Learnings

When Gayle and I travel together internationally we always end by discussing our learnings for next time we travel together. For example, after we went to Italy we said we would pack lighter in the future. We succeeded this time. So much so that we had two different porters comment on how little luggage we had brought. Traveling lighter made it much easier and more enjoyable.

Here are our learnings from this trip. Some of them we already knew but with most learnings we needed to be reminded.

• Bring quick dry clothing.
• Check every car when you get out and every seat when you stand up. Leaving something behind complicates life.
• Hire the right travel agent. It is worth the money when you leave your wallet in your transport to the airport.
• When driving on the left side of the road remember that the windshield wiper control is on your left and the turn signal is on the right.
• If you go on safari be sure to go out at night. The big cats sleep during the day. Night is when the magic happens.
• We lead such privileged lives. Most of the citizens of our planet could not dream of the luxuries we take for granted.
• Always pack a raincoat.
• Stay calm and go with the flow. There will be disappointments when you travel. There will also be unexpected delights.
• Don't turn on the television while you travel.
• If you go to the Chobe in Botswana, take the river boat ride. Skip the Jeep safari.
• Always engage the Uber or taxi drivers about the country you are visiting. They will tell you way more than anyone else.
• Corporations will use anything and everything to sell their stuff.
• Push yourself to try new experiences. If you do you might feel the spray of Victoria Falls while flying above them on a microlight or swim to the edge and peer over or crawl through a cave or get within a few feet of a leopard.
• The right answer is always truth and reconciliation.
• There is something profound about the connections you make with complete strangers when you travel.
• The food on South African Airways is way better than the food on British Airways.
• Build in rest when you travel overseas.
• It is better to make reservations and cancel than try to make them at the last minute.
• Springbok is actually quite good.
• South Africans like their food very salty.
• A birthday celebration with complete strangers and a birthday song you have never heard (accompanied by djembe) will be a highlight.
• If you don't have Global Entry be sure and download the app for Mobile Passport. It will greatly shorten your time going through customs.
• Susan is always right. At least that is what Gayle says right now.
• The world is a beautiful place.

Breathtakingly Beautiful!

We forgot to close our black out curtains last night. Thank goodness! I awoke to a gorgeous sunrise over Walker Bay. 

I threw on some clothes and headed out to take the cliff walk in the direction of the new harbor. 

All the flora and fauna smelled so fresh and beautiful from the bath it got from the rain yesterday.

The dassies were out in full force. The front desk attendant at our hotel informed us that dassies aren’t from the rat family but the elephant family. 

The beauty was around me in every direction. So I took two 180 degree panoramic photos so I could remember how I was encircled in beauty.

I thought I saw a whale in the distance but I couldn't be sure. When I got to the new harbor I saw a whale watching boat leaving. They went out into the Bay and stopped at the exact location I had seen what I thought was a whale. 

A pod of dolphins swam by. Then I got to the end of the path. 

I looked at my watch and realized I had been gone for an hour and a half. I decided to go back using the street so I didn't stop every few feet and take another photo.  My plan didn’t work because the flora and fauna here is as beautiful as the view.

By the time I returned to our room to shower I had already gone 8,000 steps. While Gayle and I were getting ready we heard someone sorrowfully calling out in the distance. After breakfast we noticed that part of the cliff walk was closed with yellow caution tape with the police standing nearby. I asked the porter about it as he loaded our bags into the car. He said a woman had jumped off the cliffs and committed suicide this morning. While I was feeling embraced in beauty, she felt hopeless. The porter then told me his own  father committed suicide when he was ten years old. Life is filled with beauty and trauma, joy and sorrow, success and disappointment. I was once again reminded of the preciousness of life.

Our flight leaves out of Cape Town at 7:30 pm. We have lunch reservations for La Petite Ferme restaurant in Franschoek on the way. The woman at the front desk said we should take the Franschoek Pass and drive slowly through the multiple hairpin curves. She said it was worth it because it is breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped many times to try to capture the view in a photo,

Franschoek is known for its wine and amazing cuisine. We skipped the wine but we each ordered a couple plates to share.

But the crowning dish was a pomegranate and hibiscus mat with a honey and lemon ricotta mousse served on an upside down bowl.

After lunch we walked down to their vineyards.

We reluctantly got in the car and drove to the airport to begin the long flight home. This has been a once in a lifetime journey. I am so glad we did it. I hate to leave and, at the same time, I can't wait to get home.

From Creation to Leaving Paradise

When we fell asleep last night the wind was howling outside our window. The forecast for this day was a 100% chance of rain. We woke up to the sound of rain. We did our cliff walk on the right day! 

