

This morning, Wednesday, I arose to greetings, cards and phone calls for my 66th birthday. We’ll be celebrating this evening with a braai at Shaun & Nikki’s home (the newly weds). Tomorrow morning we leave for Mazeppa Bay on the remote Wild Coast until Oct. 29th, so there will be no posting for a while. When we next post, I hope we will have some pictures of fish, although dinner for each evening has already been planned and not one of the menus has fish on it, so confidence cannot be running too high!

Wednesday Oct 17th – Sunday Oct. 21st – Port Elizabeth (the Windy City!)

2007-10-23T05:32:00.000-04:00

The south easterly gale had finally dropped about 11pm on Tuesday, but by 6am on Wednesday there was a howling Westerly gale blowing. Port Elizabeth is known as The Windy City but we have been reminded of just how windy it can be, especially at this time of year. Wednesday was a very busy day for us. Warwick had sent out an email to all the ZOBOs to report on the Sunday reunion and as a result, on Tuesday I was in contact with David Betheldo who now lives in Cape Town and whom we haven’t seen since he came to see us in Los Angeles not long after we moved there in 1985. He said he was coming to Port Elizabeth on Wednesday to visit his suture factory (news to us) on and he’d like to see us and show us around. We met him at the factory at 9am and had a tour of the facilities. I was amazed to find that they manufacture over 400 combinations of needles and “thread” for stitching up inside and outside the body, all manufactured in a completely sterile environment, so that part of the operation was viewed through observation windows. It was a very interesting experience. We are hoping to see David again when we get to Cape Town again in a couple of weeks time. From there we dashed to an appointment at the bank where we met Vic and then we dashed to meet Vic’s accountant for lunch. It was a long lunch. Wednesday evening eight of us had dinner at “The Stage Door”, a pub/restaurant that has been going forever and looked no different from the day we left SA. Vic joked that it was the same sawdust on the floor (I think it was a joke!). To give you an idea of how far a dollar goes in SA (except for car hire), here are the approximate details of the meal. We started with a few beers, seven of us had the fillet steak, chips & 2 veg special (one had fish). We had four bottles of wine with dinner, then a couple of after dinner drinks and the bill with the tip per couple was R260 or less than $19 each!
We went to bed quite exhausted.

Thursday morning I went back to the Virgin Active gym to work out (it was too windy go for a walk). The same day we met two of my old work colleagues from my Shatterpufe Saftey Glass Co. days. We had lunch with Mike & Felicity Campbell at Lavenders and then we went to an internet café to post Monday & Tuesday before a quick visit to Wout & Vilia Offerman (see earlier blog). Early evening we stopped off to see Mike & Felicity at their new home before we went off to dinner at Lawrence & Imelda Augustine’s home where we had a lovely curry. Lawrence recently celebrated 45 years at Shatterprufe. Both Mike and Lawrence were IT guys back in 1968 when it was then known as Data Processing! We keep in touch with emails but it was good to see them again.

Friday I started the day with a long walk on the beach and then in the evening we drove out to Amsterdamhoek where we had been invited to dinner at the home of Rob & Jenny McWilliams and then stay overnight. Their home had been devastated in the 2006 floods (they live on the banks of the Swartkops River) and they have had to rebuild a good portion of their home. They took the opportunity to make some improvements which included the building of a new guest wing, and we had the privilege of being the first guests to use it. Netty Green also joined us for the evening, as did other friends of the McWilliams, John & Myrna Mowbray. Rob cooked some magnificent prawns for the main dinner dish and a good time was had by all.

Saturday morning we were up very early (it is already light by 5.30) and we went to Bluewater Bay beach for a walk along the shore and to the mouth of the Swartkops River with PE around the bay in the distance. Breakfast at the McWilliams and then back to town where we met Brian Rainbow and Peter & Jenny Aston for lunch at Barneys, a sports bar on the beachfront. In the evening we went out for an early evening meal with the Wolffs and Hendersons before returning to the Wolff’s flat to watch on TV the final of the 2007 World Cup Rugby in Paris at 9pm, where South Africa (Springboks) were playing England. The Springboks won 15-6 with all the scoring being from penalties, no “tries”(equivalent to an American football team winning a match with no touchdowns – pretty boring!). There is much celebration going on in SA as I write this blog as the “Boks” have just returned to Johannesburg from France. We had a little pool for predicting the winning score, which Alison won as she was the closest. We were late to bed.

Sunday we were up early as we had a very full schedule and needed to get moving. We had to pack everything as we were vacating the flat and would be making our way to East London. We stopped off at the Offermans and left a suitcase there as we did not want to take everything to East London.

I had contacted the people (Meneer J.D. Steyn) who had bought our home in Bluewater Bay (in 2004) and asked if we could visit them to see how the house now looked. Danie Steyn was very excited to have us come and look at the house which we did. It was a very emotional visit for me as I had owner-built the house over a two year period in 1973-75 and it had been quite a wrench to actually sell the house. Fortunately, Danie has made some terrific changes to the house, completely remodeling the kitchen and all the bathrooms, retiling all of the living area, adding a lapa, and building what I think is about the nicest home “pub” I have seen. The house really looks great. I was also able to inform Danie about the double front doors and the oak paneling in the entrance hall. I have promised to send him a series of photographs of me building the house. Danie and his wife said it is the nicest house they have ever lived in and they are there to stay. We are welcome to visit anytime, but please be sure to come when we can sit at the pub and have a few “dops”. It was a wonderful visit and something of a closure for me to see how great the house now looks. Danie was very happy to let me viseo, so I have got good video of all of the living area and Melanie & Clare's old bedrooms.

We were a bit behind schedule as we had to drive to King Williams Town, where we would be having lunch with Lorraine Rudolph. Alison and Lorraine were working side by side as conveyancing secretaries at the Borman. Scharges & Solomons law firm in PE when Alison received the phone call from the adoption agency in late September 1977 that our long-awaited baby (Clare) was available for us, and could we be at their office to receive her the next day. Lorraine saw Alison start to cry and was really concerned that she’d received some bad news; but of course it was tears of elation, and within a couple of hours the whole office staff, organized by Lorraine, were standing around Alison’s desk giving her a baby shower! Lorraine moved on to KWT a number of years ago, but her friendship with Alison has continued. She prepared a most enjoyable Sunday lunch, and it was a lovely visit.
On the way to KWT we were stopped by traffic police at a random road check where they checked driving licenses and car licenses. It was something of a shock to be told that the car license of our hire car (picked up on Oct. 16th) had expired at the end of September! Fortunately, the female traffic cop was sympathetic to our situation and declined to fine us R500, instead telling us to visit our car hire company in East London as soon as we could. We finally arrived at the Murphy’s home in East London at around 5pm, just in time to watch the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix, the last race of the season. Hamilton had another “incident” which resulted in him not winning the World Championship which he had looked set to do before the Shanghai Grand Prix two weeks ago. We got Chinese takeaways in for supper, reminiscent of the many Sunday evenings we shared with the Murphys at each others homes when we all lived in Port Elizabeth. We collapsed into bed after an exhilarating and exhausting day.

Monday Oct 15th – Tuesday Oct 16th (Bosches and Bosches)

2007-10-18T08:50:00.000-04:00

I didn’t mention that on Sunday we passed by the PE school last attended by Melanie when we lived here, Collegiate Girls’ High School, and Alison took at picture for memory’s sake.
On Monday I finally woke up feeling well enough to join Christian on his walk again and was more than pleased that I was able to. We then went to the home of Mark and Amanda Bosch for lunch, and met their children Jenna and Andrew, who were happily playing with their pet rabbits when we arrived. However, when it came to photograph time, as you will see, Jenna didn’t want to cooperate!. Mark is the son of Kenny & Lyn Bosch who also lived in Bluewater Bay all the time we were there. Mark, and his sisters Debbie & Kim, all went to the little Redhouse Primary School (at least 5 or 6 in a class!), as did Melanie for 5 years, and they were all in “Nippers” together (junior life saving club) and were friends and competitors. Mark is an entrepreneur and has a partnership in a large and well known game farm in the Eastern Cape area called Shamwari. Mark was off to France on Wednesday to watch the final of the World Cup Rugby – a last minute decision because the “Boks” got to the final. It was a nice visit.
After lunch we went once more to the internet café to post Sat & Sun on the blog. Alison bought a new pair of slippers as the Meyers’ Rotweiler had somehow got hold of one of hers and chewed it to pieces. Rather the slipper than me. In the evening, I joined the boys for “snooker night” and this time I was able to stay for the whole evening. This week we were joined by Brian Rainbow who had been overseas the previous Monday. We have known Brian and Gayle since 1968/69. A good time was had by all but I don’t think I played any better!

Tuesday morning, Christian had a bank appointment and did not walk. There was an absolutely howling south easter gale blowing, although the sky was blue, blue, blue. Alison and I braved the wind and walked along the beachfront towards Summerstrand. We noted that they are building Radisson time share units opposite where the old Summerstrand Hotel used to be (knocked down and replaced with other time share units). Perhaps I will get to use some of my Radisson points in the future as I earn plenty from my stays at the Radisson in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.
After a quick shower and “leftovers” for lunch, we headed out to the airport and returned the Toyota Avanza and replaced it with a Renault Clio. We did not need such a big car just for the two of us. Renting cars here is one of the few expenses that cost considerably more than it would in the USA. The Avanza was $60 a day and if you want unlimited mileage there is no discount for a monthly rental, so $1,800 for the month.

Tuesday evening we had dinner at a lovely restaurant in what was an old house in Cape Road, “Wicker Woods”, with the senior Bosches, Kenny & Lyn. They also brought another old Bluewater Bay resident and friend, Lerina Scott. We all go back many years: Kenny and Lyn to when Melanie was a baby, and Lyn & Alison took Kim and Melanie to the local clinic for weighing, immunizations, etc.; and Lerina to Clare’s first days at “play school” with Lerina’s son Sean, as well as being involved with us with the Bluewater Bay Methodists. Another lovely evening of reminiscing and catching up with old friends.

Saturday Oct.13th- Sunday Oct 14th (Port Elizabeth)

2007-10-16T11:08:00.000-04:00

I started the day still feeling lousy with my cold while Alison was feeling much better. We had a lazy morning in the apartment. At noon we picked up Sybil Jali from her flat in Havelock Street, PE, and drove back to the beachfront to have lunch at Café Dolce at the Boardwalk. We had an outside table as it was a sunny (but windy) day. Our connection with Sybil goes back many years to when she was still in high school, and came to work for us as a relief when our permanent nanny/housemaid, Patricia, had her annual holiday, usually over Christmas and New Year. Sybil’s own family weren’t interested in her continuing her education, and we supported her to the extent that she was able to attend Fort Hare University through grants we helped her obtain, and a bit of our own money. After student unrest at Fort Hare, we helped Sybil get transferred to the University of Cape Town, where she completed her studies and obtained a Social Studies degree to enable her to become a social worker. We’d already moved to Los Angeles when Sybil was at UCT, but with fundraising from members of the United Methodist Women group at our church, her last couple of years there were financed, and it was indeed a wonderful sight to see Sybil in her cap and gown upon graduation! Sybil married soon after she started work as a social worker in King Williams Town, not too far from her home village. However, the marriage ended after a few years, and Sybil has since lived and worked in PE. She’s at present working at the Retiree Help Desk at the General Motors plant in PE. Over the years she’s considered us to be her “parents” and calls us Ma and Pa. Not many people know we have a black African “daughter” aged 47! It appears, however, that Sybil was mixed up with an older sister when it became necessary for them to have birth certificates, because the paperwork reflects her older sister having been born in 1963, and Sybil in 1960. So it’s quite likely she’s only 44. Whatever her age, it’s been great to have stayed in touch over the years, and to see her whenever we are in PE.

