Author: Rudy

I got up early this morning (6am), not because I had anything to look forward to (like golf), but just because. I checked the hot water — still working! — and called the plumbing company who came to check on it yesterday to let them know it was working. “Great,” says the lady who answered the phone. “Call us next time if you have problems again.” Okay! Thanks so much for coming to check on it! “It was our plizha,” she says.

Did you hear that? THAT’S what makes this place so great! We Canadians might have said, “No problem,” but here they say it was a PLEASURE (and they say it with that cool South African accent).

After breakfast Sue and I looked at some other courses that we might golf at in the next week or two. Sue had finally had it with the dead plants in the planters on our balcony, so she got a big garbage bag and ripped them out. Before lunch we went out to do a bit of shopping: more sunscreen, more beer, more cheese.

Right after lunch Sue figured out how to use the washer and did a load of laundry. It’s a new energy efficient machine, so it took a long time to do a load. No dryer, but a big drying rack in one of the closets got set up in our living room and I left our ceiling fan on high when we left the house a little after 2pm.

We went down to the V&A mall. I was looking for a cigarette adapter to charge my phone (/GPS) in the car. After doinking around at the mall for a while we continued on around the harbour. Our friends Marina and Helene had mentioned that was a regular once-a-week opportunity to go along for a sailboat ride at the Cape Town sailing club. They forwarded the notice to us:

Spend an evening sailing on one of the Royal Cape Yacht Club’s (RCYC) yachts participating in the Lufthansa Twilight Series. Bring warm clothes and a waterproof jacket.

We had tried to ‘pre-register’ by phone a couple of days ago, but were told to ‘just show up’ at around 4pm and they would register us and we’d be sailing by around 4:30. I’d looked up the location of the yacht club on google maps and since it was only about a 4 or 5 Km walk, Sue thought it would be good exercise for us if we walked there.

So we walked. Well, the walk along the harbour wasn’t anything like walking around at the Waterfront or the V&A Mall! No decent sidewalk, lots of big trucks, dirty streets, metal fencing, etc — in other words, a WORKING harbour. It wasn’t as hot today as it had been for the past few, but it was still plenty warm. By the time we finally arrived (safely) at the yacht club, we were hot, sweaty, and thirsty. And a bit too early to register. Okay, let’s go sit in the bar and cool off.

It seemed that ‘registering’ wasn’t as simple as it seemed. I had put our names on a list, but we were about the 15th on the list, and it looked like we might not get to go! Sure, people ahead (and some who’d registered AFTER us) were getting ‘picked’ — but most of them were either ‘experienced sailors’ or cute girls. And because the winds were VERY strong today (last Wednesday they had cancelled the event because of high winds, and the screen in the lobby showed everything after 1pm today was “in the red zone” — so quite a few boats were opting NOT to go out today.

WELL! This did NOT sit well with Sue. We had NOT walked all this way only to get shutout! I urged her to go stand in the lobby and smile at the old sailors and maybe we’d still have a chance. And besides, if it’s too windy to sail, do you REALLY want to be out on the ocean? Well, if we’re not going sailing then we’re WALKING all the way back! Gulp. Okay, I’ll go see what I can do.

And just when we were more or less resigned to a long hot walk back to the apartment, this tiny old lady comes up to us and asks, “Would you like to sail?” Yes! Okay, follow me.

And before you know it we are on a steel 34-foot boat named ‘Cabaray’, with Ray and Liz Matthews, and Christian (a German) and Alan (English). And we are the ‘guests’. And while there is some question as to whether the race will even begin, we will be ready! We no sooner are on the boat and we’re taking sails out and rigging the sheets and a whole bunch of other ‘sailor’ things. And we’re backing out of our slip. And heading out into the open bay. With lots of other boats. It appears the race is on. Did I say race? Oh yes, this is a race. Ray says there are about 80 boats entered, but probably only about 50 will race today. And we are in a class with 7 other similar boats, and will be starting with the second-last group. And while we wait for the start signal we jockey around on the big waves for position — not so close to the start line so as to be OVER when the horn sounds, but also not in the middle of a ‘granny tack’ where we’re facing the wrong direction!

And then we’re off! and it’s a GREAT start. We’re in perfect position. The wind is violent and we’ve had to take the sails down several feet in order to not be ‘over-sailed’. But we are flying. Well, actually we’re keeled over big time — one rail is regularly under water and we are getting soaked with sea spray. But Ray and Allen and Christian are working their butts off, cranking and pulling and ‘coming about’ and not at all worried about the gale force winds. Sue and I are smiling — this is WAY more action than we had bargained for. We didn’t really think it would be an evening ‘cruise’, but by now my palms are raw from pulling ropes and my knees are skinned from running back and forth on top of the boat, raising and then folding the big sails, trying to stay out of the way but helping when it seemed I was needed. This is REAL sailing! I want to get my phone out of Sue’s bag, which is down in the hold, but the sailor quickly advise against it: “Cameras and sea salt are not a good combination.” So the reader will just have to believe me that we were in some mighty big winds, doing our best to lean a keeled-over boat upright, looking out at a lot of other boats fighting to stay perpendicular to the waterline, and not really enough time to consider whether this was fun or scary!

