We got up at around 5:30 to pack up our bags, load the car and set off early for the boarder post. It opened at 7:00am, and we were thankful for our early start when we got there to find about a dozen trucks waiting for the gate to open. Getting through the border was much easier than I had anticipated, the Swaziland side stamped our passports and bid us goodbye and the South African side let us in easily, no car searches, questions or complaints, brilliant! We had around a three hour drive to our accommodation near Hazyview, on a route that took us through Nelspruit. I was born at the hospital in Nelspruit, 23 years, five months and six days ago, and I don't remember if I've been back since then, so it was quite nice to drive through the actual place I came into the world :)
We stopped just on our way out of Nelspruit at a curio shop that had attracted us by the copious amounts of beautiful cow hides they had hanging outside. The skins were massive, larger than we had seen before, and really really beautiful! We are probably going to buy a black and white Nguni cow skin for ourselves as a wedding gift out of the generosity of our many family and friends. Theirs were a little too pricey for our liking so after having a look around we set off again for the timeshare. We are staying at a place called Waterberry Hill, that is a 10 minute drive to the Kruger park. Because we were tired from the drive and waking up early, instead of heading into town when we got close by, we thought we may as well chance our luck that we could get our room key even though it was only 11am not the stipulated 2pm check in time.
Luckily we got the key as soon as we got there! No one had stayed in out per house the week previous to us, so aside from some sweeping that the cleaners had to do we were free to settle in, yay!! I had chosen the A side of the timeshare as it had a jacuzzi, and when we opened up 21a and had a look around I was so pleased about choosing the A side! It's huge and wonderfully comfortable :D We were also able to have a poke around 21b as the connecting doors had been left open by the cleaner. we were getting pretty hungry by this time so drove back into Hazyview to go to the Pick and Pay shopping centre to buy some braai supplies and general food stuffs. On the way back to the timeshare we stopped on the side of the road and bought what Jenny thought was very expensive firewood. It was R50 for two bundles but the wood turned out to be of amazing quality and the bundles were bigger than Jenny thought.
We spent some time at the house watching some tv, and a little while later decided to head back up to reception and investigate the miniature golf we saw on the way in. Turns out the mini golf was only R10 each so I challenged Jenny to a game which she miraculously won! Once we finished our game we walked back to the house and fired up the braai. We had a delicious dinner of smoked steaks and salad before watching a bit more tv and heading off to bed.
Tuesday, 30 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 57 -- 25/10/2012 -- Bulembu and Piggs Peak
So our agenda today consisted of a visit to Piggs Peak and a journey to Bulembu where Jenny lived just after she was born. So we took turns showering and using the Internet before heading down the road. Reception snagged us on our way out and informed us that they only had us booked in through today. Jenny was sure she had told them the right date but they brought up our email, and sure enough we had mistaken the days we would be staying. The lodge staff were less than understanding and after a few minutes of tense discussion they told us we could stay in our room for the next night.
We set the sat nav for Piggs Peak and once again chose the route with unpaved roads because we thought it would be fun. But once we got past Mbabane the roads turned fairly rough and we realised that we would likely be home a little bit later than we thought. So far on this trip Jenny has told me never to stop and pick up any hitch hikers under any circumstances, although I had to draw the line about 15 km down the first dirt road. There we encountered two ten year old kids carrying a U.N. food ration bag of rice and a live chicken; they were clearly not trying to hijack us haha. So I pulled over and we loaded the kids and their goods into the car and resumed our trip. We had only made it about 1km down the road when we saw a woman with a baby trying to get a lift. Figuring we might as well we stopped and helped her into the car. She spoke very little English and when Jenny opened the boot to load the woman's bag in the woman tried to climb in! We showed her that we intended to let her sit in one of the seats in the back haha. We gave all of our passengers droerwors and continued towards Piggs Peak.
We dropped off the kids and their chicken a few km down the road. We the encountered a stretch of road that was downhill quite steeply for 10km. Near the bottom of this decline we spotted a man and an old woman trying to get lifts so we stopped and picked them up as well. When I got out of the car to help them in I noticed that our brakes were overheating slightly. We decided to carry on driving because we were done with the decent and about to start another ascent, as such we would not be using the brakes for the next 10 km or so. Turns out that the old woman only wanted a lift about 2km down the road and when we dropped her off she was thanking us profusely with two full hands of biltong! We the proceeded into Piggs Peak where we dropped off the other occupants of our car and proceeded down the road to Bulembu.