After we had taken Sybil home, I had volunteered to see if I could help Christian with the music on his PC. He had a huge library of music on Musicmatch Jukebox software, but support for that software was recently discontinued and “turned off”. In the USA, we were able to automatically move it to Yahoo Jukebox. Apparently, this move was not supported in SA and so Christian could no longer play his “playlists” of music that is piped all over the house. I was able to find Windows Media Player in his “programs” and moved all his tracks into the library and he was back in business. We opened a bottle of champagne and Alison joined us in the celebration!

On Saturday night we went to Vic’s beachfront flat to watch the first semi-final of the World Cup Rugby, England v France. France were huge favorites and nobody expected England to win – but they did!

Sunday was another slow start to the day and I was still feeling lousy from my cold. At 11:15 we met Tandi Moni and her two sons, Paul and Wilson, at the Swartkops Police Station (just a well known landmark known to both parties!) and then we drove back to their home in Motherwell, another PE “suburb”. Tandi was married to John Moni whom we knew from the early 1970s when he was still a schoolboy and came to our house every weekend to help me in the garden and then ultimately helped me to build the house next door. Sadly, John passed away at 50 from the complications of diabetes. We have kept in touch with Tandi and are helping her to ensure that Wilson, with one more year in high school, gets a good education.

Sunday afternoon we had a reunion braai of the “ZOBO” club (Zwartkops Old Boys Organization), which is a name we gave ourselves for those “retired” members of Swartkops Round Table 195 who reached the age of 40 and thus had to retire as active members of Round Table. It was a fun afternoon and our host Arthur Ahlschlager had a detailed scrap book of all the various dinners, meetings, fund raising events, community service activities, etc., that we had been involved in over our active years. We were all laughing as we recalled different events from way back when!Sunday night we had planned to join Vic & Carol at Chippie & Pam Henderson’s to watch the second semi-final of World Cup Rugby – South Africa v. Argentina, but we were too tired and just watched it at the apartment. As expected, South Africa won fairly easily and will be playing England in the final next Saturday night. If you have followed earlier posts, you will have seen that South Africa has already played England because they were in the same “pool” of teams in the qualifying rounds (where all the teams in one pool play each other, and only the top two go through to the knockout section of the competition). South Africa annihilated England in this qualifying round, so England will have to play miraculously if they are going to stand a chance next weekend

Thursday Oct 11th - Friday Oct. 12th

2007-10-15T10:22:00.000-04:00

I wake up with Alison’s cold – how could that happen? Regardless, I still joined Christian for his 10K morning walk. Alison did some laundry and worked on a few photographs for the blog. Late morning we drove out to Theescombe, a rural area on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth in the Cape Town direction. We went to visit Leigh & Tony Parry. Leigh & Melanie met in primary school (Leigh had moved with her parents from Rhodesia to PE) and became best friends and rode together every weekend. Leigh & Tony traveled to the USA for Melanie & David’s wedding and was one of Melanie’s bridesmaids. They talk regularly on the phone. L&T have moved into their current home in the last year and it is quite lovely. She is able to keep her horses on the property instead of having to stable them elsewhere. The panoramic views from the house are astounding. L&T have two very friendly Rhodesian Ridgebacks. It was a nice visit and we will have to give a much more detailed report to Melanie!

I needed to post for the previous three days but had not completed the text so we went to a regular café and had coffee and a sandwich while I finished the blog text in Word. From there to the Internet café and we picked up email and posted the blog and then back to the apartment to change for our dinner engagement.
Tonight we were having dinner with Jorn & Sandy Bulbring, another PE couple with whom we have a long history. Sandy used to be Sandy Turpin and she and her former husband Dick lived in Bluewater Bay and we met them soon after we moved there in 1969. Jorn and I played on the same squash team together and became good friends. Sandy and Jorn met at a dinner party at our house in Bluewater Bay in 1974/75 (I’m sure they can remember the exact date) and they have now been married over 30 years and are going strong. We ate at a restaurant called “Madison on First”. Great food, service and atmosphere. Sandy and “Bully” thanked us once again for that introduction so long ago. It was a lovely evening.

Friday morning I woke up feeling the full effects of the cold I had caught and was unable to join Christian on his walk. Later when we finally arose, Marlies (who swims at the beach at 6:00 every morning all year round) told us that there were whales down at Kings Beach. Alison had been keen to walk to the harbor wall at the far end of Kings Beach anyway, so we took a walk along the beach and took some photographs. We did see the whales, but once again they are very difficult to photograph. We realized we could actually see the flat where we are staying from the beach.

At noon we were picked up by Pat & Judy Moffett. Pat was the Branch Manager for Burroughs Computers in PE in the late 70s early 80s and I was initially a customer and then a friend. We have kept in touch over the years. Although Pat was transferred to Johannesburg around 1982 and worked and lived there for over 20 years, he always wanted to “retire” to Port Elizabeth. Last time we were here in 2005, in conjunction with their daughter Sarah and her husband Ralph, they were developing a large wedding venue from scratch in the area of Lovemore Park on the outskirts of PE. This time we were able to see the finished product, but first we stopped off at Sea View for lunch at “Barnacles” overlooking the rocks and ocean. The wind was really howling and all the chokka (calamari) boats were inshore sheltering. We sat on the terrace of the restaurant and watched the dolphins surfing in the waves. After lunch we drove to “The Plantation” (http://www.theplantation.co.za/) and saw all the wedding facilities which are quite magnificent. They had a big wedding starting at 4pm and the banquet tables were all laid out for 150 people. There is also a wedding chapel on site. Pat & Judy have a beautiful home in the grounds, as do Sarah & Ralph with their children. P&J’s youngest son, Paul, also works at The Plantation so it is truly a family affair. Another son, Sean was visiting from Cape Town. We had a traditional SA braai in the evening and were joined by Sarah & Ralph when their supervisory duties of the staff allowed, but the children were with us for the whole evening. Another wonderful day with old friends.

Monday Oct 8th – Wednesday Oct 10th

2007-10-11T10:16:00.000-04:00

The start of three days of cold wet weather – thank goodness it wasn’t like this when Chris & Linda were here. Alison woke up with a nasty cold which was to get worse. I enrolled for a month at the Virgin Active gym. Although we will only be here for two weeks, at R470 a month it is cheaper than R95 a day if I go more than 5 times – motivation! I needed to post at the internet café but Alison was not feeling well and spent the afternoon in bed. I bought her Med-Lemon, SA “mootie” for colds & flu. In the main house where we are staying, there is an extremely large entertainment room on the ground floor, which, besides a very large bar, and casual dining facilities, includes a full size English snooker table. Our host, Christian Meyer has a snooker evening every Monday and Vic Wolff is one of the players. Although we were going out for dinner at 6.30, I met the snooker guys for “one drink” at 6.00 – which turned into one game of snooker. Due to some very bad play and only Vic actually sinking any balls, the game lasted longer than anticipated so when I returned to the apartment above the garage to pick up Alison, I was late and in trouble! We had dinner at the home of Peter & Jenny Aston and they another guest, Colin Trader. Colin is 85 years old but looks much younger. When I told him that, long ago, I had crossed the finishing line of the Karoo 50 miler marathon with a Roger Trader, he confirmed that that was his son! We had a lovely evening with them. I will find the photograph of us crossing the line together, hands held high in the air in elation at finishing, and send it to him.

Christian Meyer is a walker and on the Monday evening we agreed that I would join him at 8.30 on Tuesday morning which I did. We walked 10K along the beach and back (5K each way – 6 ¼ miles – Alison stayed in bed to help her cold. We went to a Rotarian lunch at the PE Club as the guests of Arthur Ahlschlager where we met a number of old Round Tablers and other friends – Ross Kobus, Cameron Scott, Tony Oshry, Vaughn Giles, Philip Shaw, Peter Long. We stopped at the internet café on the way back to pick up email. Vic was coming to the apartment at 5pm to sort out some accounting for the first two weeks of our trip but we had an area wide power outage at about 4pm (after all, this is Africa). Fortunately, it didn’t last too long after 5pm and Vic and I were able to allocate various receipts to participating parties so that we can send them a “statement of account”. We picked up Carol at about 7.35 and when to an Italian restaurant in the Casino/Bordwalk complex and had pizza and red wine – a great combination.

Wednesday I walked again with Christain and then Alison and I went off to lunch at the PE Golf Club where we met Tony & Christine Oshry. Tony was at Shatterprufe when I joined them in October 1968. Also Ross Kobus, who is a well known PE vet, and Pat & Cameron Scott. Pat is the sister of Frank Thompson who I sailed with at the Swartkops Yacht Club in the late 60s, early 70s. A nice lunch and great to see old friends again, but just not enough time to catch up with everyone. Back to the apartment via the internet café and as we drove along the beachfront we noticed (not difficult) that the traffic lights were not working and surmised that we had another power outage. This was confirmed when our remote wouldn’t open the gate at the Meyer’s home. Because it was still light, Marlies (who was playing bridge with her ladies) had no idea there was a power outage and it was only when I called her on her cell phone and said we were stuck outside in the street that she found out. The gates were changed to manual mode and we drove in. I was feeling the effects of my morning walk and “had a rest” while Alison worked on some photographs for the blog. This evening we went to our log-time friend Netty Green’s for dinner with invited guests Cris Tinley and Rob & Jenny McWilliams, all of whom we have known for almost 40 years. Chris was Managing Director of Shatterprufe where I worked for 17 years and he was instrumental in moving me in 1985 to Solaglas in Los Angeles, USA. He swears that it wasn’t to get me out of his hair! Considering how much it must have cost to move the whole family and containers, I think he is telling the truth. It was a great (and late) evening.

PS. We have just had a cell phone call from Marlies - the power is out again (third day in a row) so the gates are not working (This is definitely Africa!).

Thursday Oct 4th – Sunday Oct 7th - Sundays River/PE

2007-10-08T09:37:00.000-04:00

Thursday we had a quiet day on our own, writing the blog for the previous few days and preparing the photographs for posting (the elephants!). Late afternoon we drove into PE to the internet café to make the post and pick up email. From there we went to the Humewood Golf Club where we had arranged to meet another old friend and one time work colleague, Jim Gray. Jim belongs to a fraternity known as the “Dipsomaniacs” who meet once a month to play golf, playing at different courses in the area. We returned home for dinner.