I got up and went down to the lobby and sat in front of the fireplace. I drank French Press coffee and called my boyfriend. He will pick us up at LAX in few days. It has been a magical experience but I will be glad to be home again.

We decided that since it is raining today we will drive north to wine country. People travel from around the world to go wine tasting in South Africa. We are so close we thought we should see what all the fuss is about. We met a couple from Canada while on safari and they highly recommended a winery that is less than a half hour from our hotel. So we left for Creation Wines in the rain.

Creation Wines is on the Hemel-en-Aarde Ridge. We drove down a dirt road to get to the tasting room. There are incredible statues and flowers on the path up. 

When we arrived there was hardly anyone else there. We assumed all the other tourists were avoiding the rain but the place filled up quickly. We had made a noon reservation for small plates with wine pairings. Since I'm not knowledgeable about wine tasting I wasn't sure what to expect. It was a two and a half hour event with eight different wine pairings. I was glad I knew that I could taste the wine and then dump the rest in the container on the table. We started with magnificent bread, butter with dried meat, sour fig jam and goat cheese with edible flowers.

Each course came with an explanation of the wine. Before this one pairing we were given a shell and told that drinking this particular wine would remind us of walking beside the ocean.

Our next course was abalone with samphire.

I loved the hake with coconut milk, almonds and apricot salsa

Lamb loin with polenta, poached pears and rhubarb puree.

Springbok with waterblommetjie and samp

Malva pudding with apricot and oranges, custard and popcorn crumble.

We paced ourselves and managed to leave without overeating but we now understood what all the fuss is about. We drove home in the rain and stopped at a Pick n Pay (a grocery store) where we bought baobab powder to bring home. By the time we got back to the car we were soaked through from the rain. It has been steadily coming down since the wee hours of the morning.

Back in our room we took naps to the sound of falling rain. It was very peaceful. Then we got up and began to organize our packing. We fly home out of Cape Town tomorrow. 

We had dinner at a wine bar....and didn’t order any wine.  We got a couple small plates and felt satisfied. Back to our room to finish packing. The rain is supposed to stop in the night. I hope to get up early and take one more cliff walk before we leave this paradise.

Marine Big Five

One of the reasons we came to South Africa was to experience animals in the wild. We got to see the big five while we were on Safari -- rhino, leopard, lion, buffalo and elephant. What we really hadn't realized was that there is also a marine big five. Where we are now in Hermanus is known as the destination for whale watching. You can stand on the cliffs and watch them in the bay from June to December. Instead of a town crier they have a whale crier who stands on the shoreline and announces their location. 

So after breakfast this morning we went on a whale watching tour. It began with a visit to the penguin hospital. 

Then we were outfitted with life vests

and got onto this boat.

We came alongside the boat excursion that allows people to get in a cage and interact with sharks. They bring sharks to the boat by casting out lines with chunks of meat attached.

Then a Southern Right whale and her son were spotted. The mother was a brindle, which means she was born almost completely white and as she has aged her pigmentation has changed to gray. Brindles are rare and most of them are males, which made her an even more unusual sighting.

We watched them for a long time.

We saw one penguin swimming by itself in the ocean far from shore. Then we had a brief viewing of a humpback whale.

From there we went to shark alley, thus named because the sharks hunt from the easy pickings of thousands of seals that inhabit the nearby island.

We returned back to the harbor at an amazing and frightening speed. We were quickly herded off the boat so they could load on the next group of tourists. They fed us a warm bowl of soup and tried to sell us a video of our excursion. We saw four of the marine big five today. Surprisingly enough we didn't see any dolphins.

After our whale watching experience we headed to the old harbor area of Hermanus. We wanted to get dinner, 

enjoy the public art 

and take the cliff walk back while the sun set. 

The dassies were out in full force and not the least bit shy. It turns out they are part of the rat family. Never thought I would find rats cute.

What I didn't know until I arrived here was that there are six floral kingdoms. Fynbos is the smallest and the only one found only in a single country. In fact, it is fully contained in the Western Cape of South Africa. It is one of the richest areas in the plant world. I can attest to the truth of that statement. Gayle and I are constantly stunned by the flowers here.

I'm so glad we took the cliff walk back to our hotel. It was glorious and left me feeling so very Zen.

Whatever You Do...