Once again our trip to Bulembu was down a dirt road. We had encountered terrible unpaved roads before and thought this should be no worse. Regrettably we were wrong. Lesley had even warned us about this road before we set off on our trip today saying that it sometimes takes hours to navigate, she was right. The road was 17 km and due to the recent rain was sooooo bad in places that we had to get out of the car and pile rocks and logs into channels cut by rain in order to proceed. The road took us the better part of an hour to travel and when we finally arrived in Bulembu we were both in for a surprise.
Jenny's family lived here in 1989-1990 and Jenny was anxious to see the town, however we found a very different town than we expected. The town had been home to a booming asbestos mine since the early 20th century, but the mine shut down in 2001 and the town slowly died afterwards. Bulembu today seems like a town that shouldn't be there. The people have very little to do because it's existence was entirely dependent on the mine. The population of the town went from 10,000 in 2001 to around 50 in 2002! In recent years the population has recovered to around 2,000 and the town is desperately trying to reinvent and rebuild itself after its catastrophic collapse. In short it simply is not the same town today as it was in 1989.
We were curious about the particulars of the towns development and so we stopped by the old processing plant for the mine which has been converted into a museum. The museum (which cost R20 each) was one of the best I have been to in recent memory and gave us an amazing insight not only into the history of the town but also the history of Swazi interactions with colonising nations. We spent about an hour and a half wandering around reading the signs and admiring the vast array of artefacts from the mines days of former glory. Jenny rode in one of the inspection cars for 100 metres or so and we even found a Jenny-dubbed "death box" that was used to transport bodies along the cable way from the mine to the processing plant should someone die in the mine.
Once we had our fill of the museum we drove up the hill to the Bulembu Lodge for lunch. The lodge was even more quiet and unassuming than the town but had a lovely garden attached to it where you could sit in the sun and listen to the birds. It was for that reason that we were not terribly disappointed when we were told that our food (pizzas) may take half an hour to prepare and serve, as they were still in the process of cleaning the oven. Jenny and I used the time sitting in the garden chatting, writing posts, and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. When our food came it was nothing short of amazing. Jenny had a BBQ chicken pizza and I had a tropical pizza with bacon, banana and pineapple. The pizzas were quite large so we took nearly a whole one away with us for breakfast the next day.
We were both getting very tired at this point and made the decision to drive back to our lodge. On our way out of town we spotted a very well dressed man hitch hiking along the devilish dirt road I mentioned and stopped to pick him up. Turns out he is a school teacher in Bulembu and needed a lift to Piggs Peak so he could pick up his car from the mechanics. Good thing we stopped to give him a lift because he told us that the public transport to and from Piggs Peak was not running due to the condition of the roads. We dropped him off at friends house who would help him from then on and proceeded to a casino located about 10km outside Piggs Peak. We thought we would try our luck at roulette again and were surprised to find a computerised roulette table when we entered the casino.
The table looked exactly like a normal table except to place a bet you placed your finger on a small electronic pad in front of you and with the other hand you touched the sections of the board you wished to bet. The system worked on electrical circuits which allowed multiple people to play at the same time on the same computerised table display while not mixing their bets. Quite amazing actually. We put down R200 and spent the next hour paying more attention to the amazing table than our winnings. This time we weren't so lucky and left minus our R200. We were exceedingly tired by now, so we drove straight back to our lodge and spent a good deal of time on the Internet sending relevant communications before heading to bed, ready to wake up very early for our departure.
We set the sat nav for Piggs Peak and once again chose the route with unpaved roads because we thought it would be fun. But once we got past Mbabane the roads turned fairly rough and we realised that we would likely be home a little bit later than we thought. So far on this trip Jenny has told me never to stop and pick up any hitch hikers under any circumstances, although I had to draw the line about 15 km down the first dirt road. There we encountered two ten year old kids carrying a U.N. food ration bag of rice and a live chicken; they were clearly not trying to hijack us haha. So I pulled over and we loaded the kids and their goods into the car and resumed our trip. We had only made it about 1km down the road when we saw a woman with a baby trying to get a lift. Figuring we might as well we stopped and helped her into the car. She spoke very little English and when Jenny opened the boot to load the woman's bag in the woman tried to climb in! We showed her that we intended to let her sit in one of the seats in the back haha. We gave all of our passengers droerwors and continued towards Piggs Peak.