Did I say gale force winds? We had just rounded the first marker and were not sailing WITH the wind (a TERRIFIC start — and about that time Liz mentioned to Sue that LAST YEAR we won the trophy!) when 3 loud bursts of the horn put an end to the race. “They’ve called the race. Too much wind.” Shoot! What now? Do we take down the sails? No, says Christian, let’s sail her back to the docks. So we ‘fly’ home — our speedometer reads more than 7 knots, plus we have a 23 knot wind (30 knots, says Allen, is officially a ‘gale’!). We are really moving.

And that’s about the time our adventure started. We were close to home base when all of a sudden the engine stopped. Oh oh. Our experienced captain (we learned later that he is actually the commodore of the yacht club!) didn’t waste any time. “Hoist the gib!” he shouts. But Allen, who has just carefully taken down the front sail and nicely wrapped it and tied it up, doesn’t respond. He later explains that he did not know we had no engine, so it didn’t make any sense to him to put the sail back up. But now we had NOTHING! Except a huge wind blowing our boat STRAIGHT INTO THOSE BIG ROCKS that protect the harbour! Too late for the sail. Next Ray comes running to the front of the boat, dragging a big heavy old anchor. DROP THE ANCHOR! NOW! But first Christian cuts the sheet from the gib and ties it to the anchor. And then we have to fasten the other end of the rope to the boat. And all the while the winds are getting more violent, the waves are spraying us even more, and the big boulders on the shoreline are getting closer.

Ray gets on his radio, announces that we’ve lost power and need help. He signals to the boats coming into the channel behind us. Soon another big sailboat comes up alongside us, cuts in front of us, swings wildly around towards us on the other side — and CRACKS up against our boat. Everyone on both boats is reaching and pushing away and throwing ropes to try to get towed. But the wind is too rough and we can’t manage it. The other boat pulls away and we continue to drift. It tries again, and this time Christian manages to throw a rope that the guys on the other boat can catch — but ours is a STEEL boat, it’s heavy, and the other boat can’t pull us in this wind. In fact, now THAT boat is in danger of hitting the rocks. They manage to roar away, back into relative safety of the open water.

And now it’s too late for us. Our starboard side bangs up against the wall of rocks. We can hear the keel below crunching on rocks. And then we bob up and down, back off a bit, and bash back up against the rocks. Allen and I are near the front of the boat — feet pushing against the rocks as hard as we can to keep one particularly sharp edge from piercing the side of the boat. Christian is trying to tie bumpers all along the side of the boat to protect it — but the boat shifts forward and back and the bumpers don’t line up with the rocks. More boats come to try to help — but it’s too dangerous for other sailboats to come this close to shore in these rough waters. Eventually a big ‘coast guard’ type of motor boat arrives. But it too can’t tow us off the rocks. And it has trouble getting close enough to us.

Finally a big orange inflatable boat with two big engines in the back and a full crew of ‘rescue’ guys in full wet suits and life jackets arrive. I didn’t really believe that would work, but it did. They pulled us off the rocks, so our boat ‘backed’ off, and the front swung around one last time, clanking against the wall of rocks, and then we were free. Ray kept asking Liz to go down below and see if we were taking on water. By now he had unpacked brand new never-been-used lifejackets and insisted we each put one on. Once we were free from the rocks and ‘safely’ out in open water again, the other motorboat came back and threw us a tow rope. They pulled us all the way to the pier, passing huge brand new catamarans and yachts, many destined for shipment to Florida and the Caribbean. There were about a dozen sailors waiting at the dock, helping to tie our boat up. Even here, the winds made this no small job.

As we were getting towed into the bay, I was thinking about the damage to the boat (and even to the boat that hit us earlier) and I commented to Allen that “sailing is a rich man’s sport”. Allen smiled and said, “You know what they say: If you want to know what it feels like to be a sailor, go stand in a cold shower and burn money!”

Sue and I made our way up the ramp and walked into the yacht club. There was a huge party going on there! I guess 50 or so boats, most with 6 or more people aboard, and the race finished before it really even started — well, 300 people were going to stick around and enjoy themselves. So we did too.

Big beers, cheap hamburgers, and even a guest lecture by a guy who had sailed a sailboat from Cape Town to Argentina, then to South Georgia to climb a mountain, and finally sail back home to Cape Town. Our late arrival back at port meant we missed the lecture. But we had our own story to tell now, and many of the sailors had by now either seen our boat or heard about our problem — so when Ray and Liz and the crew were finally done cleaning up the boat (it will be hoisted out of the sea tomorrow, checked for damage, and they hope it will be racing again next Wednesday night!) and had made it back to the clubhouse — well, they will be telling stories long into the night tonight.

We, on the other hand, were exhausted. Not only windswept and sunburned and feeling dirty with our matted salt-watered hair and icky clothes, but we’re just not used to that much ‘activity’. So we said goodbye to our new friends (who invited and encouraged us to come again next Wednesday!) and went out to find a cab to take us home. But no, here in South Africa people are so kind and friendly. And another ‘friend’, a woman standing in line at the bar with Sue, waiting to be served, offered to give us a ride — and dropped us off right in front of our place. Thanks for the ride!

It was her plizha!

Good morning. What’s on the agenda today? Well, I thought we should take Peter’s car out for a spin.

So mid-morning that’s what we did. Started up the Volvo, drove it out of the garage and turned it south at the intersection. And we’re on the road!

We didn’t really have a plan, but we’d talked about maybe just heading down to Haut Bay and then back home for lunch. Well shoot!, that only took about half an hour and we were just starting to get comfortable! So we pressed on. And soon we were going up and down along the coastline, enjoying some of the most spectacular scenery this side of Chile! The driving was very fast, but we saw probably around a hundred cyclists, and boy!, some of them were coming down the winding passes might fast!

