Author: Rudy

Sue and I sat inside all morning reading. Sue did a load of laundry and hung it out on our balcony for a while. It had rained all night and the air was still cold. Eventually she moved the rack inside and of course that’s when the sun came out. At a little after 12:00 it was time for us to head out to Mouille Point for our 12:30 lunch date. I wore jeans, socks, shoes, and a sweater! That’s a first since our arrival here in Cape Town.

We got a table for 6 in a nook surrounded by shelves of books at the Hussar Grille Restaurant. We were just seated when our guests arrived. Marina and her 8-year-old daughter Emma, Marina’s partner Lukas, and Emma’s friend Nina. Easter dinner, and also a farewell dinner with our old friend Marina. We had a great couple of hours. The Hussar Grille specializes in steak and ribs, so that’s what we had. The girls ate their calamari and then brought out sketching books and playing cards and kept themselves busy at the table while the adults visited. Marina is in the middle of a very busy month at work. Lukas’s leg, which had developed a serious achilles infection that kept him tied to an IV and more-or-less immobile for the past 3 months, was finally healing and he now wore a removable cast. He is off to Ghana in a couple of weeks to speak at an anti-torture prison reform symposium. When we finally got up from the table it was time to say goodbye. Marina has been more than hospitable  — she’s organized ‘reunions’ with our old ‘sailing team’, met us for breakfast, and had us over to her place for dinner twice. We’d love to return the favour someday and welcome her to our home — and we hope it won’t be another 14 years until we meet again.

Our walk back to our apartment through Green Point Park was interrupted by a FaceTime call from Alex and Max. Happy Easter at their house too. Max was quite excited about all the Easter treats he’d collected so far, and was still looking forward to one more Easter gathering later this afternoon. It will be good to see him in a couple of days.

Back at the house we watched a bit of TV and ate the last of our cheese and crackers for happy hour. At around 7 we went out again, this time back to the Big Route pizza joint just around the corner. I’d seen a poster advertising Sunday night live jazz there. We weren’t really hungry for pizza but once we sat down at the bar and heard the band playing we decided we might as well order something and enjoy the music. Good decision. The music was great, the place was packed, and the pizza we shared was pretty good!

We got back home at around 10 o’clock. We watched the CBC National and went to bed. Our last overnight in Cape Town.

Today was the big marathon run in Cape Town — 11,000 runners ran the 56km Ultra Marathon and another 16,000 ran the half marathon. What a day for it! We woke up and it was cool and wet outside — it had rained at night, and it would rain more later in the day.

We stayed inside for the day. Had two coffees each to go with our bacon and eggs. Sat on the couch and read and computed and played games and watched TV. Sue actually left the building at one point to go buy a bottle of wine, but I stayed in the apartment all day.

In the evening it started raining harder. Wind blowing. Not a lot of traffic outside our window. Sue and I sat and watched TV — lots of Bill Maher clips on YouTube. Ice cream and a chocolate bar for snack. To bed by 11:30.

Good Friday today. We’re not sure what’s open and what’s not — we know it’s a holiday. In fact, for the working people it’s been a very short week: Monday was Human Rights Day, today’s Good Friday, and Monday is Family Day, another national holiday.

It may be a holiday for most South Africans, but there was no ‘special’ breakfast at our place! Fruit and toast and coffee. We had a lazy morning, and then had an early lunch so we could get to Milnerton, an 11km drive up the coast from here, in time for our 12:45 tee time. Although the morning started off sunny and warm and calm, by noon it was clouding over. We’d heard that this “links-style” golf course right along the coast was not fun to golf when it was windy, so we’d booked our game for today with that in mind. Sue’s iPad said no rain today (it’s coming tomorrow, though) so we were a little concerned when we saw the clouds.

We parked our car and registered at the pro shop. We were half an hour early, so we decided to go putt a bit. Well, it wasn’t long and Sue was back in the pro shop trying to warm up her frozen fingers. The wind was howling! And the air was cool and getting colder. I wasn’t sure if it was a ocean mist or if it was actually starting to rain! And we’d left our (new) rain jackets back at the apartment.