We dropped off the kids and their chicken a few km down the road. We the encountered a stretch of road that was downhill quite steeply for 10km. Near the bottom of this decline we spotted a man and an old woman trying to get lifts so we stopped and picked them up as well. When I got out of the car to help them in I noticed that our brakes were overheating slightly. We decided to carry on driving because we were done with the decent and about to start another ascent, as such we would not be using the brakes for the next 10 km or so. Turns out that the old woman only wanted a lift about 2km down the road and when we dropped her off she was thanking us profusely with two full hands of biltong! We the proceeded into Piggs Peak where we dropped off the other occupants of our car and proceeded down the road to Bulembu.
Once again our trip to Bulembu was down a dirt road. We had encountered terrible unpaved roads before and thought this should be no worse. Regrettably we were wrong. Lesley had even warned us about this road before we set off on our trip today saying that it sometimes takes hours to navigate, she was right. The road was 17 km and due to the recent rain was sooooo bad in places that we had to get out of the car and pile rocks and logs into channels cut by rain in order to proceed. The road took us the better part of an hour to travel and when we finally arrived in Bulembu we were both in for a surprise.
Jenny's family lived here in 1989-1990 and Jenny was anxious to see the town, however we found a very different town than we expected. The town had been home to a booming asbestos mine since the early 20th century, but the mine shut down in 2001 and the town slowly died afterwards. Bulembu today seems like a town that shouldn't be there. The people have very little to do because it's existence was entirely dependent on the mine. The population of the town went from 10,000 in 2001 to around 50 in 2002! In recent years the population has recovered to around 2,000 and the town is desperately trying to reinvent and rebuild itself after its catastrophic collapse. In short it simply is not the same town today as it was in 1989.
We were curious about the particulars of the towns development and so we stopped by the old processing plant for the mine which has been converted into a museum. The museum (which cost R20 each) was one of the best I have been to in recent memory and gave us an amazing insight not only into the history of the town but also the history of Swazi interactions with colonising nations. We spent about an hour and a half wandering around reading the signs and admiring the vast array of artefacts from the mines days of former glory. Jenny rode in one of the inspection cars for 100 metres or so and we even found a Jenny-dubbed "death box" that was used to transport bodies along the cable way from the mine to the processing plant should someone die in the mine.
Once we had our fill of the museum we drove up the hill to the Bulembu Lodge for lunch. The lodge was even more quiet and unassuming than the town but had a lovely garden attached to it where you could sit in the sun and listen to the birds. It was for that reason that we were not terribly disappointed when we were told that our food (pizzas) may take half an hour to prepare and serve, as they were still in the process of cleaning the oven. Jenny and I used the time sitting in the garden chatting, writing posts, and enjoying the peaceful atmosphere. When our food came it was nothing short of amazing. Jenny had a BBQ chicken pizza and I had a tropical pizza with bacon, banana and pineapple. The pizzas were quite large so we took nearly a whole one away with us for breakfast the next day.
We were both getting very tired at this point and made the decision to drive back to our lodge. On our way out of town we spotted a very well dressed man hitch hiking along the devilish dirt road I mentioned and stopped to pick him up. Turns out he is a school teacher in Bulembu and needed a lift to Piggs Peak so he could pick up his car from the mechanics. Good thing we stopped to give him a lift because he told us that the public transport to and from Piggs Peak was not running due to the condition of the roads. We dropped him off at friends house who would help him from then on and proceeded to a casino located about 10km outside Piggs Peak. We thought we would try our luck at roulette again and were surprised to find a computerised roulette table when we entered the casino.
The table looked exactly like a normal table except to place a bet you placed your finger on a small electronic pad in front of you and with the other hand you touched the sections of the board you wished to bet. The system worked on electrical circuits which allowed multiple people to play at the same time on the same computerised table display while not mixing their bets. Quite amazing actually. We put down R200 and spent the next hour paying more attention to the amazing table than our winnings. This time we weren't so lucky and left minus our R200. We were exceedingly tired by now, so we drove straight back to our lodge and spent a good deal of time on the Internet sending relevant communications before heading to bed, ready to wake up very early for our departure.