At one point, near Chapman’s Peak, we had to pay a 40 Rand toll, and THEN the road got even more scenic. The Cape’s famous fynbos, growing on steep cliffs, with the road winding up and down, hugging the coastline. Even the rockfall shelters are beautiful!

We were following the M6 highway, which took us across the peninsula and down to False Bay on the other side. We could have continued all the way down to Cape Point at the southern tip, but decided to stop at Simon’s Town for lunch. We parked the car and went across the road to a harbour-front strip of restaurants on the town pier. We enjoyed a big platter of seafood and cold beers, while we looked out at a bay of beautiful sailboats, and were entertained by 5 old black men who were doing a pretty good impression of Ladysmith Black Mambazo. All for about fifteen bucks!

Back in the car after lunch. We took a different, more direct route back to Cape Town. We were using my iPhone with GoogleMaps as our GPS, although the roads and directions were very clearly marked. (Actually the GPS wasn’t the only one telling me how to drive! My co-driver, sitting to my left, was offering constant advice regarding the speed I was driving — I think every time we were in the far-left lane on the four-lane highway she thought I was in the PASSING lane, and forgot that we were in a left-hand traffic country!)

Well, the phone’s GPS served us well, but just as we entered Cape Town, with a drive THROUGH the city left to go, the phone beeped and warned us that the battery was about to go into hibernate-mode. Yikes! No, no, no! Thankfully we managed to get all the way back to our garage before it actually shut down. Whew! I guess I’ll have to go look for a cigarette-lighter adapter before our next drive out into the country.

Back in the apartment I selected a Glenn Frey and Eagles playlist from my music library and hooked up my phone to the stereo. Sue sat on the deck and read. Around 5 o’clock the phone rang. Well actually, A phone rang. I picked up the handset on the kitchen counter — Hello? Hello? — nobody there. I had just sat back down to continue my Eagles reverie when the phone rang again. Again no answer. Huh? Then, while I was standing there looking at the phone, wondering what was going on, a phone rang again! I opened up the door to the storage cabinet under the phone, where the hot water tank is, and there on top of the hot water tank was an old wired in telephone. Hello? Ah, it’s the intercom for the buzzer at the front gate!

I let in the plumber who was here to check on our hot water tank. It only took him a few minutes to deduce that it was the breaker, an electrical problem and not a plumbing problem. So I am to let him know if we have any more hot water issues and if we do he’ll be back with an electrician.

Okay, that’s settled. Time for happy hour out on the patio. G&Ts with a portion of Biltong (for me, some kind of cereal mix for Sue). And then back to our reading and computing. My mom sent me an email complaining that she wasn’t getting enough stories from me! Really? I’m spending half a day at my laptop writing about things we do the other half of the day! So I called her up — and sure enough, they are one day behind on the journal! Oh well, it was good to talk to Mom and Dad — they both seemed to be in good spirits.

At 7pm we went out for supper. Today we turned right at our corner and ended up at a Thai place. It was pretty hot still, so of course we ordered the ‘hot’ chilli paste with our meals. The service was quite relaxed — after a quick gelato from the shop next to the restaurant we got home at 9pm. Just in time for another episode (or two?) of Narcos on Netflix.

In the news: I was shocked and saddened to learn of the death of Glenn Frey yesterday. The Eagles created a lot of the music that became the soundtrack of my life. RIP.

I woke up at 6, an hour before what I’d set the alarm for. Checked my phone — did the Broncos beat the Steelers last night? Yes. Email from Mom? Yes. Email from Tim? Yes. And the next thing we get a FaceTime call from Tim — it’s 10 at night back home, but 6am here. Well, I was up anyway. So after a short visit with Tim and Alex, who have moved into our house, I got out of bed and made coffee. We have a 7:49 tee time at the Metropolitan Golf Course today.

We emptied some of the pockets in our golf bags and headed out. It’s not quite 1km to the golf course if we walk through Green Point Park, past the big World Cup soccer stadium.

The temperature was comfortable, but you sensed it would warm up quite a bit yet. We checked in at the clubhouse, Sue had a muffin, and then we were introduced to our playing partner, Charlie, from Scotland. And then off we went to Tee #1.

The Metropolitan Golf Club is actually only a 9-hole course, but you play 18 holes by going around twice, the second time using alternate tee blocks and greens right behind or beside the ones you used for the first time around.

I dribbled my tee shot almost to the ladies tee. “That’s okay. Take a mulligan,” said the Montrealers in the foursome right behind us.

But after a couple of holes things started to fall into place. Not all our shots were long and straight, but most were. And putting was pretty good, too.

We golfed the loop that made up the first 6 holes of each 9, and then we went back under the road and past the clubhouse to play the last 3 holes on the other side of the road. And each time we passed the clubhouse I had to stop and buy another blue Powerade.

By the time we’d walked (and carried our clubs) for 18 holes the sun was directly above us and it was quite warm, although the occasional sea breeze kept things manageable. But my feet were killing me and it was high time for lunch. Charlie said this was his last golf game here — he is flying home on the weekend — so he gave us all the new balls that he had not shot into the water hazards. We asked Basil, the starter, if he would store our clubs in the club storage (for members), which he did. Then we ordered lunch from the club grille. The cheese burger I ordered had neither cheese nor burger, not even a hamburger bun (they were out), but the cook substituted a slab of grilled chicken, laid it on a couple pieces of bread, put it into a plate of fries, and parked it next to my big cold Namibian beer. So that all worked out okay.

