Some days here in Cape Town we do NOTHING — and it’s hard to keep my commitment to write in my journal EVERY day when we basically eat and sleep. Speaking of journals, we start each morning by checking the news, our emails, and a couple of blogs. And this morning, after I made coffee and sat down to ponder the state of affairs like I do every morning, I read the final entry in David Banman’s blog, Flatlander Climbing. We’ve been following his adventures day-by-day and I’ll miss that after today. What a great story. What good writing! Reading his entries makes me want to give up MY blog!

Anyway, as I was saying, some days we do nothing, and some days it pours. Today is one of those days.

We started off the day by hopping into our car and driving out to the Rondebosch Golf Club where we had an 8 o’clock tee time. We were a bit rushed and thought we’d have to fight rush hour traffic, but we got to the course right on time. The starter asked if we were ready to go right away, so that’s what we did. Rudy and Sue, just the two of us, teeing off on Hole #11 (a bit of a weird layout, we’d golf 11 to 18, then have 30 minutes for ‘breakfast’, then golf 1 to 10 to finish the round). And what a great time we had! Never really waiting for the group ahead, never feeling pushed by the group following (in fact, no one behind us for the entire ‘back’ 9!). The temperature was in the low to mid 20s, just enough clouds to keep the sun from baking us, and both of us shooting some fine golf shots. Add to that a ‘breakfast’ of egg and bacon sandwich with french fries (okay, Sue had a muffin and coffee) and a final score of 93 for me (my first 3 rounds in Cape Town were all close to 100, and this was a full par 72 18-hole course!) — well, it was a ‘red-letter day’ all the way!

Back at home shortly after one — Sue made a quick bread and wine run and then we had our sandwiches for lunch.

After lunch we went back to the big Woolworths down the street for a more substantial shopping expedition — mostly groceries and supplies. By 5 o’clock we’d cleaned up the apartment, showered and changed, and were ready for our 6 o’clock meeting at the Hudsons, the burger joint a couple blocks away.

On the way out to the restaurant we got a text from Marina — they’d be a bit late. No problem. Sue and I got our ‘reserved’ table and ordered our drinks and waited for Marina and her brother Rohann to show up. The arrived about 20 minutes late. We’d just said our hellos (we hadn’t seen Rohann since that day 15 years ago when we said goodbye and abandoned the sailing trip) when who walks up to our table but Carol, another of the ones who actually did the crossing in 2002. We’d had dinner’s at Carol’s house, and also spent quite a bit of time with her.

So now we were all here: Marina and her brother Rohann and their friend Carol — the only one missing was Ferdi, the captain. But then again, he was the guy ‘missing’ for most of that month we spent here in 2002! And as it turned out, the South African people had no shortage of stories about Ferdi.

We quickly decided that Hudsons was WAY too loud for us to do any visiting. Marina had brought along a photo album and we were going to look at it together — but we couldn’t really hear ourselves. So we all got up and walked back, heading for our apartment — but along the way we passed a little ‘Simply Asia’ restaurant, perfect for what we wanted. So we pushed together two outdoor tables and spent the rest of our evening there.

We ordered our food and then began visiting. Sue and Carol were at one end of the table, Marina and Rohann and I were at the other. We hardly had time to eat — so much fun reminiscing and catching up.

At some point in the evening Marina’s daughter Emma joined us — her father dropped her off at the restaurant. By 9:15 it was time to say goodbye — but we all agreed to meet again and continue our catching up.

While the others got into their cars and had to drive home, Sue and I walked back to our apartment. It sure looked nice and clean — too bad we never had our visitors over to enjoy it! But we’d had a great visit, and we were actually looking forward to our next one.