Monday, 29 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 56 -- 24/10/2012 -- Ezulwini Valley and Ngwenya Glass
In our attempt to keep up with blog posts, we both wrote some whilst the other showered. As our plans to use the internet yesterday were thwarted we set off early for Spur, right next to the free Internet place, for breakfast. Unfortunately our cunning plan to enjoy a meal and use free Internet backfired as the Internet was not working! I tried to ring Mum on Skype too while in the car but the connection was terrible and we could only get a few words across. It was incredibly frustrating for me because I found out that our wedding photographs had been uploaded by the extremely talented Heather Steyn, but I couldn't see them!
One thing I had been very adamant about doing whilst we were in Swaziland was going to the Ngwenya glass factory. I have always grown up with pieces of Ngwenya glass around our home, and I wanted to take Dan there and have a look at how they made everything. The word Ngwenya means crocodile, as the valley that the factory sits in looks like the back of a crocodile. The glass items are made out of recycled bottles from all over Swaziland, and for some people collecting the glasses is their only income. On our way there, we drive behind a man who had his left indicator on the entire time! We flashed him a few times but he didn't see us, so it remained on. As we passed Mbabane on the highway, we literally drove into a cloud. We could see the edges of the cloud over the mountain as we sailed into it, it looked like the mountain had a hat on. The mist was so thick that we drove at around 50kms per hour whilst we went through it, not being able to see more than 50m in front of us.
Ngwenya glass was only about 30 minutes away from where we were staying, so we got there quite early in the morning. I had a great wander around the shop imagining all the things I would love to but if I had unlimited money, and in reality I was choosing the few things I wanted that we could afford. It's not that the products are really expensive, it's just that there are so many of them that I want that it starts to become expensive if you chose them all. Before we made any decisions on what we wanted we walked up to the observation deck to see how the items are made. They have a huge furnace on the left had side of the room that one guy shovels glass into, nd then long poles are dipped into the molten glass and twisted aroind to get a blob of it to work with. We watched one man blow that blob into a cocktail glass mold, pass it to the next guy who scored the top of the glass to be broken off the pole later and shape the stem of the glass. He then passed it to the guy behind him who put a blob of molten glass from another guy onto the bottom of the stem to make the base of the glass. A final man would them take the piece and pit it into a conveyer belt type machine that we presume would cool the glass down at a rate that would not crack it.
After a few hours in that machine the glass is taken out and the top piece cracked off. A lady then sands down the top of the glass to make it even and it is put onto a round conveyer belt under a hot flame, to melt the very top of the glass so that it is no longer sharp. I was glad to be able to watch them make the cocktail glasses, but I would have also loved to watch an animal being made. Ngwenya glass makes hippos, elephants, warthogs, lions and cheetahs out of molten glass, the elephants are my favourite. Have a look on google if you are interested, they are really beautiful! After watching them for a long while we went back into the shop to chose our items. The main one we chose was a water jug, and the handle of the jug is a giraffes head, that curves and dips over the top of the jug, for R200. We also got two huge R25 champagne glasses! I would have bought more of the glasses but the logistics of getting them home would have been impossible.
We walked around the rest of the shops next to the glass factory, but didn't buy anything else. If I had have had space I would have bought a woven clock, with these beautiful woven flowers all around it! Alas, we have no space and no house! We did however buy some chocolates from a tiny artisan chocolate shop, am Dan let me get a R7 shot glass of melted milk chocolate, it was divine!! There was an Ngwenya glass cafe situated above the shop which had free Internet, so we sat down to have drinks and lunch and hopefully download the wedding photos. Dan was not hungry but I was, so I ordered butternut soup, and we both had drinks. I opened up Heather's blog on the iPad and we waited ages for anything to load! Their Internet was very very slow, so it would only load about a quarter of the photos!
The photos loaded somewhat faster outside, but I gave up eventually! We drove back to Pick and Pay to buy some more castle for Dan, and I sat in the car and finally loaded all of our wedding photos! I was so excited to finally see them! We looked through the entire blog post, and we are both so happy with our photographs :D Heather did such a wonderful job, I cannot wait to see the rest of the photographs on our cd! Once we got back to the lodge Dan started a fire for the braai. We borrowed the Internet code from the lodge and I then proceeded to download every wedding photograph, upload them all again onto Facebook and tag every one! It was brilliant to be bale to finally use the Internet properly in Swaziland, I was finally able to phone my parents on Skype for ha,f an hour without any connection issues. We sat up late and watched the 40 year old virgin before going to sleep.