We walked home, stopping to buy a loaf of bread along the way. Back home we changed, drank a few gallons of water, then promptly both fell asleep on the couch. Meddach-schlop.

Around 5pm we felt sufficiently refreshed to sit up and look at our devices again. Man, what did we do before the internets? Happy hour on the balcony, watching all the cars go by. Another shower and a bit of suntan lotion (Sue thinks it works retroactively as well) to make my nose a little less red — I got a bit too much sun at the golf course today!

At 8 we went out for supper around the corner to a fancy burger joint. Food and service is just so great here! Sue had ribs and a salad and a glass of nice red wine, I had a burger and a huge beer…

Back home we plopped ourselves onto our couch and got the Netflix started up again. Narcos, episode 3. Let’s see if we can stay awake for another hour…

After staying up way too late last night to watch the first of two NFL playoff games, I slept in this morning — woke up at around 11. It was already HOT outside. I guess we’re not going for one of those all-day City Bus rides with the open upper deck today! Too hot, and too late! I check NFL.com to see what happened in the late game (and I mean LATE! I would have had to stay up until 7 this morning to finish watching it). Well, looks like I missed a dandy. Aaron Rodgers throws another Hail Mary to get the Packers into overtime. And then Larry Fitzgerald, who’s been a standout all game, wins for the Cardinals in OT. I know — I watched all the highlights twice!

After coffees and breakfast we sat around and read. We finally closed all the doors and turned on the AC. Had a very late lunch. Didn’t really feel like doing anything that involved moving around in the heat. (A quick look at my ‘notifications’ shows that there’s nothing up on our calendar, that we’re 8 hours AHEAD of Winnipeg, and that we’re more than SIXTY degrees warmer than Steinbach!) So what should we do? How about going to a movie? It’ll be cool in the theatre, it’s not far to walk, and it would be a shame to just sit in our apartment all day. What’s playing?

And that’s when I discovered that there are TWO movie theatres in the V&A Mall, down near the harbour. I knew about the ‘big’ one, but there’s a second smaller ‘independent’ theatre that’s NOT showing Star Wars right now. So just before 5pm we headed out to the mall.

When we got there we heard live music, and saw lots of people enjoying the afternoon. Kids were splashing around in the fountains, the big ferris wheel was doing its best to keep up with the line-ups, and everyone was sitting under big umbrellas at all the indoor and outdoor bars and restaurants.

We bought our tickets to see “The Lady in the Van”, a British comedy-drama starring Maggie Smith as an eccentric homeless woman. It was a little slow, but quite good. And when we got out of the movie at around 7:30 the action outside the mall was still going strong and the sky was not yet dark.

We walked back towards our place, but did a little loop around the harbour first — and found a few places that brought back memories of the month we stayed here in 2002 and came down to the harbour (to look for our boat).

Back on Main Road, near our place, we stopped at a restaurant and had supper. Then back up to our room.

It was around 9:30pm. I wanted to watch at least the first of this afternoon’s football games — the first one, which starts at 12 noon back home, started at 8pm here. By the time I found a live feed on my computer, the first half was nearly over. Really? 31-0 for the Panthers and it was still the first half? Yikes! This is going to be a blow-out!

Well, I should have known better. Sue always says that if Rudy cheers for a team they are sure to lose (and it’s a good thing I’m a good loser, because more often than not that is true — yesterday the Chiefs, whom I was cheering for, lost. Then I missed the next game, and ‘my’ team won (just barely). Now, as I got myself all connected up and comfortable to watch the Panthers blow out the Seahawks in the second half — ‘my’ team doesn’t score another point and the Seahawks score 24 points and nearly upset Carolina. Whew!

And now one in the morning and I need to get up early for our 8 o’clock golf game tomorrow. So I’ll skip watching the Steelers-Broncos game. Both teams are probably breathing a sigh of relief knowing I’m not cheering for either of them!

You can read Part 1 (14 years ago) here.

I slept in till about 9:00 again. Sue was lying beside me, eyes closed, mouth hanging open, hands folded across her chest. If it weren’t for the light snoring you’d think she was dead. She’s fond of saying that she “slept like a DEAD woman”, but this is ridiculous! Plus, when she got out of bed shortly after I did she was pleased to report that she hadn’t slept at all until 8 in the morning! Oh no! I guess her poor sleep habits just follow her across the time zones.

I made some coffees and sat down to look at my computer. We check the news and our email first thing in the morning, but most of the time NOTHING HAS CHANGED! Okay, what’s next? Sue gets out the frying pan and prepares to make bacon and eggs. Yeah, but we have a ‘hob’, a glass stove-top with fancy buttons to press and digital read-outs. Well, since Sue had such a great experience setting the clock radio in the bedroom last night (it is off by about 7 hours and now faces the wall), figuring out how to use the cooktop should be no problem at all.

After quite a bit of reading step-by-step instructions from the owner’s manual, we sat down to enjoy our bacon and eggs. The eggs were quite a bit harder than we usually like them at home, but not too bad for a first effort. Sue’s success with the stove leads her to suggest that she probably will never even use the dishwasher here — she’ll just wash the dishes by hand. So much for technology.

