Friday 13th June 2008Today we headed off down the road and visited a near by winery (Simonsvlei) and met a great guy called... wait for it ‘Hercules’ with a rather rotund body shape that exposed his love for a good wine and maybe a cheese platter on the side. So after testing a few wines we informed him it was only 10 o’clock in the morning and we didn’t feel the need to work our way through every wine label on the premises so he offered the kids a drink at which point I informed him that they didn’t drink coke so he said he had just the thing. Thinking it was some non alcoholic grapetizer I let him pour away. The kids loving it drank their glasses dry at which point he informed me it was only 7% alcoholic so we bade our farewells and all sang our way to the car like a scene out of the sound of music. We visited Paarl, Franshoek and wound our way through the wine region, over the mountains and onto the much anticipated Garden Route. We were expecting, well, gardens. So the 400kms of dry farmland was somewhat underwhelming until we arrived in little Sedgefield at our friend Gareth’s aunty Pam’s place. Wow, this was truly beyond expectations. We are staying in a little cottage overlooking an absolutely beautiful tidal lagoon surrounded by huge mountains as far as the eye can see, and you can see and hear the breakers on the beach too. Another added bonus is that Pam’s twin sister Patsy is visiting (Gareth’s mum) and his cousin Andy also lives next door with her 3 kids, so we all enjoyed some of Patsy’s macaroni cheese and a glass or 2 of Hercules’ Simonsvlei Pinotage.
The wine region
mmmm...
now THAT'S a wine bottle
Our little cottage @ Sedgefield
How's this for a view?Thursday 12th June 2008
Woke up to a great breakfast packed the car and headed out of town to ze wine region, making our way to Stelenbosch. Popped into the Speir Winery Estate on the way, it was very creatively rustic. There were massive metal water constructions strewn around the gardens with 6 foot clay angels mosaiced in mirrors with constipated faces just resting under trees, it would have been amazing at night with all the lanterns hanging from the trees. There were canvas tents throughout the whole grounds that were massive food halls and every chair throughout the tent had a big fluffy blanket on it (it gets quite chilly here). They also have a gift shop with a huge variety of stuff, a cheetah park, eagles, and horsie rides. When we got to Stelenbosch, the wine regions main town we found a cheap B & B called “Millstream” (have made it a practise now to go straight to info centres on arrival into towns). Decided to chill out for the afternoon and went and saw the latest Indiana Jones flick which cost us about $12 for the whole family. All slept well except Maddi and ma as the B&B was opposite some church that decided to ring their bells every hour on the hour throughout the entire night with 1 ding on the half hour just to inform us.. how thoughtful... Not.. between 10 and 8 I heard 80 bells. Kaz
Woke up to a great breakfast packed the car and headed out of town to ze wine region, making our way to Stelenbosch. Popped into the Speir Winery Estate on the way, it was very creatively rustic. There were massive metal water constructions strewn around the gardens with 6 foot clay angels mosaiced in mirrors with constipated faces just resting under trees, it would have been amazing at night with all the lanterns hanging from the trees. There were canvas tents throughout the whole grounds that were massive food halls and every chair throughout the tent had a big fluffy blanket on it (it gets quite chilly here). They also have a gift shop with a huge variety of stuff, a cheetah park, eagles, and horsie rides. When we got to Stelenbosch, the wine regions main town we found a cheap B & B called “Millstream” (have made it a practise now to go straight to info centres on arrival into towns). Decided to chill out for the afternoon and went and saw the latest Indiana Jones flick which cost us about $12 for the whole family. All slept well except Maddi and ma as the B&B was opposite some church that decided to ring their bells every hour on the hour throughout the entire night with 1 ding on the half hour just to inform us.. how thoughtful... Not.. between 10 and 8 I heard 80 bells. Kaz
Wednesday 11th June 2008
Kaz here. I have drawn the short straw to write today’s blog. Pete said if he did it there would be too many expletives and that would blow his cover as a holy man. I think we had our 6 months worth of drama in one day...After having to move from our most gracious hosts, Romy’s folks, because I was allergic to their cat Hero and after taking phenergen to stop the reaction I slept for 12 hours straight wiping out any sight seeing endeavours so we bade our farewells and headed down town to check in to the backpackers and to swap our rented car for one with a bigger boot space. 5 cars later we decided it would probably be cheaper to send our 1 curio box back home via the post office. Unfortunately the Post Office won’t send suitcases and besides, ours weighs 30kgs and they have a 20 kg limit, so after literally hours of finding boxes and tape and repacking and waiting in line yet again, she informed us that we were still 1 kilo over weight. Meanwhile the kids, who were waiting in the car, informed us that the parking officers were going to give us a ticket, so after slashing our near water resistant cardboard box (you know how Pete is with his tape), we repacked and sealed it, then lined up again only to find out that they couldn’t take our credit card at which point I headed out to our near impounded car. The kids were told in no uncertain terms to render themselves mute under fear of no dessert for the rest of their lives and we headed south to Cape Point, the southernmost tip of the Cape of Good Hope. After they cautiously began to utter English, Maddi decided to take a vow of silence, something I am still thanking God for, however our quiet little Mahalia turned into a A D H D D A H D NIGHTMARE, enjoying free space in the otherwise clogged Hewitt airwaves, while Maddi was causing wind drafts just with her animated arm gestures. After our Cape photo shoot we headed back north via a route that has never been duplicated. After 6 places that couldn’t accommodate us for whatever reason, we finally found a great and cheap B&B in Kalk Bay (Chartfield Lodge), ducked out for a late meal and slept like a very still piece of bush debris.