(Photo omitted from a previous post).
Friday, I drove into PE to have lunch with members of the “Springbok Stein Club” (notice that these fraternities all have names related to drinking!). I was chairman of the club in 1976 and was impressed to find that a number of members at that time were still attending, including Ross Clements, who at 72 looks 10 years younger, also, “Porky” Connor, from whom we bought Alison’s second engagement ring (she lost the first one in a big surf at the beach). It was good to see them again. In the evening we drove to the home of Jim & Debbie Gray and had a drink before leaving to have dinner at a restaurant called “The Butcher’s Block”, owned by James & Jenny Mackenzie whose wedding we went to around 30 years ago. We had a great meal and then returned back to J&Ds, where we talked very late before retiring (as planned).

Saturday morning we watched the qualifying rounds of the Chinese F1 Grand Prix and Hamilton, to everyone’s surprise, ended up in the pole position once again. After breakfast, we went back to Sundays where I had a date with Bernie Hoffman for one last fishing trip on the river. I got very lucky and caught a very nice spotted grunter measured at 65cm (you do the conversion). At 3pm we (including Bernie) were settled into our seats in front of the TV to watch one of the quarter finals matches of the World Cup rugby, England vs. Australia, in which England had an unexpected, but deserved victory. This was followed by an early braai as the second quarter final started at 9pm – New Zealand v France. France won the game in another unexpected upset.
Sunday was moving day, but first the Chinese F1 Grand Prix at 8am, which was extremely exciting and ending disastrously for Hamilton as he left the “track” while actually on pit row, got stuck in the gravel and had to retire. This means that the World Championship Driver will be decided at the final race of the season in Brazil in two weeks time, with three drivers competing for the title. We piled everything into our rental vehicle and drove to our new accommodation in PE, a little self-catering apartment near the beachfront, in the grounds of the home of our “hosts”, Christian & Marlies Meyer. All this had to be completed in time for us to get to Vic & Carol’s by 3pm when the big quarter final of the weekend was to take place, Springboks v Fiji. Another old friend, “Chippie” Henderson joined us to watch the game. The Springboks were huge favorites and were leading 13-3 at half time, but with 15 minutes to go the game was tied at 20-20. The Springboks went on to win by a comfortable margin but they certainly had their fans and themselves worried that another upset was on the cards. After the game, Chippie’s wife Pam joined us and the six of us had dinner at a beachfront restaurant, the Bluewaters Cafe. A misnomer considering the weather conditions that day.

Apologies that there are few photographs, but the game park and sight seeing side of our travels are over for a while and now it is all about meeting old friends and former colleagues, most of whom will only be known by Melanie and possibly Clare who was only seven when we left SA.

Friday, Sept.28th to Wednesday, Oct. 3rd – Sundays River/PE

2007-10-04T10:10:00.000-04:00

(Posted Oct 4th in Port Elizabeth )
Friday, Vic arrived at Sundays in the morning to check that everything was okay and then I followed him back into PE and then took him and Carol to the airport for their flight to Johannesburg where they would be met once again by Ted & Marilyn Turner and would travel with them next day into Botswana and on to the confluence of the Chobe and Zambezi rivers where they would be spending seven days on a luxury houseboat, fishing and game viewing. From the airport I went straight to the Virgin Active gym and had a weights workout for the only time since our arrival in SA. When we move into PE next Sunday, I intend to go regularly for the next two weeks (promises, promises!). From there a quick visit to another Internet café to check email and then back to Sundays where we had a quiet afternoon and an evening braai with just the three of us.

The next morning we drove down the road, through a caravan park and found our way to the Sundays River mouth by road – previously we have always gone in Vic’s boat by river to get to the mouth. We walked on the beach, normally deserted, but that day there was a fishing competition going on, with fisherman at intervals all along the beach casting into the surf. We didn’t see anyone catch anything – just like Myrtle Beach.
At noon, I met up with an old friend, Warwick Owen and we drove into PE to the Algoa Bay Yacht Club where he was meeting with members of a fraternity known as the “Rum Club” (draw your own conclusions). The first person he introduced me to replied “I remember you, you played scrum half (a rugby version of quarterback) for Crusaders” – seeing that was around 1968-1970, I thought he had a pretty good memory and also that I couldn’t look that different! I also bumped into some other old acquaintances, Peter & Jenny Aston, who wanted to know where Alison was and want us to get together when we move to PE – we look forward to it. Back to Sundays River and a quiet afternoon before going out to a local restaurant at the “Elephants Foot Lodge” for dinner.

On Sunday morning we drove into PE to the Walmer Park shopping center and I did some blog posting while the ladies shopped for the braai we were having in the afternoon. We had Warwick & Lyn Owen, Arthur & Bev Ahlschlager and Eppity Dodd out to Sundays (these names will mean nothing to most of you readers, but they will certainly be known by Melanie, Clare and possibly a few others). We had a great afternoon “Reminiscing” (Little River Band!). Our guests left and we watched South Africa play USA in World Cup Rugby. I had been wondering how USA could field a rugby side and a statistic was given that only two of the USA side where natural born Americans, the rest were “imports”. The USA team acquitted itself well, but lost by a substantial margin.

Monday (Oct.1st), we were up early to drive to the Addo Elephant National Park (www.addoelephantpark.co.za) where we had a game drive booked for 9am. A short history: This area (Eastern Cape) was teeming with wildlife when the first Europeans arrived, including thousands of elephants. Hunting for ivory began in earnest in the early 1700s and by the 1900s hunters had exterminated most of the remaining elephants (The last black rhino in the Eastern Cape was shot in 1880 and the last lion in 1879). In 1931, the Addo Elephant National Park was proclaimed, at which time, there were only 11 elephants remaining in the whole of the Eastern Cape. Today there are over 400 elephants in the Park as well as other wildlife that was originally native to this area. The Park has been expanded considerably over the years since we lived in PE, and in fact there is now an entrance within a mile or two from where we are staying in Sundays River.

Our game drive lasted for 2 hours and our guide was very knowledgable. After the game drive, we had lunch and then went back into the park in our own vehicle and had more terrific eleohpant sightings at the waterholes.

It was a wonderful day and Angela enjoyed herslef thoroughly and considered this day to be one of the highlights of her holiday. The photographs say it all.

Tuesday, Alison & I went into PE to make travel bookings and also did some blog posting. Angela elected to stay at Sundays, sitting on the deck to enjoy the view and peacefulness of the river. In the afternoon I went fishing with Bernie Hoffman on his boat in the river, and we had a few bites and caught one undersize grunter – it was fun though. Bernie stopped by for a couple of beers and we had a quiet evening.

Wednesday was Angela’s day to fly back to the UK. The time with her has flown by and it feels as though she has jjust arrived. We drove into PE with her packed bags in the car and, after visiting the Internet café to get her an assigned seat on the international flight, took her to the Boardwalk and Casino complex to show her a bit of the tourist side of PE. She thought it looked quite “American”. Lunch on the beachfront and then off to the airport for fond farewells and her flight to Cape Town and then on to Heathrow. (We have just had a phone call from her that she is safely home in Coventry.) We returned to Sundays for a quiet evening at “home”.

Saturday, Sept 22nd-Thursday, Sept.27th – Sedgefield

2007-10-02T06:40:00.000-04:00

(Posted in Port Elizabeth on Oct. 2nd..)
From “The Retreat”, we drove via Oudtshoorn over the Outeniqua Pass into George and on to Sedgefield – not more than a two hour drive. We were staying at the vacation home of our long time SA friends, Wout & Vilia Offerman (see earlier blog). Vilia is an artist (water colors) and had an exhibition on in Port Elizabeth, so initially, they had not thought they would be able to join us and had given us the key when we had visited them with Chris & Linda. Fortunately, the exhibition was a huge success and Vilia decided she could get away for a few days and they had come to Sedgefield and got the house ready for our arrival – many thanks! Sedgefield is an old small (but growing fast) holiday resort on the SA coast between George and Kynsna. It has miles of sandy beaches and a large lagoon which alternates between being open or closed to the sea, depending upon shifting sands and rainfall (floods) that block or clear the opening where the lagoon meets the sea.

After spending time catching up on the latest respective family news, we sat down to a lovely roast lamb dinner. It had turned quite cold, so much so that Wout lit a fire and we were all very cozy.

Sunday (cold wind and a bit rainy) we first drove to the beach to investigate the remains of a fishing boat that had sailed from Mossel Bay, sprung a leak at sea and the crew had been rescued by a passing trawler. The boat then ended up on the beach at Sedgefield, quite a distance from Mossel Bay. As you will see from the photograph, it doesn’t look as though the fishing boat was seaworthy enough to be in a backyard pond, let alone the open sea! We then took a look at the latest building developments going on in Sedgefield; they are building huge holiday homes along the shore there, wherever they can find an empty lot or an old home that they can buy and demolish to make way for a mansion. From there we drove to Wilderness (see earlier photograph on our way to De Hoop), had coffee at “Timberlake”, a little development at the side of the road with a few “specialty shops” to attract passing traffic. From there we found the trailhead of the “Brown-hooded Kingfisher Trail”, which we had come to walk. The rain held off and we enjoyed our walk before returning to Sedgefield for an evening braai where we grilled in the Weber on the stoep due to “rain and cold”.

Monday Sept 24th (our 41st wedding anniversary) was an SA public holiday “Heritage Day”. I had gone to the little Sedgefield Internet café on Saturday at 5PM to make a post to the blog, but it was closing and wouldn’t open again until Monday. I was behind with the blog (still am!) and was “desperate” to make a post but had to wait until Monday. I posted every day for the next four days to catch up as much as possible. We walked to the “Sedgefield Arms” to check if they would be open for dinner and then made a reservation and we also walked around the lagoon/vlei and then watched the final of the World Series 20/20 cricket between India and Pakistan (India won) before setting out to the Sedgefield Arms for a lovely anniversary dinner.

Tuesday morning, Wout and Vilia left to drive back to PE as Wout had a meeting he needed to attend. After breakfast, the three of us drove to the “Gericke’s Point” access parking lot and made the walk to the Point. This walk is best done at low tide to avoid being “cut off”! It is a very enjoyable walk (more rock pools, but a lot more exposed to the public!). On our return I did more internet posting and then we had lunch at the Fynbos Pub & Grill. We all settled down on the stoep to do some reading after lunch and later had “leftovers” for supper. A nice day.

Wednesday was our designated day to drive to Knysna (after another visit to the Internet café) where we stopped in to see the sister (Margaret) of Bob Meyer (a South African from Nelspruit, a town close to the southwestern edge of Kruger Park and quite near the Berg-en-Dal Rest Camp) who now lives with his daughter, Cathy, in our Palmetto Greens development in Myrtle Beach. Margaret is 81 years old and welcomed us as though we had been her brother himself. We visited Kynsna Heads, a natural narrow opening from the Kynsna lagoon to the sea, used by fishing and pleasure boats whose captains are experienced enough to negotiate the passage.