After breakfast Sue went back to bed while I went out to do a bunch of errands. I packed up the car tarp in the garage and stowed it in a closet in our spare bedroom. Then I went to buy a few groceries, etc from the nearby deli and grocery store.

When I got back Sue got out of bed and we had sandwiches for lunch. It’s stinking hot here today, around 30 degrees. I finally closed up the doors and windows and turned on our A/C. We were expecting a FaceTime call from our kids at around 4pm our time, so mid-afternoon we went out for a short walk. We came back from the Albert & Victoria Mall with salt and pepper shakers. Shopping!

We both showered and then sat around waiting for that phone call! We told the kids to FaceTime between 4 and 6, since we’re getting picked up at 6 to go for supper at Marina’s house. At 5 o’clock there were two clean and dressed-up grandparents sitting around in the apartment, listening to the air-conditioner hum, waiting for that phone to ring! At around 5:30 it finally DID ring — and we were greeted with a big smile from our 3-year-old little buddy. So how was his first night sleeping in ‘his’ downstairs bedroom at Oma and Opa’s house? “Good.” (The kids picked one of the coldest days of our winter to move from their house into ours.) So all was good at home — Max had not only finished eating his pancakes for breakfast, but his puzzles and books and toys were more or less evenly distributed between all the rooms in the house.

Not long after we hung up the FaceTime call I got a text message from Helene, Marina’s friend who was picking us up and taking us to Marina’s for supper. On her way, meet her downstairs where she’ll come by shortly.

After a 10-minute drive up around Signal Hill we’re at Marina’s. And what a joy it was to meet again! Marina and her friend Lucas live in a home that looks up to Table Mountain on one side, and down to the harbour the other way. Unfortunately it was quite windy out on the deck so we elected to sit inside around the table and catch up.

Which we did. Poor Helene and Lucas had to sit and listen as Marina, Sue, and I did our best to fit our stories together. While I have often told the story of our ‘almost’ big adventure sailing across the Atlantic, Marina ACTUALLY DID IT! And then, after making the crossing, she continued to work on sailboats for another 3 years before returning to her home in Cape Town.

We had a lovely dinner, lamb and potatoes and salad, and coffee and dessert. And we visited for a full five hours. And we’re still not done! All three ‘Cape Towners’ were eager to give us restaurant tips and suggestions for things to do and places to visit. Sue’s notebook has enough places noted in it that we may not eat in on the trip again!

So, before we said our good-night and good-bye, we promised to do this again before we go home — and maybe even meet one or two other ‘sailors’ from that 2002 adventure.

Helene drove us back to our apartment. We were tired but happy — we’d had a very fun evening. So Sue went off to bed while I found an online stream for the first of two NFL play-off games. By just before 3:00am the Kansas City Chiefs had lost to the New England Patriots and I was going to bed.

Friday. I woke up at 6. It’s bright outside and the city is waking up. I went back to sleep. Next time I woke up it was the construction workers down below our open window who were mixing concrete to patch the driveway — and it was almost 9 o’clock. I got out of bed and made a couple of nice ‘real’ coffees for Sue and me with my Aeropress.

Sometime after we’d eaten our fresh mangos and toast with peanut butter there was a knock on the door. It’s Warren, the maintenance guy from down in the garage. Do I have jumper cables? Hmmm… I don’t know. I’ll get my shirt on and meet you in the garage.

There’s a German tenant whose battery needs a boost. So now I need to get into Peter’s covered up car. Okay. I take of the cover and roll it up. Underneath is a reasonably clean white Volvo 2-door sporty car. I take the key apart as per Peter’s instructions, and unlock the door. Now what? The battery has been disconnected, but Peter has told me that there is a wrench in the car with which I can re-connect it. I find the wrench. Now I need to open the boot. Or the trunk. Or the hood. Or the bonnet. Whatever — but I don’t see any knob or handle to pull. Now I’ve got Warren, the maintenance man, and security guy, and the German dead battery guy, all offering suggestions. The German looks up the car on his Samsung phone. Shows me a diagram that indicates we may find a lever or cable in the trunk. I’ve pulled out the back armrest but I need the German’s phone-flashlight to see into the trunk. Nothing there. We all take turns getting into the car and pressing various buttons. Nothing. Finally they all wander back to the German’s car. I am perplexed. I bend way down under the dashboard and spot a red handle. Pull it. The hood pops. Ho-ho! I open the hood and spot the two red battery leads dangling. But where’s the battery? And how will I get into the trunk to get at the booster cables I’m not sure are in there?

It takes me a couple of minutes to realize that the battery is right there! Just the cables are disconnected. So I reattach them and tighten them up with the wrench. The car makes a chattering noise, just like Peter had told me it would, but I press on unperturbed. By now my friends have gathered around me again. Things are looking up. I press the little ‘open trunk’ icon on the key fob. Boink. Up pops the trunk lid. We all scramble to the back and look into the open trunk. Mr German unzips the spare tire cover, sure that there’s something else packed into there. But alas — no booster cables for him.

While he wanders off and calls for a service vehicle to help him, I get back into the car and put the key into the ignition. Will it start? Warren tells me the car hasn’t been running for 1.5 years (I don’t really believe that — Peter said he was here last summer). But the car starts right away, no problem. As if it was last driven yesterday. I pull it forward and park it again. Good. That will work just fine. All I have to do is remember to stay on the WRONG side of the road for the first couple of days (and the LEFT side of the road after that).