We left Cape Town this morning. Our rental car was scheduled to be delivered to our hotel at 8 am. We went down to the lobby restaurant to order breakfast and wait. Our food, our rental car and a representative of our travel agency all arrived at the same time. Our food grew cold while we signed the papers for our Hyundai rental car. When the guy from Eurocar left We turned out attention to what Elsabe, our rep from the travel agency, wanted. We were so glad to meet her. She was the woman we called when Gayle left her wallet in the car back in Johannesburg at the beginning of our trip. She moved some mountains...well at least some foothills....to get Gayle's wallet back into her hands. Elsabe brought us each a gift.  She said she came to make sure we had what we needed before we left on our own. She gave us some advice on routes, what to see and where to eat. We told her we were nervous. She said you will be fine but "whatever you do don't go into the townships outside of Strand. Be sure not to stop your car near there."

We took off by 9:30 am. The plan was for Gayle to start off driving and for me to navigate. I was also supposed to always remind her to drive on the left.  We headed out of Cape Town and down the Cape Peninsula. Our first stop was the Karbonkelberg Beach, a recommendation of Elsabe. The GPS suggested we drive out into the ocean but we thought better of it.

It was a beautiful coastal area...

...with lovely flowers.

Then we paid the toll to drive the road around Chapman's Peak.

It was a pretty intense drive for people who are used to driving on a different side of the road. Plus it rained intermittently all day.

We entered Table Mountain National Park so we could visit the Cape of Good Hope.

We skipped the scenic hike up the rocks.

Then we went to Cape Point where we rode the funicular.

It takes you part way up to the lighthouse.

Then we did part of the cliff walk so we could see Cape Point in the distance.

There are signs all over the place warning people about the dangers of baboons. So of course we saw this family the moment we got out of the car.

By the time we were ready to leave the national park it was 2:30 pm and we hadn't eaten lunch. We were dangerously close to getting "hangry" so we stopped in their little shop for some snacks just to hold us over. Our next stop was Boulder Beach to see African penguins. We were not disappointed.

We could tell that everything was taking longer than we planned so we decided not to stop for fish and chips like we had originally planned. We drove on.  Two different people had suggested a place in Kalk Bay called Cape to Cairo. We thought we might get something to snack on there but we had a terrible time locating the place. It turns out it is called Cape to Cuba. It was just okay. We ordered dessert and sat next to the railway to eat it.

I took over driving at this point. I wanted to get a feel for driving on the left. Our next stop was the brightly colored houses of Muizenberg. Gayle teased me for wanting to see them just because I'd done a jigsaw puzzle of this photogenic location.

After we left Muizenberg we saw the townships on our left that Elsabe mentioned. We reminded each other that we were not to stop there.

That is when we came upon a police barricade. There had been an "action" and there was still a fire on the road. The police made us turn into the township. We found ourselves in stop and go traffic through the heart of the township.  We inched along for 45 minutes with Elsabe's words ringing in our ears..."Whatever you do don't stop in the townships"....which is exactly what we were doing. The night before we had a FaceTime conversation with Matt and he told us that a friend had shared that there has been protests in Cape Town. When we got back out onto a main road we saw even more police and were directed around multiple fires on the road. When I took over the driving I hadn't imagined myself navigating that kind of traffic and situation. 

Once we got onto the expressway we headed for our destination, Hermanus. We decided that we were done sightseeing. We arrived just after 7:30 pm. Our hotel is located directly across the street from the ocean, which we couldn't see because of the late hour. We had a hard time figuring out how to get into it because it is completely gated. We were meet by Sandisa who offered us wine and seats by the fire while he checked us in. The incongruity of life in a township and this opulence was not lost on us.

While we were checking in three German women we had met while having dinner at Reverie Social Table in Cape Town walked in. We hugged like we were long list friends from elementary school. 

Our room faces the ocean and has every eminity, including a cell phone and iPad you can use while staying here. But mostly we were hungry. We started walking in search of food. We got turned away due to the late hour. We passed by a couple restaurants because Gayle thought the sounded too "meaty". She doesn't enjoy eating meat that looks like meat. I think it probably comes from growing up in Nigeria where the meat market had big slabs of red meat covered in flies.

Eventually our pickiness ceased and I went into the next restaurant and started with: "We are very hungry. We promise to eat quickly and order no drinks." They gave us a table. When the waitress came to take our order she brought a tray with large cuts of raw red meat on it. She said, "I would like to talk to you about the cuts of meat we are offering tonight." She instantly registered our horror and had another waitress whisk the bloody meat away from our table. After she took our order and left I got the giggles about it and had to lay down on the booth bench. It was funny but I think it was also the stress of the day. 

I had the best pulled pork sandwich of my life at theirs restaurant named Chard. Gayle got sides. One of them was corn on the cob dipped in tempura batter and deep fried. It was served with kale chips. It turns out that is delicious! 

By then we were too exhausted to walk back to our hotel in the dark. We got an Uber. Glad to be back in our room we fell into bed.