We also visited the “Pezula” golfing estate where Roger Federer has built a holiday home amongst many other “rich and famous”. The golf course looks fantastic and the homes match the golf course. We had lunch at Bosun’s Grill and then drove to Belvidere where we visited the beautiful Holy Trinity Church built in miniature of the Norman style and consecrated in 1855. To balance things out, we then visited “The Bell”, a lovely cottage type pub just down the street from the church. Back to Sedgefield and more “leftovers” for supper.

Thursday we packed up & closed up W&V’s vacation home and after one last trip to the Internet café, started our journey to Port Elizabeth. As we drove on the N2 (National road) at Plettenberg Bay, we almost ran into a huge sow that just ambled across the road in front of us, with no owner or caretaker in sight. A little later, we stopped at the Bloukrans River bridge, “The World’s highest bungy bridge” to see if anyone was jumping. We were not disappointed – three brave ladies jumped one after the other into the chasm below. Hopefully, you can make out the speck in the photo.On to PE where we had planned to be at the gallery showing Vilia’s paintings before the exhibition closed that afternoon. We arrived and were joined shortly by Wout & Vilia. While we were waiting and viewing the paintings, the custodian of the gallery told us she had never seen red stickers (sold) on as many paintings before. Well done Vilia. We drove back to W&V’s home for tea/coffee before driving to Vic & Carol’s PE beachfront flat/apartment to pick up the key for their Sundays River weekend home before driving out there via the Bluewater Bay “Pick N Pay” supermarket where we stocked up on provisions for our stay.

Thursday, Sept. 20th-21st. Somerset West to (and at) “The Retreat at Groenfontein”.

2007-09-30T04:07:00.000-04:00

Posted in Port Elizabeth (our old home town) on Sept. 30th.

Moving Day! We were off on the next leg of our vacation. We traveled up the N2 from SW to Swellendam and then took the Tradouw Pass over to Barrydale. For those who were with us in 2005, this is the pass that was closed and caused a major diversion for us. This year it was open and was a spectacular drive. We stopped at a view point and Angela fell in love with a dassie. We stopped for lunch in Barrydale at “Clarke’s of the Karoo”. I detected an English accent from the proprietor and on enquiry, he revealed that he came out to South Africa “with McBride’s (19)75 lions and decided to stay”. I did not have the temerity to ask him if he was a player or a spectator! A very annoying “feature” of all the roads we are traveling in SA is how many of them are under repair. When they repair the road, they close down the side of the road they are repairing for miles and make the other side a one way road. Then they have a stop sign for one end of the section while they let the vehicles at the other end through and the line of vehicles gets longer and longer until all the vehicles have come through and then you get to go down the single lane. These “stops” have notices that say “Wait time 30 minutes” (people get out of their cars and chat to each other) – and some of these are so called National Roads – the equivalent of Interstates! We encountered one of these after leaving Barrydale, which, in fairness is not a National Road.

On to Calitzdorp and then 20K of dirt road and we arrived at “The Retreat at Groenfontein”, a little piece of heaven on earth! (http://www.groenfontein.com) We were met by our hostess, Marie Burton and after moving suitcases to our rooms, went for an evening stroll before dinner. The Retreat is a guest house (a converted farmhouse) in the middle of the “Karoo”. It is dominated by the close proximity of the Swartberg Mountains, while being surrounded be smaller hills/mountains as well. It is a place of utter peace and tranquility, with only the birds and running water in the streams to hear.

Our host, Grant Burton joined us on the veranda for sundowners and then, as is their custom, Marie & Grant joined us for dinner. The main course that evening was an ostrich casserole which was delicious. Fortunately, it was a beautiful evening and we were able to have dinner on the veranda. By chance, we were the only guests on this particular night, so we were able to catch up on all the news of The Retreat with Grant & Marie and enjoy some good wine with them. We slept well!

An excellent new feature of The Retreat is the fact that that Grant has gone out into the surrounding hills following the animal paths, marking them and clearing them where they may be a bit overgrown or dangerous. He has created linking paths from farm paths and created a map of all the trails around The Retreat. There is a Green Lizard Trail, a Yellow Lizard, Klipspringer, Baboon and others, each of different lengths and difficulty (don’t try the Baboon Trail unless you can climb like one!). The trails are also interlinked, so you can join one trail from another and make it a longer walk. By walking all the trails, you can actually walk a complete circle around the farm buildings and view it from all the high points on the surrounding hills. The next morning, this is what I set out to do.

Alison & Angela started out with me on the Blue Lizard Trail, which was a good walk for them just by itself. When we were at a point where I was sure they could find their way back to the house, I left them and continued on each of the trails mentioned above. I had been planning to get back by 1PM but not being a baboon (no comments please), took a little longer on that trail than I anticipated (I couldn’t find the way down!). Anyway, as I arrived back at the lodge, I saw Grant on the veranda with his binoculars, but he may have just been looking at the birds! We had a very nice lunch followed I think by a siesta.

Marie had been telling us about the Rock Pool Trail which we thought we had already completed the evening before and is an old trail that we have done before. However, having now seen a drawing of the trail in map form, we realized that what we thought was the rock pool was actually about 600 yards short of the real rock pool, which was across the stream we had stopped at, across yet another stream and then a scramble across more rocks, to find the “real” rock pool at the bottom of a small waterfall.
Marie told us this rock pool was deep enough to take a plunge in and we should give it a try, subtly inferring that we didn’t need to take any swimming gear. Alison and I set out once again on the Rock Pool Trail and this time we went all the way! We were trying to set up the camera so that we could take a picture of us together in the rock pool, but it proved impossible due to the downward slope of the rocks and if we put the camera any further away, I wouldn’t have made it back to the pool before the timer went off. All this palaver was going on while we were absolutely “kaalgat”, shivering with cold, and laughing hysterically. Eventually, we had to take pictures of each other in the pool individually, but I cheated a bit and took pictures of Alison before she actually immersed herself in the pool. I am going to sell them on eBay. It was great fun (who said we were old)?

Back to the house for sundowners and dinner again. Of course we had to show the pictures to prove we had been in the pool – from the look on Grant’s face I think I showed him the wrong picture!
This night there were other guests, a couple from Knysna who were there for the first time. They had only checked in 90 minutes before dinner but had already tried to extend their stay for a third night – to no avail as the guest house was full – such is the lure of The Retreat.

I have also almost totally neglected to inform everyone of the number of photographs of birds that Alison has taken on this trip so far. In Kruger, it was at least one bird for every animal and far too many to put on the blog. However, we will find space for the lovely Malachite Sunbird in the garden at The Retreat.

Grant and Marie have two pure bred Staffordshire Bull Terriers and of course Alison also fell in love with them. When they look at you with those sad eyes, they sure look a lot like Clare’s Meathead.

We left the next morning with promises of returning in 2009!

Wednesday, Sept. 19th. Vic & Carol’s last day with us for a while.

2007-09-27T04:06:00.000-04:00

(Posted on Sept. 27th at Sedgefield) Having set the alarm, Vic & I were up early and were at the “Helderburg” gates just after 7am. We got to the parking lot and then started up one of the trails that led up from the parking lot, not paying too much attention to which trail we were on – bad idea! There was very thick mist and low cloud this particular morning so it was difficult to know exactly where we were, but we knew we had to go up. We finally found what we assume now was the right path and 75 minutes later we were at the highest point we could attain given our time restraint. The whole of the Somerset West and Strand area was completely covered, with only the mountains showing majestically through the clouds. I have included a second photograph, taken at a later time, showing approximately the same view and the same mountains without the clouds.

The ladies were waiting for us when we returned and after a quick shower and packing Vic & Carol’s luggage into the SUV, we headed out for Hout Bay where we had decided to have lunch. For Nostalgia’s sake, we drove the route of the “Two Oceans marathon”, which Vic and I had run many times (only 35 miles!). Our plan was thwarted when we got to one of the most difficult parts of the course, but also one of the most beautiful, Chapman’s Peak was closed because of rock falls – gives you some idea of the terrain in that area. We diverted and found another route to Hout Bay where we had a lovely lunch at the Mariners Wharf. By the time we finished lunch it was time for us to make haste once more to Cape Town International where Vic & Carol would leave us to fly back to Port Elizabeth. We will see them in eight or nine days when we return to PE by road (making some stops along the way).

When we were at the Helderberg Nature Reserve, Vic & I saw what must be one of the most beautiful Proteas in bloom that we have seen and I wanted Alison to see it, so after dropping off V&C we went straight to the reserve and Alison took a photo of the Protea. She and Angela liked the reserve very much and would have liked to have spent more time there but it closed at 5.30 and the next morning we would be on our way.

Tuesday, Sept.18th. Once more up Table Mountain

2007-09-27T03:49:00.000-04:00

(Posted on Sept. 27th at Sedgefield) Angela visited us in South Africa in 1978 and Alison brought her to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth, but the weather was never good enough to go up Table Mountain. Fortunately, she had better luck this time. We dropped Vic & Carol at the Waterfront and made arrangements to meet them for lunch, then headed up the mountain. Because every day had been clear since we went up with Chris & Linda, the lines were normal and we were soon in a cable car on our way to the top. This time, Alison and I wanted to make a hike of it so after walking for a while with Angela, we set out to walk to Maclear’s Beacon at the back of the mountain, overlooking False Bay and back over Somerset West and Gordon’s Bay. It turned out to be much further than we thought so it took us longer than we intended to be away.

We then joined Vic & Carol at Quay Four, the name of a fish restaurant. Alison was particularly impressed with the fish that she had – Dorado. Back to Somerset West and Vic & I investigated how we might be able to walk up part of the mountain (subsequently determined to be named “Helderberg”) that we could see from our residence. After walking and asking, we found that the gates to the “Helderberg Nature Reserve” were within driving distance of our house and that they open at 7 AM. We were determined to rise early and make an attempt to take a good walk up Helderberg mountain.

Monday, Sept 17th, Wine tasting and lunch at Franschhoek

2007-09-26T05:13:00.000-04:00

(Posted on Sept. 26th at Sedgefield) On this day, Vic had arranged for the five of us to have a private wine tasting at a winery called Boekenhoutskloof in the Franschhoek Valley. Vic’s company distributes their wine in the Eastern Cape area so we were well looked after and the wine tasting was conducted by the winemaker himself, Rudiger Gretschel. Coincidentally, one of the red blends that they make is called The Wolftrap, which as you can imagine, is a popular table wine in the Wolff household. A bottle of The Wolftrap retails at about R32, or under $5 to those in the USA. One can easily buy a bottle of wine here to accompany a nice dinner at a price between R50-R100 ($7-$14). We also tasted some of Boekenhoutskloof premium wines, one of which was called “Chocolate Block” which was superb and cost R140 ($20). I bought four bottles, but don’t get excited, they won’t be coming back to the USA!