We were scheduled to tee off as a ‘two-ball’, but were joined at the last minute by another ‘couple’. Gunnar, a 55-ish magazine publisher, and Rosita, a 65-ish English teacher, both from the island of Gotland in Sweden, were here for a 2-week holiday together with a group of about 18 fellow Swedes. They do this every year. We very much enjoyed meeting them and spending the next 5 hours on the golf course with them.

Not long after our first tee shot the wind and a thin rain started. This was NOT going to be fun. My tee shots, which have been getting progressively more erratic and unpredictable, continued to let me down. I lost a few balls right off the bat — over the sand dunes, into the scrub bushes that lined the fairways, into the water on either side of the fairways. If the Swedes hadn’t raced ahead in their golf cart and found my ball for me, I’d have been out of ammo by the fifth hole, heading back to our nice warm and dry apartment! But we persevered. And it was worth it.

Halfway through the front nine the clouds moved out to sea and the sun came out. (The course layout is a long narrow walk out to the ninth where there is a small cafe, and then comes back the same way to the clubhouse for the back nine.) Sue was playing very well, every tee shot straight down the middle. And Gunnar and Rosita were playing a friendly competition and were having a great time. By the time we were sitting down in the halfway cafe and watching Gunnar wash down a massive chicken burger and fries with two Black Label beers, we were SO glad we hadn’t aborted after 2 holes.

But we were not home yet! The back nine started off a bit cooler — maybe it was the rest stop or maybe it was the wind picking up or maybe it was the beers — but while the others had their scores go up a bit, MY game got back on track. While Gunnar lost 3 new ProV1s on one hole, I managed to play with the same ball until the final hole! By the time we were on the 15th hole the weather was changing again — now the fog was rolling in. It got progressively thicker with each hole — first we had trouble seeing the coastal highway which ran alongside the course, then the beautiful new homes that lined the some of the fairways disappeared, and then we couldn’t see the flag on the green until we were less than a fifty yards out. By the last two holes the Swedes would drive their cart out onto the fairway, to the green and back, before we teed off, just so we’d know what direction to hit the ball (and where the hazards were). It was crazy! and it was fun. By now the Swede’s competition was getting serious — Gunnar was playing for beers, Rosie for champagne, and they were tied going into the last green. Rosita was the last one to putt; we all circled around the hole (by now the fog was so thick we could barely see across the green) and watched as she THREE-putted from 10-feet out, and lost to Gunnar. He was relieved and happy. They hugged. Sue thinks they had more than just a friendly side bet going. We said goodbye.

As soon as we were back on the road the fog was a non-issue. The road was just inland enough, I guess. We stopped at our local Metropolitan golf course and I dropped off my pull cart (I bought it used from Basil, one of the caddies there, and now he could sell it to someone else). We parked the car and hauled our clubs up to the apartment — that’ll be it for our golfing here. We FaceTimed with the kids — they have a string of family gatherings spoiling their long weekend but seemed happy to be back in their house; Alex looking forward to a week off ahead, Tim busy building Lego cars with Max, and Max proudly showing off the ‘Paw Patrol’ tattoo he got from ‘Auntie Melissa’.

I went to Big Route to pick up a pizza (it’s Friday, afterall). On my return I met Mike — he was having another ‘slow night’ parking cars (not much action out here on this Good Friday night) and was worried about a cold (and wet) night ahead. I gave him the change from the pizza, to which he said, “I have never experienced a father’s love, but YOU are so good to me, you always take care of me.” I’m hoping to go out for coffee with him before we leave here — and hear some of his story.

After supper we watched some TV. By now that is the cue for me to get comfortable on the couch, close my eyes just for a minute, and unwind from a long hard day. It seems to me that at some point during the evening I had a bowl of ice cream for a night snack. It’s a good thing that Peter Mansbridge always starts off The National by listing the top 3 or 4 news stories so I at least FEEL like I know what’s going on in the world. I feel sorry for all those people who lie in bed and can’t fall asleep — GET A TV IN THE BEDROOM!