One thing I had been very adamant about doing whilst we were in Swaziland was going to the Ngwenya glass factory. I have always grown up with pieces of Ngwenya glass around our home, and I wanted to take Dan there and have a look at how they made everything. The word Ngwenya means crocodile, as the valley that the factory sits in looks like the back of a crocodile. The glass items are made out of recycled bottles from all over Swaziland, and for some people collecting the glasses is their only income. On our way there, we drive behind a man who had his left indicator on the entire time! We flashed him a few times but he didn't see us, so it remained on. As we passed Mbabane on the highway, we literally drove into a cloud. We could see the edges of the cloud over the mountain as we sailed into it, it looked like the mountain had a hat on. The mist was so thick that we drove at around 50kms per hour whilst we went through it, not being able to see more than 50m in front of us.
Ngwenya glass was only about 30 minutes away from where we were staying, so we got there quite early in the morning. I had a great wander around the shop imagining all the things I would love to but if I had unlimited money, and in reality I was choosing the few things I wanted that we could afford. It's not that the products are really expensive, it's just that there are so many of them that I want that it starts to become expensive if you chose them all. Before we made any decisions on what we wanted we walked up to the observation deck to see how the items are made. They have a huge furnace on the left had side of the room that one guy shovels glass into, nd then long poles are dipped into the molten glass and twisted aroind to get a blob of it to work with. We watched one man blow that blob into a cocktail glass mold, pass it to the next guy who scored the top of the glass to be broken off the pole later and shape the stem of the glass. He then passed it to the guy behind him who put a blob of molten glass from another guy onto the bottom of the stem to make the base of the glass. A final man would them take the piece and pit it into a conveyer belt type machine that we presume would cool the glass down at a rate that would not crack it.
After a few hours in that machine the glass is taken out and the top piece cracked off. A lady then sands down the top of the glass to make it even and it is put onto a round conveyer belt under a hot flame, to melt the very top of the glass so that it is no longer sharp. I was glad to be able to watch them make the cocktail glasses, but I would have also loved to watch an animal being made. Ngwenya glass makes hippos, elephants, warthogs, lions and cheetahs out of molten glass, the elephants are my favourite. Have a look on google if you are interested, they are really beautiful! After watching them for a long while we went back into the shop to chose our items. The main one we chose was a water jug, and the handle of the jug is a giraffes head, that curves and dips over the top of the jug, for R200. We also got two huge R25 champagne glasses! I would have bought more of the glasses but the logistics of getting them home would have been impossible.
We walked around the rest of the shops next to the glass factory, but didn't buy anything else. If I had have had space I would have bought a woven clock, with these beautiful woven flowers all around it! Alas, we have no space and no house! We did however buy some chocolates from a tiny artisan chocolate shop, am Dan let me get a R7 shot glass of melted milk chocolate, it was divine!! There was an Ngwenya glass cafe situated above the shop which had free Internet, so we sat down to have drinks and lunch and hopefully download the wedding photos. Dan was not hungry but I was, so I ordered butternut soup, and we both had drinks. I opened up Heather's blog on the iPad and we waited ages for anything to load! Their Internet was very very slow, so it would only load about a quarter of the photos!
The photos loaded somewhat faster outside, but I gave up eventually! We drove back to Pick and Pay to buy some more castle for Dan, and I sat in the car and finally loaded all of our wedding photos! I was so excited to finally see them! We looked through the entire blog post, and we are both so happy with our photographs :D Heather did such a wonderful job, I cannot wait to see the rest of the photographs on our cd! Once we got back to the lodge Dan started a fire for the braai. We borrowed the Internet code from the lodge and I then proceeded to download every wedding photograph, upload them all again onto Facebook and tag every one! It was brilliant to be bale to finally use the Internet properly in Swaziland, I was finally able to phone my parents on Skype for ha,f an hour without any connection issues. We sat up late and watched the 40 year old virgin before going to sleep.