Kaz here. I have drawn the short straw to write today’s blog. Pete said if he did it there would be too many expletives and that would blow his cover as a holy man. I think we had our 6 months worth of drama in one day...After having to move from our most gracious hosts, Romy’s folks, because I was allergic to their cat Hero and after taking phenergen to stop the reaction I slept for 12 hours straight wiping out any sight seeing endeavours so we bade our farewells and headed down town to check in to the backpackers and to swap our rented car for one with a bigger boot space. 5 cars later we decided it would probably be cheaper to send our 1 curio box back home via the post office. Unfortunately the Post Office won’t send suitcases and besides, ours weighs 30kgs and they have a 20 kg limit, so after literally hours of finding boxes and tape and repacking and waiting in line yet again, she informed us that we were still 1 kilo over weight. Meanwhile the kids, who were waiting in the car, informed us that the parking officers were going to give us a ticket, so after slashing our near water resistant cardboard box (you know how Pete is with his tape), we repacked and sealed it, then lined up again only to find out that they couldn’t take our credit card at which point I headed out to our near impounded car. The kids were told in no uncertain terms to render themselves mute under fear of no dessert for the rest of their lives and we headed south to Cape Point, the southernmost tip of the Cape of Good Hope. After they cautiously began to utter English, Maddi decided to take a vow of silence, something I am still thanking God for, however our quiet little Mahalia turned into a A D H D D A H D NIGHTMARE, enjoying free space in the otherwise clogged Hewitt airwaves, while Maddi was causing wind drafts just with her animated arm gestures. After our Cape photo shoot we headed back north via a route that has never been duplicated. After 6 places that couldn’t accommodate us for whatever reason, we finally found a great and cheap B&B in Kalk Bay (Chartfield Lodge), ducked out for a late meal and slept like a very still piece of bush debris.
Tuesday 10th June 2008
Everything caught up with us today resulting in a HUGE sleep in. Gus & Cindy’s beautiful cat is unintentionally slowly killing Kaz, whose severe allergic reaction requires large doses of antihistamines which knocked her out for over 12 hours last night! She says she has never slept that long in her entire night. Unfortunately, this also means that we have to be on our way, so we did our laundry and packed our bags before heading off to “Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens” with Cindy & Catherine, a truly magnificent garden. This little spot also provided another little unexpected memorable moment when we got out of the cold at the tea rooms and had the most ridiculously thick & rich French hot chocolate in the world, so rich in fact that no one could drink it without pouring another 100mls of warm milk into it. We finished today with an evening out at the “theatre on the Bay” where a nice musical called “Chess” was playing (the kid’s first ever proper musical) and after a very late dinner, stayed the night at Ashanti lodge back in town to avoid the cat.