It was windy when we woke up. The forecast for today was about 26 degrees and very windy. The forecast was right. We went for a walk late in the morning — the usual walk along the promenade — but there were times when the wind literally stopped us in our tracks!

Sue stopped at the Spar (grocery store) on the way back and picked up lunch fixings. After lunch I worked on Sue’s bookclub website — it stopped working about a month ago because it was running on an old version of PHP. It took me a couple of hours to update the code. Sue read her Canada Reads book, The Illegal. The kids Facetimed for a bit. We decided to watch another of my downloaded TV series and watched 3 episodes before supper and another in the evening.

We went to the ‘Simply Asia’ place a couple of blocks from our place and both ordered Thai dishes “extra spicy”. That was fun. When we got home we tried watching the last Canada Reads episode (streaming on CBC.ca) but our internet was flaky again and the show ‘stuttered’ so bad we finally gave up on that and just read the results online. Sue played bridge on her iPad while I fiddled with a website project for a bit before going to bed at around midnight.

After a bit of a lazy morning, the highlight of which was scrambled eggs for breakfast (What? But it’s not Saturday! This IS a good day!), we decided to have an early lunch (we’d had a VERY early morning — all that talk about how we were tired of having to get up so early to go golfing? well, “early to bed, early to rise” proved to be true this morning at 4:45am!) and take a drive out to Kirstenbosch National Botanical Gardens, a UNESCO World Heritage Site located at the eastern foot of Table Mountain. (Whew! I bet you thought that sentence would never end.) We got there just before 2pm, which turned out to be just in time to join a free walking tour, led by a volunteer septuagenarian botanist who shared his love and enthusiasm for everything about the garden for the next 3 hours!

I am not a “plant” guy, but there is something about listening to someone who is PASSIONATE about his or her field of interest, no matter how narrow that field might be (and there was NOTHING narrow about the fields at Kirstenbosch! the gardens take up 52,800-sq-kms!) that is contagious. And so we spent the afternoon with a group of 15, following old Mr Finkelstein around the park. I’ll leave the particulars of the various latin names and special attributes of the genus and species and pollinators and reproductive parts and sex habits (seriously!) concerning plants to Wikipedia. Suffice it to say the flowers were interesting and beautiful. Although the garden is huge, and the South African winters are mild and rainy so there is always SOMETHING in bloom, old Mr Finkelstein could walk up to a patch of brown and dying ‘schtruk‘ and turn around and wave his arms and excitedly describe in great detail and delight, in the most eloquent and rich vocabulary, how ‘absolutely STUNNING’ this patch looked about two months ago when it was FILLED with tiny flowers of every shade and hue. And then we’d march off to the next patch and I’d think to myself now he’ll tell us something about that big bushy orange plant with the interesting leaves, but no, he stops and bends down and points to a tiny little ‘weed’ that has a one-centimetre white 5-petalled flower peeking out from one of its branches and old Mr Finkelstein nearly has an orgasm! Yeah, okay, that’s special.

And lest I make this sound like it was NOT fun, I KNOW that if Sue and I had visited the gardens without a guide we’d have done it the “American” way (Finkelstein’s words) and marched once around, snapped a photo of those extremely rare and endangered cycads, two photos of those tin dinosaur statues (which Mr Finkelstein detested — what have THEY got to do with botany?), and been back at the souvenir and snack shop in 20 minutes, ready to get back on the bus and head to the next tourist stop — now THAT’S how we usually visit places like this. But that old saying, “You’ve got to stop and smell the roses…” applied to our walking tour with Mr Finkelstein, who invited us to rub a leaf and smell the mint, snap a twig and smell the camphor, sniff these flowers and smell the lemon, etc. Okay, I think you get the picture. Chasing my lawnmower around the backyard will never be the same again!