From Boekenhoutskloof, we drove a short distance round the Franschhoek Valley to have lunch at a restaurant called “La Petite Ferme”, which is situated in a most beautiful spot overlooking the whole valley. The photographs cannot do it justice. (http://www.lapetiteferme.co.za/). We had drinks on the lawn and lunch on the terrace.
After lunch, we stopped on our way home to Somerset West in Stellenbosch at the Lanzerac winery and I bought three bottles of Lanzerac rose, one of Alison’s old favorites from our early days in SA.
Back home to watch more 20/20 cricket and a light supper before bed!

Sunday, Sept 16th, Angela (Alison’s sister) arrives from England

2007-09-26T05:06:00.000-04:00

(Posted Sept. 26th in Sedgefield).

Early morning Alison & I left for Cape Town International once more, this time to pick up Alison’s sister Angela, who had taken an overnight flight from Heathrow to Cape Town. We had a quiet day in Somerset West with the two sisters catching up on their latest news and me trying to write up a few days for the blog! Sunday evening was another showdown between England and South Africa, this time in the World cricket limited overs (20-20) championship (which SA also won). Interestingly, the USA has a side in the World Cup Rugby champs, but not in the cricket champs. Vic cooked two whole chickens on the Weber braai for supper.

Saturday, Sept. 15th, (Clare’s 30th birthday). Goodbye to Chris & Linda

2007-09-26T04:53:00.000-04:00

(Posted Sept. 26th in Sedgefield) We were up early, but not as early as C&L, although they had done the majority of their packing on Friday night. We left the house just after 8.30 as we were also returning the VW microbus at the Cape Town International airport as well as putting Chris & Linda on their flight to Johannesburg. We replaced the VW with a smaller vehicle - a Toyota SUV (an Avanza – a model not available in the USA). We were sad to see C&L leave, but know that they considered their experience in SA the vacation of a lifetime. We certainly enjoyed their company and their enthusiasm for everything they saw.

We went out to lunch at the Oak Tree Restaurant on the Lourensford Wine Estate, one of many, many wineries in the Somerset West, Stellenbosch, Paarl and general Cape Region. From there we returned to watch the World Cup rugby match that all the SA fans had been waiting for – the Springboks v England. It was annihilation in SA’s favor.

Friday, Sept 14th, Table Mountain and “The Waterfront” (The Umbles’ last full day).

2007-09-25T07:07:00.000-04:00

(Posted Sept. 25th, Sedgefield). The danger of only having one full day in Cape Town is that the weather could be bad and there would be no point or fun in going up Table Mountain. Fortunately, we woke up on Friday morning to glorious sunshine. Unfortunately, there had been bad weather all week in Cape Town so every tourist in town headed to the cableway on Friday morning, so there were long lines and quite a long wait. However, once we got in the cable car, we all forgot about the wait and enjoyed the moment and the views. Spectacular as always!

From the Cableway, we went to Cape Town’s second most popular attraction, “The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront” down at the harbor. We had lunch at a favorite pub & restaurant of Vic’s, “Ferrymans Tavern”, followed by shopping for those inclined. We got back to SW in time for sundowners and then Vic cooked the snoek to perfection on a Weber braai. Another great day.

Thursday, Sept. 13th, De Hoop to Cape Town (Somerset West).

2007-09-25T06:53:00.000-04:00

(Posted Sept. 25th in Sedgefield)

We got an early start on our way to Somerset West as we had decided to take the scenic coast route instead of going back inland. We went through Bredasdorp, which is just 30K from Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the African Continent. We stopped in Stanford at the Birkenhead Brewery and as it was only five minutes to opening time, waited until 10AM and then had a beer tasting as opposed to a wine tasting, although there was also a winery in the grounds. From there we went to Hermanus (another famous whale spotting town, but we didn’t see any whales that morning), Betty’s Bay, on to False Bay (a body of water) and into Gordon’s Bay where we had lunch at a pub in the little fishing harbor.
After lunch, we went to Strand where we picked up some snoek (a Cape Town specialty fish) for our next braai, and then on into SW, where we moved into Carol’s brother’s vacation home – a very, very nice vacation home!
After settling in, we went out for the evening to the Spier Winery to a restaurant called Moyo. The restaurant is in a large marquee and has an African theme with symbolic hand washing at the table, face painting, African style blankets on every chair to put around your shoulders and, of course, African music and dancing as entertainment. Naturally, the food was also (South) African, and was served buffet style from multiple stations serving different categories of dishes (fish, curry, braai, stew, etc.) along one side of the marquee. It was well done and a very fun evening. (See www.moyo.co.za)

Tuesday, Wednesday, Sept. 11th, 12th, Sundays River to De Hoop Nature Reserve

2007-09-24T04:45:00.000-04:00

(Posted at Sedgefield on Sept. 24th). On Tuesday morning we drove to the airport in Port Elizabeth and picked up a VW microbus that we would use to transport the six of us with luggage to De Hoop and then on to Cape Town. We repacked and got on our way down the “Garden Route” en route to De Hoop, a journey of about 650K, of which the last 60-70K is on dirt roads. Our accommodation was in self-catering cottages and was very nice. We had two adjacent cottages and set up one as the main base where we would eat. The reserve contains the 15K long De Hoop Vlei: “A wetland of international importance for migratory birds. Of the 260 bird species recorded, 97 are waterbirds, etc." The vlei was formed by a river mouth being cut off by sand dunes.

In addition to the birds, there are many species of antelope in the reserve, including the bontebok which is indigenous to the area, but was almost hunted to extinction until the remaining 22 where protected by being placed in a reserve.

Although we were interested in both bird and game viewing, our main hope of coming to De Hoop was to see the whales! Quoting the tour guide: “The waters off De Hoop have the largest concentration of southern right whales along the South African coast and the reserve offers superb vantage points for viewing these majestic creatures”. We were not disappointed. On Wednesday morning when we got to the shoreline, we were able to see many, many whales in the shallow blue water along the coast. These whales have come into the bay to calf, so do not “jump” and thrash about, but they are quite clearly visible and “blow” huge spouts of water into the air. Unfortunately, they are also very difficult to photograph and I don’t think we have a “great” picture of the whales to show you. They are much easier to follow in the video.
It was another great day.

Monday, Sept. 10th, Sundays River and Port Elizabeth

2007-09-24T04:40:00.000-04:00

(Posted in Sedgefield, Sept. 24th).

Monday morning I used Carol’s car to drive Chris, Linda, Alison and myself into Port Elizabeth to have morning coffee (elevenses) with Wout & Vilia Offerman, whom we have known since 1969 when we moved into the area where they then lived, Bluewater Bay, and became neighbors. On our way into town, we stopped in Bluewater Bay to show C&L where we used to live in a street called Maureen Circle, first at No.18 which we rented and where we lived when Melanie was born, then to No.7 which we bought, then to No. 4 which we rented from Wout and Vilia while we finished building No.9, where we had bought the plot next door to No.7 and decided to owner-build. It took us two years! All of our moving was done by carrying our furniture across or down the street! We also drove along Amsterdamhoek and into the village of Swartkops where we used to shop and where Clare went to primary school. Nostalgia!

We had a lovely visit with W&V and then went on to a local shopping center to make a few purchases (Chris already needed a new San Disk for his camera and would go on to need more!).

We returned to Sundays River and later took a boat trip up the river where we had “sundowners” and watched the birds. We saw a goliath heron which I was not aware could be found in this area – we had seen them in Kruger Park. Another lovely day.

Sunday, Sept. 9th, East London to Sundays River.

2007-09-24T04:27:00.000-04:00

(Posted in Sedgefield, Sept 24th).

After a leisurely breakfast on Sunday morning, Barry drove Alison and I along the coast route from East London to Sundays River, Vic & Carol’s “weekend cottage” about 15 miles from Port Elizabeth.

We stopped at Port Alfred and bought some assorted pies for lunch for the whole group. We arrived at Sundays about 2pm. Meanwhile, Vic & Carol had taken Chris &Linda down to Sundays River Mouth in their boat (a big inflatable dingy with a big enough engine that they can go out to sea), and they all walked on the deserted beach and on the sand dunes. On the way back from the mouth they passed Bernie Hoffman who used to work with Vic and is now retired. Bernie was fishing and subsequently caught a nice sized spotted grunter and stopped by Vic’s jetty to display his catch. Vic told Bernie we were having a braai (barbecue) that evening and he was invited on the condition that he brought the fish – the deal was sealed.

We all had a pie lunch and then settled in to watch some serious sport. There was a Formula One Grand Prix followed by the Springboks playing Samoa in World Cup Rugby and following a great braai, we watched Federer win the US Open Tennis.

Saturday, Sept 8th, Shaun Murphy& Nikki Hare’s Wedding Day

2007-09-24T04:00:00.000-04:00

(Posted in Sedgefield on Sept. 24th - Our 41st Anniversary).

On Saturday morning, having not yet had a chance to post anything about our trip to Kruger, we asked Barry to drop us at a local internet “shop” where I could hook up my laptop and get going on a post. There are no places here like Panera Bread or Starbucks where you can get a cup of coffee and then be wireless on the internet for as long as you like at no charge. Although they may call them internet cafés, there is no coffee and there is an hourly rate for using the internet. As I am writing this now at a lovely guest house in the mountains, there is only a “land line” and they have to use “dial up” to pick up their emails (during which their phone line for bookings is “busy”). I won’t be posting here! We were at the “café” until 1.30 and the wedding was at 3pm.

The wedding went off perfectly at 3pm and I am not going to attempt to go into great detail as most of you won’t know the people involved. This is a post that needs pictures rather than words. I can say that the bride giggled her way though her vows, which the priest took all in his stride. It was a nice service.

The reception was held on the beachfront at a swank restaurant, and undoubtedly, the bride’s father will be in debt for the rest of his life! Shaun’s groomsmen (there were three of them – his old school mates) made excellent speeches, with lines like “No one has ever questioned Shaun’s intelligence --- in fact, no one has ever mentioned it!” There were stories told of Shaun’s schoolboy escapades that had remained unknown to his parents, one of which involved Shaun returning and reinstalling street signs under police supervision! Other stories told where somewhat risqué and cannot be repeated here as this blog can be read by young children.

The reception was first class. It was early Sunday morning before we retired to bed.

Friday, Sept 7th (Posted Sept.20th!)