Everything caught up with us today resulting in a HUGE sleep in. Gus & Cindy’s beautiful cat is unintentionally slowly killing Kaz, whose severe allergic reaction requires large doses of antihistamines which knocked her out for over 12 hours last night! She says she has never slept that long in her entire night. Unfortunately, this also means that we have to be on our way, so we did our laundry and packed our bags before heading off to “Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens” with Cindy & Catherine, a truly magnificent garden. This little spot also provided another little unexpected memorable moment when we got out of the cold at the tea rooms and had the most ridiculously thick & rich French hot chocolate in the world, so rich in fact that no one could drink it without pouring another 100mls of warm milk into it. We finished today with an evening out at the “theatre on the Bay” where a nice musical called “Chess” was playing (the kid’s first ever proper musical) and after a very late dinner, stayed the night at Ashanti lodge back in town to avoid the cat.
Monday 9th June 2008This morning we woke up pretty early to get to the wharf and catch our boat to Robben Island (the boat we went on is the one behind the old blue prisoner boat in the picture). We got some awesome pictures of Table Mountain that we took on the boat. When we arrived at Robben Island we hopped into a bus and got toured around the Island, we saw were Nelson Mandela did hard labour in a limestone quarry for 14 years. He was on Robben Island for 18 years in total, before he was moved to Paarl prison for 9 years, he was in prison for 27 years and was finally released in 1990 and soon became the president of South Africa. We were then taken to their shared prison cells where our guide was once a prisoner there. He was telling us about what the guards used to do to him if he didn’t tell them what he knew about Nelson Mandela and other leaders. Then we were taken to the other prison cells where Nelson Mandela was kept in solitary confinement so he couldn’t influence the other prisoners, they only had a mat to sleep on, a stool and a tin bin to pee in. We then went on the boat again to Cape Town, where we went on the cable car to get up to Table Mountain and have a look around. It was very beautiful to see Cape Town in a very different way. We went back home and had a great sleep after a long day. Mahalia
Beautiful Cape Town
Table Mountain
One of the prisoner transport ships
Our guide who was one of the political prisoners
A cell block on Robben Island
Nelson Mandela’s cell
On top of Table MountainSunday 8th June 2008
In the morning we went to church with Cindy and Gus it was called – ‘His people’ then we drove to an Aquarium. The aquarium was cool and there was shark feeding. I hugged a big penguin, there was a touch pool and I touched a starfish, it felt funny. Then we saw John, Kirra and Jubin from the safari we had ice cream with them. Then we drove back to Gus and Cindy’s house and then mum and dad and the youngest daughter Catherine, went to church (“Common Ground”) then when they came back we went to dinner with them, back to the same restaurant as last night “the Spur”. Then we came back and went to bed. Elijah
In the morning we went to church with Cindy and Gus it was called – ‘His people’ then we drove to an Aquarium. The aquarium was cool and there was shark feeding. I hugged a big penguin, there was a touch pool and I touched a starfish, it felt funny. Then we saw John, Kirra and Jubin from the safari we had ice cream with them. Then we drove back to Gus and Cindy’s house and then mum and dad and the youngest daughter Catherine, went to church (“Common Ground”) then when they came back we went to dinner with them, back to the same restaurant as last night “the Spur”. Then we came back and went to bed. Elijah
Saturday 7th June 2008This morning we slept in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YAY!!! We organised to have brekky with Jock, our Brit friend. We went to a nice cafe’ down the road called ‘Arnolds’. We all had the simple bacon, eggs, toast etc (only $2.50). But Jock, He had the Double breakfast, 4eggs, 4slices of bacon, 4 pieces of toast... FATTY! It was sad to say bye but hopefully we’ll see him again.Then Dad and I went to choose our rent-a-car for the garden rout while the others went back to the lodge. After ages of looking for one that was cheap but could fit all of our luggage into it, we went back to the lodge to pick Mum, Mahalia and Elijah up... Then realising that the boot was too small for the luggage we all went back and got an upgrade with a bigger boot! (but we can’t pick it up till tomorrow). Finally we got to go to the water front where Mum and Dad had a cuppa and we all watched ‘Narnia Prince Caspian’. It was getting late and we needed to drive to Cindy and Gus’ house. (When Romy from church found out we were going to South Africa she told us that her parents - Cindy and Gus lived there and that we could stay with them for a few nights. Small world) After getting lost, thanks to the map we picked up from a fuel station at the last minute, we found our way successfully! All tired and not wanting to organise dinner, we all went out dinner at “the Spur”. It was a good night. Maddi
*Sorry no pictures
1 comment:
Finally!!!! I've been checking in every day to see what you've all been up to - it must be getting towards the close of your adventure??? Thanks for keeping up the info to us all back home - we love to read about the latest travels from the Thornburys... X Don
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