We drove back home. Sue made supper. We caught up on the news. Sue watched the latest episode of “Canada Reads” on CBC. Ice cream and a small glass of port for ‘night snack’. Went to bed a little after ten.

And so begins our last week in Cape Town. Even before our 6 o’clock alarm was set to go off, Sue was in the kitchen cutting up a mango. It was still dark outside! What are we doing getting up before the sun? This is so ‘not right’!

We are going golfing. Again. Much to Sue’s chagrin. I’d booked this over a week ago and that’s the first mistake right there — ‘I’ booked it. Better to make decisions TOGETHER (i.e. let Sue make them!) than to go down the wrong road like this. Sue was not happy even before we left home.

First of all, we had no cash. And we had no data on our phone. I corrected the cash problem first by making a pitstop at the Woolworths ATM before heading out to the Rondebosch Golf Club. And low and behold, my phone’s google maps GPS brought us safely to the golf course, even without data!

Our old friend Fritz (the 70-year-old German guy, whose girlfriend Susanne has gone back to Germany for a couple of weeks) was waiting for us at the clubhouse. We checked in and paid in the pro shop and then headed for the tee boxes at the eleventh hole. That’s how they do it here — the first hole was all booked so we started at hole 11 and finished the back nine before having our ‘coffee break’ and continuing with the front 10 holes.

I was shooting great at the start but then things fell apart. It got so bad I shot ‘double-digits’ on our 4th hole (yes, I said double digits — not double bogey, not double par, double DIGITS!). Still, I was optimistic that things would turn around on the next hole. Sue, on the other hand, was playing great golf, in spite of the fact that her one un-gloved hand was getting frozen.

Table mountain looked glorious with the morning sun illuminating it. We could see the congestion of cars on the freeway just beyond the trees that lined our fairways — hey, it could be worse — some people have to go to work today!

And after a few really bad holes my game got back on track (sort of). It seems that once I make a bad shot I am determined to get that yardage back on the next shot — and the harder I flail, the more likely I am to repeat my mistake. I KNOW that’s not good golf, but I guess I am a slow learner. Still, I was enjoying my day.

We finished our game at around 11:30, said ‘Auf Wiedersehen’ to Fritz, and wished him well. He is staying here for most of the ‘winter’, golfing three times a week, and looking forward to his ‘caddy’ Susanne coming back to join him in a couple of weeks.

The data-less phone failed us on the drive back to our apartment. But by now I really didn’t need the GPS to find my way. And thanks to Sue, who has nearly pushed through the floorboards of our Volvo whenever she notices a car ahead of us, and who has kept us accident-free by gripping her armrest and shouting at me when she thinks I don’t see what she sees, we made it home in no time at all and without incident. Sue headed upstairs to make sandwiches while I went to the corner pharmacy to buy more data for my phone.

After lunch I continued working on my computer (and watching the Apple Event on TV, now that our internet was working — well, not so well that I could stream it without long rotating ‘beachball’ pauses, but I could get the drift of it. And Sue updated our home budget accounts in her little notebook. And that’s how we spent the afternoon!

At around suppertime we Skyped my parents — all is well, snow has nearly melted, temperatures could warm up a bit. And not soon after, at around 7:30, we went out for supper. We went to one of Sue’s favorites, Manos, and it did not disappoint.We shared an excellent grilled calamari dish for an appetizer. Sue had pasta and liver (so good she ate half of it and boxed up the rest for tomorrow’s lunch) and I had a breaded chicken with salad dish (I ate half the chicken and gave the rest to Mike, the parking attendant down on our street). A guy at the next table bought us each a couple of shooters to celebrate various events — possibly the birthday of the lady sitting at another nearby table (friendly South Africans!) And the best part of dinner was watching our waitress, Fran, literally ‘skipping’ from table to table to kitchen and back, working feverishly to keep the full restaurant (and those waiting to get a table) entertained and happy. As Sue likes to say (and said again tonight), it would be her dream job to work in a restaurant like this.