Epic Adventure -- Day 55 -- 23/10/2012 -- Ezulwini Valley and Mbabane
Turns out that when I woke up this morning I discovered that I had more to drink last night than I thought. My head was quite sore and movement proved difficult even though we slept in until half past 8. We planned to go to the Pick and Pay centre and use the free wireless Internet we found coming from a telecommunication shop while we sat and ate breakfast. However, soon after getting in the car we realised that the misfire was back and the car was certainly down on power again. We revised our plan and instead spent time in the shopping centre trying to find a place to buy the relevant tools to be able to access the injector connections. Last time we assumed the shaking of the car when the tire failed had rattled a connection loose; this time we hypothesised that the rocky road through golden gate national park had also rattled a connection loose.
No shop in the centre sold a ratchet set so we drove back to our room to see if the matinence people at the lodge had the correct tools. Just our luck, their mechanic was out, but they recommended driving down to Ezulwini Garage about 4 km down the road. It was our only option because we didn't want to make any long journeys with the car struggling so we set off for the garage. Before we left we ran into Jenny again and we asked if she wanted a lift to the craft village we had visited yesterday; it was on our way. She accepted and we put one of the back seats down in the car and set off.
We dropped her off at the car village and proceeded down the road to the garage where we found a small shop filled with random tools and a man behind the counter who had no idea what a ratchet was. You have no idea how difficult it is to describe with hand motions what a ratchet is! Eventually he invited me behind the counter to see if I could find what I was looking for. It became apparent that they didn't have what we needed but they did have a range of spanner sizes and we found the correct size we needed to take the cover off of the engine. I went out to the car and removed the cover, hoping that if the man from inside could see the bolts we needed to remove he may be able to find the correct tool to do it. Just as I finished removing the cover a man named Milton came up to us and asked if we needed some help. We explained our situation to him and he informed us he was trained as a grade three mechanic and had a truck full of tools nearby.
Milton had exactly what we needed, the correct size ratchet and attachment and before we knew it he was busy taking the top off the engine. A very friendly group of locals (presumably Milton's friends) soon gathered round the car, they way men often do when there is something mechanical that needs fixing haha. While Milton worked we chatted with the group about our travels; where we had been and where we still had to go. They were the nicest group of men and they made the time pass quite enjoyably despite the fact that our car wasn't working properly! Once Milton had removed the top of the engine I followed the exact same procedure that Koebus had done. I unplugged each of the electrical connections to the injectors and plugged them all back in, that's it! Milton then got to work putting the top and the cover back on the engine. We started up the car and again, miraculously, the misfire was gone!
We tipped Milton R100 for his help and drove back to the lodge to print one of the forms I would need for my visit to the US embassy. Form in hand we drove past the craft village to see if Jenny wanted a ride into Mbabane She looked rather glad to see us, probably because she was getting quite a lot of hassle in the craft centre to visit every shop and buy something each time she stepped inside. She decided to come with us and we left for the capital city. Our first stop was a shop called Midas, to try to buy our own ratchet. Turns out they don't have one, but they did have an entire car tool set for sale for R300, which had everything we needed and also anything we could possibly need, so we bought it. Finding the US embassy turned out to be a mission, and only after 20 minutes of driving in circles did we finally locate it.
Our trip to the embassy was necessary and annoying. Charles Mercer contacted us about a week ago informing us that the South African government requires a letter of no impediment from the US government to validate our marriage. This is rather annoying because the US has no central marriage office and so cannot issue these letters. The South African government will however except a letter from the US stating this fact! You would think the governments would talk!? We were informed after our arrival that the Consul was out of the embassy and would only return at 14:30. Probably a good thing he was gone because we noticed that we had grabbed my old passport. We found a place to have some lunch before driving Jenny back to the accommodation and retrieving my correct passport.
We got back to embassy at our appointed time, and the Consul, who shall remain nameless, came into the waiting room to see us. He wouldn't do the letter that we needed but instead would officiate a letter written by me stating that I had no impediments. He said that we would need to go and write and print our own letter, and he went off to get us a template. This was really annoying as we had no idea where an Internet cafe was that had a printer! Thankfully he called us in and told us he would write it for us and print it as he couldn't find the template. Jenny and I sat listening to him whilst he wrote the letter and told us how super amazing he was, and how difficult it was to be come a US Consul. Especially as they are not permitted to live in their assigned country for more than three years, so as not to create a bond that would compromise their US loyalty. I really wanted to see his point of view but I can't fit my head that far up my own ass.
