Hermanus ‘cliff walk’

Breakfast at the Lavender Lodge is great: bacon and sausages and eggs any style and toast and fruit and coffee, etc. It’s going to be a week of Saturdays for the Nikkels.

After breakfast we went on our first ‘cliff walk’. Robert joined us, Arlene stayed in bed to try to sleep away her stomach problems. Our first stop was at a little ‘OK convenience store’ not far from our place, where I ‘topped up’ my phone card — so now I’m good for another month. We went back across the street and headed for the cliff walk along the ocean. We walked for 3 or 4 kms until Robert thought he’d better go back and check on Arlene. Sue and I continued. The walk was mostly paved or cemented path in and amongst the rocks on the shoreline, sometimes weaving a little farther away from the shoreline, back through the fynbos that grows in the wild here.

At one point we headed back to the main road for a short stretch, but soon we were back down along the shoreline. After just over 6kms we were near the end of our walk — and we’d arrived at what we believe is the very apartment block where we stayed in December of 2001, and from where we’d watched the big Southern Right whales playing

Marine Court apartments
Marine Court — we rented an apartment here when we stayed in Hermanus in 2001

in the bay with their calves.  I took a picture of the apartment building, for “old time’s sake”.

We walked around the little markets in this part of the city and finally we sat down under one of the big umbrellas at an outside ‘food court’ and had lunch: Hake and fries and a draught and a cappuccino. We did a bit of scouting around after lunch, even checking in with a real estate office to see how /what are the opportunities for us to perhaps rent a furnished apartment for 3 months here next winter — just checking.

After that we started on our walk back to our place. It took about an hour and a half to get back home, but once we did we made ourselves comfortable out on our balcony (over looking our parking lot, but looking out to the big mountain behind our place. Robert came up and joined us for happy hour.

After drinks and a quick shower it was time for supper. I’d called Lizette’s Kitchen to reserve a table for four for 7:00. We took the car the 10 blocks down our road and parked in the parking lot. We got a table — and a good thing that we’d reserved because the restaurant appeared to be fully booked. We had just put in our food order when Sue noticed Paul and Shirley getting off their little Vespa motorcycle outside. Ho, ho!

They join us, and the six of us move to a smaller room in the back of the restaurant for dinner. Paul and Shirley have brought 3 ‘new’ bottles of wine with them — this is a ‘tasting’ evening — they are making some decisions regarding what kinds of wine they will want to export to Manitoba — that is the business they are in. And tonight we will get to help them ‘choose’!

We share a lovely evening with them — and their wine. When, at around 10:00, we get up and say goodbye, we’ve arranged to run up a trail on the mountain behind our place together with them tomorrow after breakfast. And we’ll be going on a wine tour of some of the wineries they deal with on the day after tomorrow. This will be fun!

We all squeeze back into our Volvo 2-door and head back to our house, 10 blocks back up along 10th Street. I park the car and soon we’re joined by Robert and Arlene back on our patio. The evening is cool, but very comfortable. We can hear the crashing of the waves, and sometimes catch a whiff of the salty sea from our place up here, too.

By eleven the Dycks have said goodnight, and it’s Rudy and Sue alone in our first floor hotel room. We have a small old-style Sony TV — we watch a bit of CNN. I write in my journal and Sue reads her iPad until we are both tired and ready for bed. The cool breeze is blowing through the slatted shutters of our ‘patio door’. Let’s hope it’s a good day weather-wise tomorrow — I’m looking forward to climbing that big mountain.