When we got home we started up our devices and checked various insignificant things: Facebook and Twitter and emails and news feeds etc. We were both tired from quite a few early mornings in a row — tomorrow we’ll sleep in for the first time in over a week — and went to bed before eleven.

Today is a national holiday in South Africa. My alarm went off at 4:00am. Jessica was already up — at least we know the alarm in her new phone works! When I got up she’d already packed and checked her Uber app to make sure there were cabs in the area at this time of the morning — there were. So she ordered one and 5 minutes later it was at our door. We loaded her suitcase in the trunk and said goodbye. And she was gone. She messaged me about half an hour later — she was safely at the airport, and the cab fare was less than 100 Rand so it was a free ride for her! Great. I went back to bed.

At 6:30 Sue woke me up again. Time to get ready for our morning golf game. I made coffee, Sue cut up a mango. We were at the Metropolitan course for our LAST game there for this trip! We were paired up with Bennie and his son-in-law Lawrence, both from Bloemfontein, a city between here and Johannesburg. Lawrence is here to run his fifth ultra-marathon (56km around the Cape Peninsula, including some SERIOUS hills) this weekend, along with 11,000 other ultra-marathoners!

We had a great round of golf, not because our scores were so good (although they were better than they’d been for a few rounds here), but because the company was. We stopped at the clubhouse after the first 9 holes and enjoyed a quick bacon and egg breakfast before finishing the back nine. We’ve learned that a quick stop at the cafe after the first nine holes is customary here in South Africa.

We stopped to fill up gas on our way back home. Then Sue made sandwiches and did two loads of laundry. She even had a little nap this afternoon while I worked on a website. By early afternoon we’d heard from Jessica: she is safely back in Lilongwe, Malawi.

By suppertime it was getting a bit cooler and windier outside. That too is something we’re noticing – other years, when we were in the southern states, the temperatures got warmer as our time to go home got closer. Here it is now autumn and the temperatures are starting to fall a bit. Sue didn’t really want to go out for supper so I went down to the Rocomama hamburger joint to pick up a couple of burgers. On the way home I met Mike down on our street – he too has had a turn of bad luck; his backpack and all his clothes were stolen and because today is a holiday there weren’t a lot of cars parking on our street, so not too many ‘tips’ for him today. I gave him 50 Rand and wished him well. He was very grateful.

We ate supper and then set up the TV so we could watch another of my downloaded movies. Our internet stopped working just before supper and I really wanted to watch the ‘live’ Apple event at 7pm. Luckily my phone still had data so I could watch it – well, for about 10 minutes it did, and then it too was done when I’d used up the remaining data time! Now what? We decided to watch ‘Meru’, a documentary about mountain climbers trying to climb one of the toughest peaks in the world (Meru is a ‘shark fin’ mountain in India). I believe it was a good movie – at least that’s what Sue said when I woke up from a little nap of my own!

It was ten o’clock. We had some dried fruit and chocolate and decided to call it a night.

Sunday morning. Breakfast was fruit and toast and coffee. The plan for the day? Walk the promenade, get a replacement for Jessica’s stolen phone, go out for one last supper with Jessica. (Spoiler alert: Mission accomplished.)

Sunny and a wee bit on the cool side this morning as we headed out for a long walk along Sea Point. But we soon warmed up, along with hundreds of other walkers, joggers, cyclists, families, and a surprising number of unleashed dogs. We walked from our house, through Green Point park, to the lighthouse and down all the way to the big public pool. Then we turned around and walked back all the way to the V&A shopping centre. We went to about half a dozen phone stores, comparing prices and checking out what was available. Jessica’s stolen phone was an older Samsung S3 — her next phone could be a cheaper (but newer) phone that is supposed to last her for the next 4 months, until she gets back to Canada. She ultimately decided on a Huawei basic smartphone for around a hundred bucks. The salesman did his best to try to get her settings and apps set up like they were on the old phone, and mostly succeeded. It was after one o’clock by the time that was done, and we headed back to the apartment for lunch.