After getting the letter stamped and sealed, and the form Dan needs to fill in certified, we paid the receptionist $50 for his kind service and left. We decided to head to the Ezulwini sun casino for some gambling! We first tried some of the slot machines which have never been my favourite. After a few minutes we thought the roulette tables looked more appealing and found a table doing R5 minimum inside bets. We threw down R100 and started playing. Every time we have ever played roulette in the past Jenny always plays the number 22 and I always play 0. This time we had the amazing luck that 22 and 0 came up a total of 5 times in the first 7 spins. Before we knew it we had turned R100 into R750!!!!
It was inevitable, but over the next hour and a half we managed to piss away all that we had won in the first 5 minutes. We decided To take a short break before heading back into the casino and this time putting R200 on the roulette table. Again we were pretty lucky and within a few minutes we had R300 in front of us. At this point we figured we should be heading out so we took our original R200 and cashed it in. With the remaining R100 we placed some go-for-broke bets including R20 on 0. The final spin was a 32; right next to 0! Damn!!!! After leaving the casino we picked up a pizza and headed back to the lodge for sleep.
No shop in the centre sold a ratchet set so we drove back to our room to see if the matinence people at the lodge had the correct tools. Just our luck, their mechanic was out, but they recommended driving down to Ezulwini Garage about 4 km down the road. It was our only option because we didn't want to make any long journeys with the car struggling so we set off for the garage. Before we left we ran into Jenny again and we asked if she wanted a lift to the craft village we had visited yesterday; it was on our way. She accepted and we put one of the back seats down in the car and set off.
We dropped her off at the car village and proceeded down the road to the garage where we found a small shop filled with random tools and a man behind the counter who had no idea what a ratchet was. You have no idea how difficult it is to describe with hand motions what a ratchet is! Eventually he invited me behind the counter to see if I could find what I was looking for. It became apparent that they didn't have what we needed but they did have a range of spanner sizes and we found the correct size we needed to take the cover off of the engine. I went out to the car and removed the cover, hoping that if the man from inside could see the bolts we needed to remove he may be able to find the correct tool to do it. Just as I finished removing the cover a man named Milton came up to us and asked if we needed some help. We explained our situation to him and he informed us he was trained as a grade three mechanic and had a truck full of tools nearby.
Milton had exactly what we needed, the correct size ratchet and attachment and before we knew it he was busy taking the top off the engine. A very friendly group of locals (presumably Milton's friends) soon gathered round the car, they way men often do when there is something mechanical that needs fixing haha. While Milton worked we chatted with the group about our travels; where we had been and where we still had to go. They were the nicest group of men and they made the time pass quite enjoyably despite the fact that our car wasn't working properly! Once Milton had removed the top of the engine I followed the exact same procedure that Koebus had done. I unplugged each of the electrical connections to the injectors and plugged them all back in, that's it! Milton then got to work putting the top and the cover back on the engine. We started up the car and again, miraculously, the misfire was gone!
We tipped Milton R100 for his help and drove back to the lodge to print one of the forms I would need for my visit to the US embassy. Form in hand we drove past the craft village to see if Jenny wanted a ride into Mbabane She looked rather glad to see us, probably because she was getting quite a lot of hassle in the craft centre to visit every shop and buy something each time she stepped inside. She decided to come with us and we left for the capital city. Our first stop was a shop called Midas, to try to buy our own ratchet. Turns out they don't have one, but they did have an entire car tool set for sale for R300, which had everything we needed and also anything we could possibly need, so we bought it. Finding the US embassy turned out to be a mission, and only after 20 minutes of driving in circles did we finally locate it.
Our trip to the embassy was necessary and annoying. Charles Mercer contacted us about a week ago informing us that the South African government requires a letter of no impediment from the US government to validate our marriage. This is rather annoying because the US has no central marriage office and so cannot issue these letters. The South African government will however except a letter from the US stating this fact! You would think the governments would talk!? We were informed after our arrival that the Consul was out of the embassy and would only return at 14:30. Probably a good thing he was gone because we noticed that we had grabbed my old passport. We found a place to have some lunch before driving Jenny back to the accommodation and retrieving my correct passport.
We got back to embassy at our appointed time, and the Consul, who shall remain nameless, came into the waiting room to see us. He wouldn't do the letter that we needed but instead would officiate a letter written by me stating that I had no impediments. He said that we would need to go and write and print our own letter, and he went off to get us a template. This was really annoying as we had no idea where an Internet cafe was that had a printer! Thankfully he called us in and told us he would write it for us and print it as he couldn't find the template. Jenny and I sat listening to him whilst he wrote the letter and told us how super amazing he was, and how difficult it was to be come a US Consul. Especially as they are not permitted to live in their assigned country for more than three years, so as not to create a bond that would compromise their US loyalty. I really wanted to see his point of view but I can't fit my head that far up my own ass.
