Cape Town!

Flying down to Cape Town from Joburg, we got to see some of the land of South Africa. We flew over Kimberley which is where the big diamond mine. Even 30,000 ft in the air you can see the big hole in the middle of the town that is the mine. The middle of the country is very arid, but as you approach Cape Town the mountains start to appear & as you go over them, everything starts to turn green. It is the rainy season in Cape Town & spring is just starting, so everything is greener. Table Mountain is very dramatic and is very large in the middle of the city, right on the water. We are hoping to get a clear day & go up to the top one day. The clouds seem to hang over this mountain – it’s called the ‘tablecloth’.  The beaches are beautiful but the water is still cold – 12 degrees Celsius (55 degree farenheit). We are staying over by Somerset West, by the vineyards (they call them wine farms), again with Susan & Johann. They are brave enough to have all 8 of us in their house for 8 days and they have a bed for everyone!

We drove past the Strand (the beach) in False Bay and up Gordon’s Bay (no guardrails!) but we spotted our first whale! I can’t believe how close they are to shore! So many waves as well. The weather forcast for this week is not great, several days of rain ahead. But Johann, says ‘ you’ll get four seasons in a day’. So I don’t think it will be a complete washout. So on the rainy Sunday we had down to the waterfront, called the V&A (Victoria & Albert) waterfront. Similar to the South Street Seaport, only bigger & nicer. We went into the Two Oceans Aquarium, where Ryan took a picture of every fish in there. The spider crabs, were the one thing that I really didn’t like, they were almost as big as Ryan! In this aquarium, you can dive in the shark tank, so it was weird to see these divers floating around in the tank!

The shopping at the waterfront was great. The Red Shed is full of crafters with their booths. You see lots of wooden animals, beaded animals, animal skins, wooden bowls & statues. Rich is happy to compare prices on his giraffe, it looks like he got a good deal. A rainy day well spent! The next day we woke up to more rain, but it looked like the skies were clearing so we headed over to Stellenbosch, which is a college town surrounded by wine farms. In fact, the wine farms now charge for wine tastings, because all the college students would drink them dry for free! We stopped at Ernie Els’ place, beautiful gardens with a koi pond & large rocks – the kids played in this garden while we took a look inside. Rich bought some wine, but we didn’t taste any – I must be getting old, 10am is way too early to start drinking!  Then we headed over to Tokara, which is Susan & Johann’s favorite wine. Johann is a conisseur of wine. Every night he brings out bottles of wine for us to try – reds, whites, pinot noir, rose, vanilla white, coffee red. Anyway, we tasted & bought some wines. Loved the olive oil there & bought some bottles of that as well. I’m starting to panic on how I am going to fit everything in our luggage to get home.

On Wednesday, rain again. So we started out by doing some more shopping. We went to a sports store (like Sports Authority) to check out the Sprinbok gear. Everyone in South Africa wears green & gold, for their Rugby team, the Springboks. Imagine all of the US wearing Yankee colors! They were a little low on green & gold wear but Ryan decided to get a cricket set & a rugby ball. Still not sure of the rules, but he is figuring it out. Cricket games can last for days (and I complain about baseball games being too long!). But Ryan and Steffan have been playing rugby everyday with the neighborhood boys. Not sure what that will do to his football game when we get home! But after the shopping, again it looked like it was clearing & we headed over to Speir, which is a wine farm that has some animals as well. There was a bird of prey exhibit that the kids loved. You could pay to hang out with the spotted owls. So the kids had so much fun having the owls swoop around them and land on their hands, arms & even heads. They fed them chicken feet (which was gross). The barn owls you could only pet, but if you sang to them they would dance! There was also a cheetah rescue sanctuary as well. So we got to pet a cheetah. They are bigger than you think! The kids were very good, the longer that you are calm & don’t stress the cheetah out, the longer you get to pet them. What beautiful animals! One was just laying around & then this man wearing a striped jacket went by on a Segway, you had to see that cheetah go. I think he thought it was a small zebra! Now thoroughly drenched (turns out the sky didn’t clear up) we headed by home. I have been trying to keep up with the laundry, but it has been hard. The washer is a ¼ of the size of mine at home & they don’t like to dry their clothes in a dryer. So the clothes hang on a line inside until they dry, which in this weather takes a very long time. I broke a dryer trying to dry out some of Ryans stuff!  The next few days will be sunny so we should all dry out!