Back upstairs Sue is looking all clean and gorgeous and ready to hit the town. Shoot! I hurry and shave and shower and get my new snazzy pink shirt on. And then we’re off.

We cross the Main Road in front of our apartment and take the new wide sidewalk past the big oval soccer stadium that was built for the 2010 World Cup. There’s a couple of outdoor soccer pitches, a cricket stadium, and some horse-riding stables along the way. And then Sue spots a couple of golfers. We’re at the Metropolitan Golf Course, not quite 1km from our apartment. We can carry our clubs this far easily! A few club members are sitting at the outdoor under-the-shade tables enjoying big cold glasses of beer and plates of delicious food. Hey, we should have lunch here! But first, let’s go in and enquire about the golf.

Which we do. Looks good. Not a very complicated or ‘interesting’ golf course, but hey, it’s just across the street from our place and the fairways and greens are in tip-top shape. Plus we can buy discount 10-game packs. Plus on Mondays it’s nearly half-price! We make a Monday early-morning tee time. The plan is to play it once and see if we like it enough to buy a book of vouchers. Rudy is elated.

We continue our walk after we finished our big Windhoek beer and a cheeseburger (for Rudy) and a cucumber salad (Sue).

We soon find ourselves at the ocean, with a very nice wide paving stone promenade winding its way along the rocky coastline. It’s 2 in the afternoon, the sun is 27 degrees warm, the breeze brings that down a few degrees, and there’s only enough other walkers on the sidewalk to make us feel at ease and comfortable and safe. So we walk. And we walk. And we get to the famous Green Point Lighthouse, the oldest operational lighthouse in South Africa. It’s been warning sailors from this location since 1824. We stop for photos.

We continue on. When we see a putt-putt golf course I suggest to Sue that we stop for a break and have a game here. I’m not much into mini-golf but it seems to me the idea is about as close as I’ll get to being sweet and romantic like Hugh Grant in a schmaltzyJulia Roberts romantic comedy. Sue guffaws at the idea. “We’re going for a walk!” So much for romance.

We pass the turn-off to the highway named after our Mennonite friend, Bill Peters. Actually, lots of places here are named after famous Mennonites; well, they’re not really Mennonites, but their names come from the same Dutch origins as many of the names of our Steinbach avenues. Halfway around the world and we’re all ‘frintschaft‘.

We’ve walked for an hour, for almost four miles, in the heat of the day. How about we find a bus station that sells metro cards and we’ll bus it back to our place? That’s what we do. We’re at the Queen’s Beach station. The wait for the girl to actually sell us our metro cards (30 Rand each, about $3.00) takes about as long as it took us to walk all this way! But hey, we’re in Africa, and who’s in a hurry? We get on the bus and sweat in the hot sun all the way back to our place — and past our place — and past the next stop — until Rudy figures out that you have to press the big red STOP button hard and the bus will stop at the next stop for you.

Now we walk BACK towards our place. Stop at Woolworths (yes, that’s a ‘higher end’ grocery store chain here in South Africa) and Sue loads up on more fresh fruit — mangos, papaya, little sweet and ripe pineapples, all of which she recalls so fondly from her time in Franschhoek, South Africa back in 2001.

Another stop at the local liquor store for gin, tonic water, and limes, and we’re finally ready to go home.

Oh, I’d forgotten that we didn’t have power in our house. It’s warm when we get in. The ice cubes Sue takes out of the freezer to make our gin and tonics are not ‘icy cold’. Hmmm… What to do? Sue goes downstairs and asks Warren, the maintenance man, if this is happening to other apartments, and if this is ‘normal’. No. He comes up to check on me diddling around with our breaker panel in one of the kitchen cupboards. Try this. Nope. Try that. Same. So the ‘cold’ (by that I mean ‘not hot’ — the cold water here is lukewarm) shower I had this morning was due to the hot water tank breaker being off. Now everything’s off. I try various combinations of offs and ons, but the electricity just stays ‘off’.

Oh boy. Now what? Warren is nearly ready to leave for the weekend, but first gives me the phone number of an electrical service company that I can call. Which I do. Which isn’t answering the phones anymore at 5:30 Friday afternoon.

I email Peter — good thing I bought that cellphone card because without it I would NOT be emailing right now — and explain what’s going on here. Not that I really think he can help us from where he is in Toronto.

Fifteen minutes later I’m back at the breaker panel trying different combinations — and finally voilà! the microwave lights up. And the living room fan starts turning again. And we’re back in business. Well, all except the hot water tank, but I decide there’s no point in chancing that! We’ll have cold showers to go with our cold beers and hot Netflix offerings anytime rather than risk it all going ‘off’ again. I’ll wait until Monday when Warren is back to hit that breaker switch again.

I email Peter back to say that (almost) all is well. And then Sue and I have our long-awaited ‘happy hour’.

That takes us until suppertime. Out we go, back on the street. First to the ATM to freshen up our wallets, then to Mario’s, the italian restaurant at our corner, for a big plate of fresh mussels followed by a wood-fired pizza. Yummy. Interrupted by a phone call from Peter: what’s up? do we have hydro? bla bla bla I explain. Then I tell him about the car. And we’re all good here. And we’re happy. Have a great weekend. Back to my pizza.