We were home until around 6:30, Jessica exploring her new phone (and having a short nap), Sue reading and scrabbling on her iPad, and I worked on a website. After a quick happy hour we went back out to the mall — this time to see if the CellC cell service people could replace Jessica’s SIM card and get her ‘WhatsApp’ to work on her old (Canadian) phone number. He tried, but no success there. So we walked back to our part of town and looked for a restaurant. We ended up at Cafe Extrablatt, about a block and a half from our corner. Seafood platter for Jessica, chicken fingers for me, pizza for Sue. All we needed was a ice cream for dessert — and we found that at a little gelato shop on our way home.

Back at the apartment we sat down and started watching one of my movie downloads, “Straight Outta Compton”.  But we were too tired to finish it; Jessica had to pack — she needs to be up and ready to head to the airport by shortly after 4am tomorrow morning. She’ll try to get an Uber taxi — and if that doesn’t work, I’ll take her to the airport myself.

And so ends our time with Jessica. It’s too bad her time in Cape Town was spoiled by that mugging yesterday; the fright, the expense, and the inconvenience! (We spent much of today shopping for a new phone and getting it set up.) But she’s handled it all so well, and that’s been very impressive. It’s been great getting to know Jessica a bit better. I think she has the best qualities of both Paul and Kathy, and that’s saying a lot! Farewell, and SAFE travels!

The day started off so well. Sue and Jessica went out to buy eggs and bread so we could have bacon and eggs for breakfast. We sat around for a part of the morning and enjoyed the warm sunshine. We considered options for how to spend the day. Jessica was happy to go out and do some sightseeing on her own. So we sent her off to visit the District Six museum in the city center.

When she was finished there, Jessica sent us a text — and we arranged to meet at the ‘Bacon’ restaurant on Bree Street for lunch. Sue has swollen and sore ankles — she’s not sure what brought that on; either jumping to forcefully on the cliff walk yesterday, or putting her feet in the cold Hermanus ocean — so we actually took the bus for part of the trip. Jessica was already there — had saved us a table. After lunch (bacon, what else?) Jessica set off to see if she could find a particular clothing shop while Sue and I walked back home to the apartment.

Just after 5 there’s a knock on the door and Jessica comes in. How was your afternoon? Well, you won’t believe this, but I was just robbed! I’m not joking!

What a disappointment. Jessica had been walking back to our place, in broad daylight on a fairly busy street not far from here, when two guys come up behind her and demand her purse. They have a knife! Jessica gave them her purse but asked to please be able to keep her ID. The muggers run off, rifle through the purse and take her wallet (cash and credit cards and driver’s license) and her cell phone, then drop the purse on the sidewalk. A passerby stops who saw the whole thing comes to Jessica’s aid — tells her she shouldn’t be walking in that area! But he calls an Uber cab for her and pays her taxi ride back to our place.

Oh no! What do we do now? So we cancelled the credit cards, and I tried calling the police — but ended up completely frustrated with them when the Green Point police referred me to the city center police, and the city center police sounded like they were having a very loud party in their office and were hard for me to understand. Ultimately I decided that calling the police and filing a case might be a good thing to do, but wasn’t going to happen today.

Jessica called her parents back home. It was an upsetting event, but somehow Jessica (and her parents) managed to laugh and make some jokes about it too. After the call Sue started supper and I barbecued lamb and chicken skewers on the barbecue. Supper was good. We visited a bit and then had a Skype call from Ed & Val in Phoenix. We watched a few short shows on TV. After watching last night’s CBC The National we all went to bed.

A bit of a downer here in Cape Town! I guess it could have been worse, so that’s some consolation — but I feel very sorry for Jessica: two months in Africa, two robberies! Let’s hope that’s the end of that for her and the rest of her time in Malawi turns out to be a rewarding  and way less ‘exciting’ experience.