2007-09-20T03:06:00.000-04:00

Our time in the Kruger National Park had come to an end, it was time to move on. As planned, the two groups split up and Vic, Carol, Chris & Linda left in the hired SUV to begin their journey to PE via a little town called Clarens in the (what used to be called) Free State. They had a 600K journey to make and would be skirting the Lesotho Mountains on their way.
Alison and I traveled in Ted Turner’s car with Diane and we drove back to Joburg, about a five hour journey arriving at Ted’s home at about 1.30 PM. There’s all sorts of construction going on around Joburg in preparation for the 2010 World Cup Soccer which SA is hosting. They are even building an underground “Metro” or “T” from Joburg to Pretoria and there is lots of blasting going on and they close sections of the freeways while they blast. It is a mess and nobody we met thought they would be ready!
I mention this because we had been held up on our journey into Joburg and there were big traffic jams around the airport. Consequently, we left the Turners in very good time to get back to the airport (where there is more construction going on). That evening we flew from Joburg to East London (150 miles east of Port Elizabeth) and were met by our long time friend Barry Murphy whose son Shaun (see earlier post) was getting married the next day. Barry took us straight to Miranda’s (his daughter) house where a “pre wedding braai” was in full swing and where we met the rest of the Murphy family, including the groom, whose first question was “Did I bring the fishing reels?” I should mention that that the World Cup Rugby championships are in process in Paris and the SA team (Springboks) are currently unbeaten and gave England (who won the championship four years ago) a real hiding. This Friday night was the opening game of the championship, so there was a crowd of guys gathered around the TV at 9PM. We retired to Barry & Anne’s house, joined by his other daughter Belinda who came in from Cape Town for the wedding. It was a lovely reunion with our very long time SA friends.

Wednesday, Sept 5th - Thursday Sept. 6th

2007-09-16T08:45:00.000-04:00

When we arrived at Berg-en-Dal at 9am, we knew we would only be able to check into our lodge at 1pm so we got into the two SUVs and went for a drive. For those with a Kruger Park map, we took the H3 tarred road towards Skukuza and went up to the Renoster Pan where we had a great viewing of zebra and warthog. Also on the drive we saw wildebeast and yet more rhino. We stopped for drinks at the Afsaal picnic stop and then made our way back to Berg-en-Dal via dirt roads and the Gardenia Bird Hide. Unfortunately the pan/marsh that the hide overlooks was totally dry so there were no birds to see. As we came back along the Crocodile River, we saw hippos, but they were a long way away. We got back to the rest camp and moved into the Rhino Lodge where our accommodation was somewhat more luxurious than what we experienced at the Bushman Wilderness camp.

After lunch, three of the ladies went into Malelane to shop for groceries while Vic, Ted and I turned on the TV and watched cricket. Alison and Chris went to the camp laundromat to wash and dry clothes and peacefully read during the process. A couple of hours later, when the ladies had not returned, we called them and found out they had missed the Berg-en-Dal turn and had carried on merrily up the H3, past the Renoster Pan and Afsaal Picnic spot where we had been that morning, only realizing they were “lost” after a further 10K. Of course, being gentlemen, we made no comment when they finally found there way back to the lodge. The lodge had an expansive courtyard with a built in braai and so that evening, that’s what we did. It was a nice relaxing day.

There is a dam at Berg-en-Dal and the end of the lodge yard overlooked the dam, but dammit, it was completly dry! However, we did see a big elephant chasing baboons down the dry dam floor! The Park was so dry, only big rivers had flowing water in them, but all the tributaries that flow into them were dry, consequently, we decided we would have a better chance of seeing more game if we followed a big river and decided to go up to Skukuza and follow the Sabie River down to the Lower Sabie Rest Camp where we would have lunch. Due to time constraints, we agreed that the 80K from Berg- en-Dal to Skukuza would be a “non stop” journey unless we had a “cat” sighting. So we made good time and had a pit stop at Skukuza. Just outside Skukuza, as we were following the Sabie River, a wild dog came running across the road towards the river. I got him on video and Alison and Chris got photos. A few miles later, we saw a crowd of vehicles on one side of the road and the driver of a vehicle coming toward us stopped to tell us that there were six lions on the side of the road! This turned out to be true, but Chris who was in the other vehicle only saw the four females and didn’t see or was at the wrong angle to see the male and the additional female. They all just lay there and paid no mind to all the fuss and moving of cars, etc. that was going on all around them.

We went on to Lower Sabie and before we went into the camp we stopped off at the "Sunset Dam" that some of you will remember. As usual, there was a large pod of hippos (all submerged, with only their backs showing), crocodiles, maribu storks and more.

We finally tore ourselves away and went for lunch at Lower Sabie--what a lovely restaurant in such a great setting overlooking the dam--plenty of water in there and plenty of action, including an elephant crossing the Sabie River. Chris & Linda missed the elephant as they were in the gift shop buying two wooden giraffes. I will say no more about this for the rest of the blog as Chris is paying a sizeable sum to keep this story from being published on the WWW!

We have to be back to our home rest camp by 6pm and as we were going back the shortest route, but all dirt roads, we had to get going. We hadn't gone far when we saw another bunch of cars stopped on the road and this time there were at least four lioness right next to the road feeding on a big male kudu bull (note the horns).

We continued on our way and saw cars on a bridge going over the Sabie. We took a look and in the dry bed of the river in the distance we could see (with binoculars) two lioness. Apparently, the other vehicle also spotted the male resting near the bank. We continued on and remembered that we hadn't seen any Cape Buffalo herds. We went on to see three herds on our way home.

Just after we had left the dirt road and turned onto the tar, we saw another crowd of cars and this time we had a male lion who had obviously eaten himself absolutely full as his belly looked as though it was ready to burst. He was passed out and not worrying about all the people who were watching him. It was our fourth lion sighting of the day!

I also forgot to mention that we had a nice sighting of a Saddle billed stork on the Sabie river.

We were back in time to visit a water hole near the camp just to see what might be there and there was a rhino and calf. What an end to a fantastic day of viewing.

Thursday August 30 to Tuesday Sept 4.

2007-09-08T06:10:00.000-04:00

Posted on Saturday Sept 8th (Shaun's wedding day) at an Internet cafe in East London (first time connectivity available to us) and on Friday Sept 14th in Somerset West near Cape Town.

I expect everyone is wondering whenever we’re going to post. Sorry to have kept you waiting so long but to some extent it has been beyond our control. As I start writing (MondaySept.3rd), we are in the Bushman Wilderness Trail camp having just returned from an evening drive and walk and we are having pre-dinner drinks. We have had a most unbelievable day today and even the resident South Africans who have been here on wilderness trails before are amazed at how much we have seen. But before I start on that, I must summarize the events since we left the Crown Club in Atlanta and got on our flight to Joburg..

After a long flight, we arrived in Joburg late at about 5.15 PM on Thursday. We were met by Ted & Marilyn Turner, who had graciously driven out to meet us and to guide us back to our hotel (Marilyn traveled in our rental car). As our rental car is a “manual” and of course SA drives on the left, the transition to driving in SA is not easy, especially on the busy roads of SA’s largest city. We slept well.
On Friday morning we did a little bit of shopping, after which Ted & Marilyn came and met us and once again Marilyn drove with me and this time Alison drove with Ted., back to the airport where we first picked up Vic & Carol from their flight from Port Elizabeth, and then later (their flight was late) all six of us met Chris & Linda from their flight from Washington. There was much excitement!

Back to the hotel again for a short while, then off to T&M’s home for a curry evening. We had a grand time and the food was great. We ate outside on the patio. Pictures were taken, but not enough.

I had to drive home so I was very conscious of that and restrained myself admirably. I was very nervous driving a stick shift on the “wrong” side of the road in Joburg , particularly at night!

Saturday morning we drove over to T&M’s and the “boys” left in one car to go shopping for beer, wine, etc. for Kruger, while the “girls” went to Sandton City to shop. Marilyn dropped A&L back at the hotel and Chris & I drove back from T&M’s house to meet them. By 5.30 we were back at T&M’s and en route to Montecasino, a giant casino and theatre complex in the style of Caesar’s Palace (where you are “outside”, inside). We had a great meal and then went to see the stage production of “The Lion King”. It was wonderful. It was 11.30 by the time we got home and then we finished re-packing for the trip to Kruger. Although the hotel had Wi-Fi, it did not reach the third floor and I had to go down to the lobby to pickup or send email. There was no time to sort out a blog posting.

On Sunday morning, we loaded up the SUV and drove once more to Ted and Marilyn’s and by 8.45 AM we were on our way to Kruger Park. Very unfortunately Marilyn had an accident while on vacation in Morocco about a month ago, and ended up having to have knee surgery after she and Ted got back to Joburg. Consequently she had to forego the Kruger Park trip, and Ted’s younger sister, Dianne, joined our party instead. We were at the Malalane Gate by 1PM. We had told Chris and Linda not to expect to see much on the short 10Km drive to the “Berg en Dal” main camp – but we saw quite a lot including ground hornbills, a poor lion sighting (low in the grass and not a good enough picture to post) a very good giraffe sighting – very close proximity, female kudus (still haven’t seen a male kudu), two warthogs and a couple of different elephants.

We checked in at the main camp (during which, the gentlemen checking us in told Vic: “Your wilderness walk was cancelled” – his idea a joke! – you should have seen the look on all of our faces!). As detailed in our second blog, we were picked up by the ranger & tracker in the bush wagon (photo) and were on our way to the Bushman Wilderness Camp. The ensuing experience has been fantastic and I don’t really know how to start to put it all into words, or if I have enough time to do so.
Our ranger (Kenneth) and tracker (Bentu) are from Shangaan Tribe, mainly from Mozambique or Eastern African Region and they converse with each other in the Shangaan language. Bentu can spot game really well, and Vic formed the opinion that Kenneth is one of the most knowledgeable rangers/guides he has had. (This is Vic’s sixth wilderness trail).

On the way to the camp we saw a rhino in the distance and then it came running down the hill at the sound of our vehicle. It was a long way away and stopped after a short burst of speed and looked in our direction (they have very poor eyesight, but very good hearing (just like me! – not). It was an inkling of the good sightings to come. We arrived at the camp and sorted ourselves out into the four huts available. They are all the same and the word “rustic” is apt! (pictures). We then adjourned to the lapa had a few sundowners before supper was served (a delicious stew).

On Monday morning we were awoken at 5.30 by the sound of water being poured into our enamel wash basin on a stand outside our hut (picture), followed by a knock on the door (and we’re supposed to be on vacation!). We dressed quickly and got to the lapa for coffee and rusks. For this particular walk we started from the camp at just after six, with the eight of us in single file behind Kenneth and Bentu. Within minutes we saw our first rhino and went on to have two separate rhino encounters and multiple rhino sightings. I say encounters rather than sightings because in each case, we were walking directly into the path of a rhino and Kenneth signaled urgently for us to move sideways as quickly and silently as possible. On one occasion we actually climbed an outcrop of rocks on a small hill to be in a safe position. Despite the close proximity of the rhino, we never felt in any danger.

We also had a terrific giraffe sighting, which thrilled Linda as she has a passion for giraffes. We saw three of them at quite a distance and took pictures before walking toward them. However, they didn’t move so we stopped and took more pictures because we were sure they would move if we got any closer. We walked even closer and took more pictures and then they just moved a few yards off our path and we went by them. It was a great sighting.

We returned from the walk by 11.30 and had a late brunch of scrambled eggs, bacon, etc. (we also had a snack while walking on the trail).. Our camp has a “man made” waterhole just outside the perimeter fence (which was only about 4 foot high and not particularly substantial – Kenneth suggested it was to keep us in, not the animals out). We heard loud sounds of drinking at the waterhole and there at the waterhole was a female rhino with her calf (picture).