We’re back home by a little after 10 o’clock. Just enough time for me to write a book about what we did today. And NOT QUITE enough time for Sue to figure out how to change the bedside clock radio from flashing 12:00 to showing the correct time. And both events took about the same amount of time, so you know Sue worked pretty hard at trying to figure out how to set a clock. But that’s probably a man’s job. “Besides,” she says, “We can just leave it.”

Today’s news item: Hey, the Oscar nominations are out! Now we have even more reason to spend a few afternoons in the refreshing coolness of a movie theatre here in Cape Town.

After the craziness of last night, how could we NOT sleep well? I woke up around 6, checked out the noise outside our bedroom window. The sun was already up and I guess it was time for the guy sleeping in the driveway to the underground garage next to us to pack up his stuff and move along. I went back to bed for another hour.

When we finally DID get out of bed we didn’t have much in the house for breakfast. Sue made a couple of Nespressos and we decided we’d go out for breakfast at one of the many coffee shops on our street. But first we had a bit of unpacking and cleaning up to do.

A couple of hours later we had two bags of garbage to carry down to the bins in our parking garage. The fridge was empty, de-icing. The cupboards were all cleaned out and cleaned up. And our suitcases and golf clubs were packed away into the closets.

We had a coffee and a chocolate croissant at the coffee shop. Then we went to the grocery store just down the road and bought two bags of groceries. Back at the apartment the big ice block in the fridge had melted into a giant puddle on the kitchen floor. And Sue washed all the dishes for the next hour.

We wandered back out into the neighbourhood again in the afternoon. Found ourselves at the big Victoria & Albert Mall at the Cape Town Harbour. I bought a phone card for my phone and checked a number of stores for an AC plug adapter to fit my cords to the South African outlets. Not much luck. We had a very late lunch of fish and chips and a salad. I finally found a $9 adapter at the ‘Pic-N=Pay’ store in the basement of the mall. We wandered home past the big World Cup Soccer Stadium. Sue stopped at the deli to buy a pound of roasted coffee beans so we can make ‘our kind of’ coffee tomorrow morning.

We started happy hour as the sun was setting. Big winds out today — we had to really block up our open doors to keep them from suddenly slamming shut. Now that I finally had an adapter I could hook up my Apple TV to the television and sign into Netflix. So started watching ‘Narcos’ — watched the first 2 episodes and had a little ‘at home’ wine and cheese party to go with it. By 10:00pm we were both having trouble staying awake — maybe that’s a sign that we’re now ‘acclimatized’ to the new time zone?? A bit of internet and then off to bed.

Today’s News: Sue just got an email from Millie that her mom died. Not entirely unexpected, but a sad note all the same.

So our wake up call got me out of my deep sleep just before 7am. Shower. Put on the same clothes I wore yesterday. Go down to the restaurant. Big buffet. I heap a pile of bacon next to my scrambled eggs and wash it all down with some great fresh coffee.

The shuttle bus back to the airport is packed. We line up and go through customs in no time — although the Schiphol Airport is a huge and busy airport, everything seems so smooth and efficient. Before you know it we’re in the departure lounge, and soon after that we’re making our way down the airplane aisles, dragging our one carry-on suitcase all the way to row 40 near the back of the plane.

But the seats seemed more comfortable — more legroom, great TV, all good. We took off almost as soon as we were buckled in. Slick. I quickly tuned in one of the ‘new release’ movies and so did Sue. Then came swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes, IKEA-style. More movies. A bit of dozing. Pizza for supper. The 11.5-hour trip seemed easier than the 8-hour cross-Atlantic flight.

We arrived at the Cape Town airport at around 10pm, about a half hour early. We quickly frittered away that bonus time in the long queue winding its way to the passport control. Then we picked up our bags and headed out. Sue spotted the big 300-lb taxi driver holding a paper with ‘Rudy & Sue’ handwritten on it. We dragged our golf bag and suitcases out to his waiting cab. Twenty minutes (and 220 Rand, $19CAD) later he had us at our apartment on York Street. I unloaded our bags, paid the cabbie, and dragged our stuff to the waiting gate.

And that’s where the first hiccup of the day began. The gate was locked. It looked like we would need a card or a fob to swipe it to open. We didn’t have that. We DID have instructions on how to get into the #12 mailbox, how to open up the combination lock inside that mailbox, and how to find our way up the stairs to our apartment. But we were on the wrong side of the gate. Oh oh. What do we do now?

I wandered to the other end of the building and took out my phone. No phone card here, but I soon connected to Peter’s wifi — his apartment was just one floor up from the street. Once I had that I looked up his phone number in Toronto and Skype-phoned him. He was surprised to hear form me — he was in a meeting — but when I explained our situation he quickly gave me his full attention. No, don’t go down the street and check into a hotel. We’ll get you into the apartment. He wasn’t expecting the gate to be locked, and he really wasn’t expecting us to arrive there this late. (I DID email him our new itinerary but I guess he read arriving at noon rather than at midnight.)

Well, Peter and I both tried calling and texting his contact here in Cape Town, but that didn’t get us anywhere. Our bodyguard, the big cab driver, hung around and waited — he didn’t have anymore fares for the night and we felt safer out on the dark street with him standing next to us.

Finally I took out two golf clubs, my driver and an iron, and used one of my bungee cords to tie them into a long pole which I stuck through the iron grate and stretched as far as I could to ring each of the addresses on the buzzer inside the entrance. No one answered — at least we didn’t hear anyone answer. Besides, it was now after midnight and any of the tenants in our building probably wouldn’t be too pleased to make our acquaintance at this time of night anyway.

