Epic Adventure -- Day 13 -- 11/09/2012 -- Ceres, Paarl

After the heat of the fire faded in the middle of the night, we awoke this morning to a rather colder cabin than we remember when we fell asleep. Bundling ourselves up in blankets we strolled out onto our porch overlooking the river at about 7:30 to watch the sun rise over the hills looming in front of the cabin. Jenny poured herself a glass of grapetiser and I poured myself a 125 ml glass of JC le Roux simply because I could! We sat for a little while before deciding to mobilise and drive to the nearby town of Ceres where Jenny had arranged to have her trial hair and makeup done for the wedding, at 9:00am.

Ceres is stark contrast to Wolseley because after a 10 minute drive from Olive Rock we arrived in a town that very much reminded me of downtown York Pa on a chilly, overcast, autumn morning. We found the hairdresser a little before 9 so we had a poke around town and went to Spar for some biltong before going back to have Jenny's hair and makeup done. While Jenny was busy I headed down to ABSA, the local bank, and transferred the money to pay for the hair and makeup of 8 people for the wedding day. One thing I have noticed about South African customer service so far is that, while brilliant, you often find yourself celebrating a birthday between asking for and receiving a service. The bank took me no fewer than 45 minutes to simply exchange some £50 notes, and afterwards I headed back to the hairdresser to part with all my patiently acquired Rand.

I have to say, I'm not a fan of tons of makeup. Maybe that's a consequence of living in the UK where most girls makeup routine consists of a bucket of orange paint and a trowel. Jenny doesn't usually wear makeup, I can probably count the occasions on two hands since I have known her, but the woman did an amazing job and Jenny really did look like she was on her way to her wedding! I paid the woman an amount that most men would agree is ludicrous for her services, obviously not ever needing to do our hair and make up, and we headed to Spur for lunch where Jenny and I both had Rave Burger. This burger place was one of few I have ever been to that served burgers that looked and tasted like burgers should, actually 100% beef, not the "100%" beef that McDonald's and burger king advertise, they were amazing. We stopped at a small shop just outside Spar for some springbok biltong before sauntering back to the car.

Our next stop was Paarl, a town located an hour and a half drive away. To get there involved climbing over a mountain pass before descending into the valley where the town is located. About 25 kilometres away I realised I had neglected to check the fuel level in the car and it was dangerously close to running out. The warning light had obviously been on for quite some time, but because I was used to checking my speed using the sat nav I never bothered to look at the fuel gauge. Lucky for us, the last 15 kilometres wound down the side of a mountain and was ALL downhill. So to conserve the little remaining fuel we had I positioned myself behind a truck descending the hill quite slowly, and didn't touch the gas pedal for 12 km, drifting the whole way into Paarl. Obviously our first stop upon arriving was to get to a petrol station, and here we had a chance to find out exactly how much fuel the Land Rover holds and how much it costs to fill the tank. The answers are 80.5 litres, and 906 Rand!


After filling up the car we drove to the Paarl Mall and had a look around the shops for a different top for Jenny to wear for an engagement shoot with the wedding photographer we scheduled for later in the afternoon. An hour later Jenny had not found a top to her liking so decided to keep her outfit as is. There was also a shop there that made me laugh, which is an Afrikaans Christian book store called CUM Books!! We stopped in Pick n Pay for some lunch supplies and to pick up a cooler box for use on the rest of the trip. We took out sandwich ingredients and drove to nearby clearing where we sat and had lunch in the sun.



We returned to the Paarl Mall after our lunch to meet up with Heather Steyn our wedding photographer for our engagement shoot. Here is where Dan made me take over to describe the shoot, he was very uncomfortable as he always is when people take photographs, he finds it hard to be natural. Heather was as wonderful as I could ever have imagined, having only 'spoken' to her via email, and I was thrilled to finally meet her. She drove us to a nearby farm that had blossoms in full bloom, it was so gorgeous! She had already asked permission to be there from the owner of the farm so we simply walked through the lines of blossoming trees, which are apparently pears, past the boxes of bees which are there to cross pollinate the flowers, and had our photos taken. Heather was amazing in directing us where to go and how to sit, and the three sneak peeks we saw on Facebook the next day are far more beautiful than I could have hoped for, I am so so thrilled! I'm very excited to see the rest of the photos from the shoot and also her photos from our wedding, I know I couldn't have chosen anyone more talented and special to help us on our wedding day :)

The only thing left to do was drive back to Olive Rock. We decided not to take the mountain route on the way back because it was quite treacherous on the way into town even at the slow speeds we took it at and I didn't feel like navigating it in the dark, with no barriers on the outside lane. Instead we decided to take the slightly longer route around the mountains, and besides getting stuck behind some very slow trucks the trip was uneventful.

When we got back to our accommodation at Olive Rock we discovered that no additional firewood had been left for us, as we probably shouldn't have thundered our way through two bags on the first night! It was quite cold and we needed a fire in the cabin, so Jenny sent me off in the car to find the owners and ask about getting more firewood. The owners were nowhere to be found ( although I did find their guard dogs, two VERY large great danes ) and after driving all over the farm I returned to the cabin to report to Jenny my findings. We had no option but to both get in the car and head into Wolseley to find a shop selling firewood. Wolseley feels much dodgier at night. Much to my delight the first shop I went into was selling R13 bags of wood. I bought three, and returned to the car. Jenny and I were both in a hurry to leave, the setting just made both of us uneasy. I quickly got in the car and promptly broke off the key in the ignition. ( what else could go wrong! ) With a minute or two of fidgeting I managed to get the car to start and we very swiftly headed back to start our fire. Don't worry, we had been warned that the one key tended to do that, so it wasn't an issue after we fixed it. Thankful that as bad as our luck was, we were headed home to a warm fire -- at last!