After a siesta in the afternoon, we gathered together again for coffee/tea and then packed drinks into a cool box, loaded it and ourselves into the bush wagon and off we went for an evening drive/walk. This trip was less eventful in terms of sightings, but we ended on the banks of a river where we carried the cool box down to a large outcrop of rocks and we sat and watched the sun go down. It is extremely dry here at the moment, and the river is not flowing, there are only pools of water in various sections of the river bed. Although Sept 1st was the first day of spring, we are encountering temperatures in the 90’s F at midday. We did see another rhino and calf at the river at a long distance and we also had other rhino sightings on the drive. We returned to camp in the dark, had another lovely evening in the lapa and then to bed.
On Tuesday morning at 5.30 we started the process all over again!

Tuesday Sept 4th (posted Sept.14th!)

We left camp in the bush wagon at 6.00 AM and drove to the spot where we began our walk. We had another great rhino sighting on the drive. We saw san bushman paintings that were in the region of 15,000 years old! The walk was not as eventful as the Monday walk in terms of game seen, but was enjoyable.

We returned to the camp at late morning and while we were waiting for lunch I walked over to see if anything was happening at the water hole. There was nothing there, but I saw a rhino in the distance making his way through the bush towards the waterhole and began videoing. The rhino got to the hole and began to drink. I was not aware of any issues with the rhino and after a few minutes, I stopped videoing and returned to the lapa for coffee. Later, Diane who was also watching the rhino came to tell us that the rhino was now IN the waterhole! We went back and I began videoing again. We thought the rhino was just cooling off, but then when it tried to leave the waterhole it fell sideways and screamed in what we assumed was pain. The rhino then lay there on his side with it’s two legs pawing at the air and was unable to get up. It was awful to see. Kenneth came to look and said that the rhino was badly burned on his back legs and rump from a recent fire and he thought the rhino was dying. He said that they might have to shoot it and he would have to call the section ranger to discuss the situation. Kenneth was concerned that the rhino would die in the waterhole, which would make things very difficult. Meanwhile, the rhino was “moaning” so woefully that I could not continue to video. We heard that the section ranger was on his way. Meanwhile, the rhino had managed to right himself, and, after resting for a while, made a determined rush to get out of the waterhole. Unfortunately, he was facing the deep end and was unable to make it and ended up with his head resting on the side of the waterhole and his front legs
folded under him. He was exhausted and unable to move. We could hear his breathing quite clearly. We continued to watch and wait for the section ranger when suddenly, out the bush appeared two elephants approaching the waterhole to drink, one of which was massive. The massive elephant looked at the rhino in the waterhole but started to drink and spray himself down from the other end to where the rhino was resting his head. The rhino then managed to turn himself around and now stood in the deep end of the waterhole facing the elephant drinking from the other end. He was snorting weakly, but was obviously very wary. The elephants drank from the waterhole one at a time and we surmised that they couldn’t understand why the rhino was in the water. In the distance we saw the section ranger’s pickup truck racing down the road towards our camp. He duly arrived and introduced himself to us (Rob). After examining the rhino with binoculars he confirmed that rhino was suffering from burns and that they may have to shoot it. He asked us not to photograph or video if that turned out to be the case. We were wondering how they were going to go out and look at the rhino while the elephants were there, but Rob and Kenneth just walked out of the back gate and started waving their arms (at the two elephants, they turned and faced them momentarily, but then turned away and started to walk back into the bush. The two rangers followed them for a few meters to ensure they were well out of the way so that they could turn their attention to the rhino. We were all watching the rangers and the elephants and I was videoing this phase of the operation and when the rangers turned back to the waterhole and I swung back my video camera, the rhino was emerging from the shallow end of the waterhole! The rangers then started to walk toward the rhino and we all switched off our cameras fearing the worst. The rhino turned and looked at the two rangers as they walked toward him. Rob raised his big gun and lined up his shot when suddenly the rhino turned and actually started to trot back into the bush. The rangers followed and went out of sight, however, we heard no shots and 15 minutes later, Rob got into his pickup truck and left and Kenneth told us that as the rhino seemed mobile, they would see how things went over the next couple of weeks. Although it would normally be difficult to find a particular rhino, they expect him to return to the waterhole again as it is an easy source of water for him while he is injured. We all hope and like to think he will survive. It was a dramatic experience for us all.

As on Monday, we went out again at 4pm for an evening walk followed by “sundowners”. We were looking for the big cats but had no luck. We saw vultures in a tree and went to check if there was a kill nearby but didn’t find anything. We did disturb three elephants with three “baby” elephants with the bush wagon and the one elephant “trumpeted” at us, but that was all. Back to camp for another delicious “camp fire” cooked meal and then off to bed. On Wednesday morning we were once again up early, but this time our time in the bush camp came to an end and we were off back to the main camp of Berg en Dal.

Wednesday, August 29th - On our way!

2007-08-29T12:31:00.000-04:00

Hello all. Alison and I are sitting in the Delta Crown Club lounge at Hartsfield Airport, Atlanta, waiting for our flight to Johannesburg (via Dakar, Senegal) at 4.10 this afternoon. We had originally purchased our internal flights so that we could leave Myrtle Beach on an 11.30 AM flight to Atlanta instead of having to catch the 7.25 flight which would have been "free"using frequent flyer miles (no FF seats available on the 11.30). This reservation was made back in January. Delta then changed the 11.30 AM departure time to 12.30 PM which we subsequently ascertained has a record of being late so frequently, that we had a 45% chance of missing our International flight. Not acceptable, so we ended up catching the 7.25 AM after all. When I told this (true) story to the concierge at the Delta CC lounge, he waived the $25 each fee for the use of the lounge! Anyway, as we knew we were going to be here for a good seven hours, we decided I would take this opportunity to post!

As you can imagine, since we returned from Falls Church (see previous post), we have been busy with final preparations for the trip, including trial packing (weight calculations). However, Alison had decided that we must have a small "going away" gathering and that was scheduled for a braai at 4 PM on Sunday. Alison has also had a major goal to achieve prior to leaving for SA, which was to reach the 3000 mile mark on her bike's odometer. As you can see, she reached her goal.

We had 14 people attend the braai and a good time was had by all. Unbeknown even to me, Clare and Josh had ordered an inscribed "trophy" in anticipation of Alison reaching the 3,000 mile mark and it was a great surprise when we were all sitting around the dining room table (drinking port!) and Clare presented the trophy to her mom!

Unfortunately, there were no photographs of the festive evening, during which we toasted our good friends Roger & Penny Pocock in Maidstone, England, who celebrated their Ruby Wedding anniversary that day, and we also toasted my cousin Bernard and wife Arline (who were present), congratulating them on their 43rd wedding anniversary, which is today. Of course, Alison's acheivement was also toasted - that's a lot of toasts!

In my second post, I said I would add more about what we were going to do after we left the Kruger Park, so here is a bit of information about that. By an incredible coincidence, Alison's Godson, Shaun Murphy (see picture right on his Christening day in 1981 with his mom, Anne!), is getting married on Saturday, Sept. 8th, the day after we leave the Park. Consequently, Alison & I will fly to East London (see SA map) on Friday night and attend the wedding on Saturday, while Chris, Linda, Vic & Carol will start the two day drive from the Park to Port Elizabeth.

Below is Shaun fishing in 1983. Notice that he is already being distracted by the female species! That is "Uncle Bob" in the background, teaching the daughter (Cathy) of another old SA friend, Wout Offerman, how to windsurf.

To the right is the present day Shaun. This picture was taken at Mazeppa Bay, one of Shaun's favorite fishing spots. We will be joining Shaun and his new wife, Nikki, his mom & dad, sister & hubby(Anne, Barry, Miranda, Riaan) at Mazeppa Bay for 6 days later in October (which will include my 66th birthday). We will be renting cottages. For those reading this who are keen fishermen, here are a couple more pictures of Mazeppa Bay (just to make you envious!).

Arial of Mazeppa - see cottages top right. Note bridge access to peninsula.

Right - Wave coming!

Wave arriving! - not for the faint hearted.

All for this post, the next one will be in SA!

Sunday, August 19 - Back In Myrtle Beach with ten days to go!

2007-08-19T11:50:00.000-04:00

After a long drive from Falls Church to Myrtle Beach yesterday, we were pleased to be sleeping in our own bed again - even if it's not for long! We had a great couple of days with M&D and of course Indigo Wen. Although she was nervous with us at first, it didn't take long for her to become comfortable with us again and she was giving us kisses. Having promised to post some pictures before the end of the weekend, we suspect there are folks in the UK who are hoping we will post before they go to bed. As they are five hours ahead of us, we need to get moving. This post is going to be all about photographs and not too many words.

Indigo Wen testing the water!

Granny and Indigo playing at the lake

Indigo Wen in her stroller at the Capitol in Washington DC (she went to visit her Congressman--just kidding of course)

Feeding Granddad

Indigo Wen with Granddad

Two Weeks to go!

2007-08-15T18:22:00.000-04:00

Bob at the keys again. Alison’s responsible for the photos. After my last week of working up in Pennsylvania, I returned home on Thursday, August 9th and the next morning we left for Hot Springs on the Appalachian Trail (AT) and the wedding of David & Rachel as mentioned in the first Blog. When I say Hot Springs is “on” the AT, it is a true statement, because I had not realized that the AT actually runs straight down the main street! Our journey from MB was a long one because we got stuck in a very bad traffic jam on the I-26 heading into Asheville and ultimately got off the Interstate and went backwards a few miles to the Blue Ridge Parkway and went around Asheville on the Parkway – a few miles longer but at least we were moving. On the front page of the Asheville paper the next morning it showed a truck carrying flattened cars for scrap that had overturned on the Interstate and traffic had been held up for hours. We had made the right move and were in good time for the rehearsal dinner.

The Mountain Magnolia Inn is a beautiful place in an even more beautiful setting. We were also fortunate enough to have been allocated the “Rose Room” which must be one of the best rooms in the house, with a lovely balcony that had a fabulous view of the mountains as well as a grand view of all the activities taking place in the gardens below.

This is the view of the outdoor venue for the rehearsal dinner. The picture was taken from our balcony shown on the picture above.

To the right is a view of the mountains from our balcony.

A good time was had by all at the rehearsal dinner and, fortunately, breakfast didn’t start until 9am. The breakfasts themselves were worth the journey!

After breakfast, the wedding guests all gathered together and drove in convoy to a place called “Max Patch”, which is a grassy expanse 4600 ft above sea level on the “real” AT with a 360 view and mountains and valleys all around (note the AT "white blaze" marker on the post in the left side picture - the parking lot is in the background). We were there to fly kites and have a picnic lunch. David bought some kites for those who didn’t have their own, but I have my own kite,

purchased in Morro Bay, California over 16 years ago. I love to fly my kite, but flying on the top of Max Patch was a real treat (remember, men never grow up!). You can see a kite in the picture below, but there is also a small dot in the middle and if you keep magnifying the picture, you will see my kite way in the distance!