I went back to the front section of the building, under Peter’s apartment where my wifi signal was strongest. I looked up at the third floor apartment above ‘ours’ and saw the lights were on and the patio door was partially open. I called out, ‘hello?’. And then two you ladies came out on the balcony — and I explained my situation and asked them to please let me in the door. And one of them came down and opened the gate for us. Whew!

The cabbie left us. We gathered our bags and hauled them up to our apartment. Hot in here. We opened the doors and windows, turned on the fans. I emailed Peter to let him know we were in. He called right back on the landline into the apartment. He too was completely flustered and anxious. He’d left his meeting early and run back to his office where he was now looking up hotels for us for tonight. So we talked and calmed down a bit and he gave me instructions on how to get his car going (tomorrow).

In the meantime Sue found 2 open bottles of white wine in the fridge which we easily finished before turning in for the night. All that frenzied action at the end of our day — we were still up at 2:30am, me writing my blog entry and Sue catching up on what Margaret Daley-Wiebe had going on Facebook.

Finally, the rooms were cooled down, the wine was all gone, the streets were all quiet. I took out my contacts and went to bed. Tomorrow will be another day. Another ‘beginning’.

Today’s News: The loonie closed below 70 cents US.

Right now, as I write this, we should be arriving at the Cape Town International Airport. But we’re not. We are happy and comfortably in our hotel in Amsterdam, about ready to go to sleep.

Our third trip back to Cape Town started off great. For the past week or so Sue has been cleaning and culling clothes, getting our house ready for our children to move in while they do renovations to their own home. We should have house guests more often — we’d have a lot less ‘stuff’ in our closets.

Our last week at home seemed to be a flurry of socializing and dinners, trying to ‘say goodbye’ to all our friends and family. You’d think we were off on a 3-year mission stint, and not a mere 2.5 month ‘holiday’!

So yesterday (Monday) morning, Brian was on our driveway by 8:45, and we loaded our luggage (golf clubs, 1 large suitcase to check-in, 1 small suitcase and a backpack to carry-on) into his truck. It was (another) bitterly cold day in Manitoba — we left our parkas in his truck after he dropped us off at the airport. Plenty of time to check-in. Our luggage was checked right through to Cape Town. I’d arranged for a taxi to meet us there Tuesday night at 11pm to take us to the apartment in Green Point that we were renting from Peter for our first month.

Plenty of time to sit in the departure lounge and have one last Tim Horton’s coffee. The Delta flight to Minneapolis was SUPPOSED to be here early, according to the text messages (and voice mails!) I was getting on my phone. So when we first got a notice that it would be delayed we were not concerned. We had lots of time to make our connection in Minneapolis for the flight to Amsterdam. But when they rolled out the urns of coffee and tables of doughnuts, things were looking a little more serious. The flight desk announced regular status updates, and then ordered SANDWICHES for us all. And just when we thought we might actually spend our first night in Winnipeg, they announced that the plane from Minneapolis was now in the air and we would be boarding — 2.5 hours after schedule!

We more or less knew we’d miss our connection to Amsterdam. And we did. And the airline folks quickly had us re-booked on a later flight, leaving Minneapolis at around 7pm. Well, that wouldn’t really get us to Amsterdam in time to make our 10am connection to Cape Town. And especially not once our evening take-off was further delayed due to de-icing and snow-ploughs on the runway, etc, etc.

Oh well, no point in getting stressed or upset. Would it help? There were quite a few others on our flight who too would be either scrambling to make a connection or desperately trying to find alternative options. (Even the German guy who was trying to connect to Berlin, whom we tried to help. We directed him to the next departure lounge and after a bit of visiting found out that he was from Mitchell!)

We arrived in Amsterdam shortly after noon — 2 hours after our flight to Cape Town had departed. But KLM was VERY organized and efficient and looked after us better than we could have expected. We were immediately re-booked for tomorrow’s flight to Cape Town, same flight number, same departure time. Then we got vouchers for food and stuff at the airport and were directed to the ‘KLM Travel Services’ desk. There we got a couple of ‘overnight kits’ (tooth brush, shampoo, hair brush, even a large white t-shirt) and vouchers for hotel and meals and shuttle. Easy!

The free shuttle took us to our huge conference-center hotel. We checked in and were quickly seated in the restaurant so we could get our free lunch before the 2 o’clock closing time. Nice meal! Then up to our room to have a bit of a snooze and clean up. Email our waiting taxi in Cape Town and re-book for tomorrow, let Peter (our landlord) and Marina (our Cape Town friend and ‘almost-sailing companion’ from 15 years ago) know that we’d not be checking in and contacting them on Wednesday as we’d arranged.

At around 7:30 we headed back down to the restaurant and had a delicious supper — even beer and wine included in our voucher! Back in the room we watched a bit of BBC and then Sue went to sleep while I started my journal. Gotta get back into the routine…

Tomorrow we’ll have a wake-up call at 7, be on the shuttle to the airport by 8:15, and hopefully on our way again at 10:10am.

So what could have so easily been a day of ‘lemons’ turned out to be just fine. We’re ‘on holidays’!

In the news: David Bowie died yesterday. A suicide bomber killed at least 8 German tourists in Istanbul (two passengers on our Minneapolis-Amsterdam flight and our shuttle to this hotel were on their way to Istanbul; they too missed their connecting flight and will try again tomorrow).