We got back to the inn in time for an afternoon snooze and then got dressed for the wedding. I say dressed rather than “dressed up” because it is so hot at the moment all over the USA and particularly in North & South Carolina, that most of the guests wore casual shirts and the groom was almost the only person in a suit (minus a tie). The wedding was an outside ceremony and the preacher who married David & Rachel was one of two preachers (Bill Newman & Henry) that David had met on his 2,150 mile hike on the AT, and in fact, they are walking the AT again this year, ministering to the hikers when needed, and left the trail up in Vermont and drove to Hot Springs to perform the ceremony and they are now driving back to the AT in Vermont to continue their walk to Maine.

On Sunday morning, I got up early as I was determined to walk a (short)

segment of the AT in the Hot Springs area. All I had to do was to walk to the main street and follow the AT arrows that are cemented into the sidewalk. I followed the arrows across the French Broad River bridge and then followed the signs along the river bank and eventually started to climb the switchbacks that take you out of the river valley. It is a good climb. This little segment of the trail is called “Lovers Leap” as there is a legend regarding an Indian (Cherokee) maiden who threw herself from the cliff when she was promised to one brave while she loved another. At the top of the valley, the AT continues on and I followed the Lovers Leap trail back to town. It was a short but satisfying hike.

After another scrumptious breakfast on Sunday morning, the guests left at their leisure and we left to find our way to the “Broken Arrow” cabin, again as mentioned in the first blog. It is only 15 miles from Hot Springs and is up in the mountains with a wonderful view and a sight of the French Broad River running in the valley below, the gentle flowing noise of which is only drowned out when the train runs along the track that follows the river! One of the instructions for the cabin says “Do not trespass on neighboring properties, failure to heed this warning could get you a good ol’ Madison County welcome which usually includes a view down the barrel of a shotgun”. We took this warning with a pinch of salt until we saw this sign on a property driving along one of the mountain roads! This is definitely “Hill Billy” country!

The plan was to go hiking on Monday, but with the heat, we were concerned about getting on the 13 mile one way section of the AT that we had had in mind. Sensibility overruled our impulses and we decided to head up to the Blue Ridge Parkway where there were more choices of shorter and medium length walks. Fortunately, because of the diversion we made to

the Blue Ridge on our way to the wedding, we knew exactly how to get back to the Parkway from our cabin. We headed up to the visitors center at milepost 364.5 where coincidently we had last been with South African friends Vic& Carol (see previous post) in September, 2006, on our way back from Chimney Rock Park to Banner Elk. This area of the Blue Ridge is called “Craggy Gardens”. We walked to Craggy Pinnacle (5,892 ft) and then took a longer walk on a stretch of the “Mountains to Sea” trail, of which the Craggy Gardens trail is a segment. We had a great time and no one has shown any ill effects so far!

Tuesday, August 14th, we decided to do a trek of a different sort – we decided to visit the Biltmore Estate in Asheville. It is something that we have wanted to do since we moved to Myrtle Beach, but in the couple of times we have been in the Asheville area, have not found the time. The Biltmore Estate was the vision of George Washington Vanderbilt, who started the Estate as a country retreat (he lived in New York), but the house (mansion, castle, chateau) became and remains the largest private residence in America. The building and estate are simply magnificent. We finished the day with some wine tasting at the Biltmore winery and of course purchased a couple of bottles as a reminder of another wonderful day.

Today, Aug.15th, we drove 460 miles from the hills of North Carolina to M&D in Falls Church, VA, just outside Washington DC. We are having one last visit with them and of course granddaughter Indigo Wen before our long trip to SA, where we will arrive, two weeks today. Look for more pictures of Indigo Wen later this weekend. We drive back to Myrtle Beach on Saturday.

FOUR WEEKS TO GO!

2007-08-02T19:08:00.000-04:00

Where did the last week go? So let us give you a little more detail about our SA trip and what we will be doing in the first week. On Aug 29th we fly from Atlanta to Johannesburg, SA (subsequently referred to in the colloquial as “Joburg”), leaving Atlanta about 4.00PM and after an 18 hour journey (we have to stop to refuel) and a 6 hour time difference, we arrive at 4 PM the next day! We will be recovering for the next 22 hours before returning to the Joburg airport at 2.30 on Friday to pick up our good friends and one time work colleagues from Pittsburgh, Chris & Linda Umble. Chris and Linda are flying South African Airways (SAA) from Dulles to Joburg and their flight is direct and less than a 15 hour flight (both our flights are longer than Melanie & David’s flight to China!).
Also arriving in Joburg around the same time as Chris & Linda will be our long time friends and our hosts for the next two weeks and beyond, Vic & Carol Wolff. Vic & Carol will be flying into Joburg from Port Elizabeth, our old home town in SA from 1968-1985.

Also meeting Vic & Carol, and completing our four couple group, will be Ted & Marilyn Turner from Johannesburg. Ted & Marilyn were also with us for our trip to Kruger in 2002.
After what we are sure will be a good night's sleep, we will be out and about in the Sandton (a Joburg suburb) Shopping Center purchasing the necessary goods for our trip to Kruger Park (beer, wine, spirits, etc…). On Saturday evening we join Vic & Carol for dinner at the Montecasino complex which will be followed by a night at the theater to see the SA stage production of “The Lion King”. We are looking forward to this event, which apparently has had rave reviews.

On Sunday morning we leave Joburg in a two vehicle (SUVs) convoy and make the journey to the Kruger National Park, about 250 miles north east of Joburg.
Once we are in the Park, we make our way to the Berg en Dal Restcamp (bottom left) and we have to be there before 3PM. At 3.30PM, we will be picked up in a “bush wagon” by a game ranger and his tracker. We leave our vehicles at the main camp and are driven to the Wilderness Camp (Bushmans, west of Berg en Dal) in an area of the park which is off limits to the general public. We only take a couple of changes of clothing (but all the beverages!). The camp is securely fenced and only has accommodation for the four couples and the three park personnel (the third is a cook who also makes the beds and stays at the camp while we walk with the ranger & tracker). In the evening, we sit around the fire and have a couple of sundowners (fortunately, the sun takes a long time to go down). The cook brings the supper (also cooked on the fire), and we sit around the fire and eat & drink under the African sky.

Here is an “official” description of the Kruger Park “Wilderness Trail” option:
Established in the world-famous Kruger National Park, wilderness trails allow adventurous visitors a close personal encounter with nature by traversing large areas of unspoiled wilderness on foot, under the guidance of armed and experienced trail rangers.In keeping with the wilderness atmosphere, sites for the trails camps are carefully selected for their scenic beauty and diverse plant and animal life. Groups spend three nights in four rustic two-bed huts. Ablution facilities comprise reed-walled showers and flush toilets. A covered lapa serves as a dining/socializing area where the campfire’s flickering shadows encourage stories of adventures in the African bush.Simple, wholesome meals are provided. The day commences with coffee and rusks in the crisp morning hours. A light meal is enjoyed in the bush and brunch awaits the group when they return at noon. After a “siesta”, the group leaves the camp once again for an evening stroll in the wild.Evening meals comprise either a hunters’ stew or barbecues, supplemented with salads and vegetables.

Here is a "stew" delivered by the cook! (note: all pictures of the camp, etc. are from 2002 - at a different wilderness camp we were at.

They get us up early in the morning and after coffee and rusks, we will either leave the “compound” on foot, or be driven in the bush wagon to where we will start our walk. We now walk in single file with the ranger and tracker leading the way (and carrying big guns). I have to admit, having done this once before, it sounds scarier than it really is. In truth, the animals are very wary of humans on foot and if they see you, they will run away. It would need to be a very unusual situation for us to be in any danger.

The "Trail Gang" in 2002

On Wednesday morning, we will be driven back to the main Berg en Dal Restcamp http://www.sanparks.org/parks/kruger/camps/berg-en-dal/ (There are 12 main rest camps in the Park) where we will then move into the most luxurious accommodation in the camp, the “Rhino Donor Guest House” which can be seen in the top right corner of this map and will be a far cry from our “rustic two-bed hut” at the Bushmans wilderness camp. We will spend the next two days driving ourselves within the Park on various routes on both tarred and dirt roads, hoping to catch sight of some of the more elusive game in the park such as rhino, lion, leopard, wild dogs and cheetah. We are guaranteed to see elephants, hippos, buffaloes, giraffes, zebras, wildebeest and much more. It is a wonderful experience. Our time in the park comes to an end on Friday morning Sept. 7, when the next leg of the journey begins – but you will have to wait for the next posting to hear about that!

Victor Max Wolff

Couldn't resist adding this one great picture of Vic and his magnificent catch!

The first Post, Wednesday July 25, 5 weeks to go!

2007-07-25T21:05:00.000-04:00

Melanie has decided that we should have a "Blog" while we are in South Africa so that we can stay in touch. I guess I'm going to have to take my laptop after all! Melanie was so keen, she even started a blog for us so I guess I had better start finding out how it all works. As she came up with the caption "Still crazy after 40 years", a family photo taken at our 40th wedding anniversary "bash" would seem to be appropriate.

While we have only 5 weeks left before we fly to Johannesburg, SA, we have plenty of things on the calender to keep us occupied in the meantime. I fly to Harrisburg on Sunday evening and will commence my last two weeks at Highmark in Camp Hill until I return after Thanksgiving -- assuming they still want me to return after we get back from SA, which currently they do. I fly home from Camp Hill on August 9 and on the 10th we're driving to Hot Springs, a little town beside the Appalachian Trail in the North Carolina mountains, where we're attending the destination wedding of David Burke and Rachel Malone on the 11th (the groom is the guy I hiked on the AT with for 6 days in late April last year, and who finished the Trail in Maine in September). http://www.mountainmagnoliainn.com/ After the wedding we're spending 3 nights at a cabin in the mountains with the "newly weds" so we can do some hiking together,or just hang out, watch the birds, etc. http://www.ncvalley.com/-brokenarrow I can assure you all that David and Rachel invited us to join them, we didn't just invite ourselves! On Aug. 15 we plan to drive from North Carolina to Falls Church to spend a few more days with Melanie and David and baby Indigo, probably returning to MB on the 18th. Then we'll have just 10 days at home until we leave for SA on August 29.

We can't end this first post without including a photo showing us with Indigo, our darling little granddaughter whom Melanie and David went all the way to China to adopt for us. Here we are with her at the farm where Melanie keeps her horse, Dan. To any of you who are reading this blog who haven't followed Melanie and David's "Journey to our Daughter" blog, please go to http://www.brookesweiss.com/ and you can read everything from April this year through May 1, when they got their "referral", through June 20 when they left for China, through July 1 when they received Indigo, through July 13 when they returned with her to the US, and up to the present. (You'll need a whole evening to read everything and look at all the pictures, but we highly recommend it, and cannot commend M&D enough for all their hard work in regularly posting such informative blogs that all of us who've been reading them feel that we were on the "journey" with them. We love you so much M&D!

We'll do another practice post soon, and give a few details of our South Africa travel plans.