After getting the letter stamped and sealed, and the form Dan needs to fill in certified, we paid the receptionist $50 for his kind service and left. We decided to head to the Ezulwini sun casino for some gambling! We first tried some of the slot machines which have never been my favourite. After a few minutes we thought the roulette tables looked more appealing and found a table doing R5 minimum inside bets. We threw down R100 and started playing. Every time we have ever played roulette in the past Jenny always plays the number 22 and I always play 0. This time we had the amazing luck that 22 and 0 came up a total of 5 times in the first 7 spins. Before we knew it we had turned R100 into R750!!!!
It was inevitable, but over the next hour and a half we managed to piss away all that we had won in the first 5 minutes. We decided To take a short break before heading back into the casino and this time putting R200 on the roulette table. Again we were pretty lucky and within a few minutes we had R300 in front of us. At this point we figured we should be heading out so we took our original R200 and cashed it in. With the remaining R100 we placed some go-for-broke bets including R20 on 0. The final spin was a 32; right next to 0! Damn!!!! After leaving the casino we picked up a pizza and headed back to the lodge for sleep.
Thursday, 25 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 54 -- 22/10/2012 -- Ezelwini Valley
Amazingly this morning, entirely due to Jenny, I woke up without the slightest hint of a hangover. Jenny, on the other hand, had a decent headache because she had focussed all her efforts on me last night and had forgotten to drink enough water herself! I went outside and re wrote part of the blog from day 52, as Jenny had accidentally deleted it last night whilst typing blog posts. The upside of that happening is that she felt so terrible about deleting it that she stayed up another couple of hours and finished nearly all the blog posts, so now we are basically caught up, let's hope we keep it that way!
Whilst I was in the shower Dan went to ask about when we could move our things over to the double room from the twin room, which luckily could happen straight away and we didn't need to wait till later. After we had moved our bags over we set off in search of the large craft centre we had been told was a few kms down the road. We initially drove past the centre because it didn't look like "the largest craft village in Swaziland". When we finally got there and started walking around, it became clear that we would be leaving again very shortly. The store owners would all tell you to come into their shop and look around, making you feel bad if you passed by the same things they were selling that you had seen being sold by someone else five seconds previously.
We set the sat nav to take us to the Swazi candle centre. It was brilliant to be there and have a look around, as I have always loved Swazi candles. If you don't know what they are, have a search on google, it's a very distinctive style of candle making. Dan loved looking at all of the different animals, and we contemplated buying a Christmas present for my parents but decided against it as it would probably melt in the car along the way. We got to watch a man make an elephant candle, it was quite amazing! He took a blob of white wax out of an oven in front of him, and once he had rolled it around in his hands a few times he got two brightly coloured patterned squares from the oven and worked them over the top and bottom of the ball of wax. We then watched him mild that into an elephant in about 5 minutes!
There was a really cute cat along the path to the other shops who we obviously had to stop and say hi too. She was so tiny and looked like she was still partly a kitten, but just had kittens, and a black cat who also came to say hi looked like he could be one of them! We walked around the other few shops that were nearby, and decided we should have lunch in the little cafe overlooking the craft stalls. My lunch was delicious, I had two pancakes filled with banana, bacon and syrup, and Dan had a sandwich with mozzarella, chicken, pineapple and sweet chilli sauce.
After walking around the stalls and watching two guys carve giraffe out of wood, we drove to the Mantengu falls. We didn't really want to go on the contrived village tour and watch the Swazi locals dance, so we just paid to enter the reserve and drove to the falls. We parked the car and walked down to have a look, they were quite pretty and made me wish we had brought along a picnic of some sort. When we got bored and walked back to the car I convinced Dan that we should walk down the road with the no entry sign on the off chance it too had a view of the falls. After walking for about a kilometre uphill in the sun and seeing no falls we gave up and went back again.
On our way back to the lodge we stopped at Pick and Pay to buy food for dinner and more braai supplies. We ended up buying a smoked rump steak, some boerwors and some impala chops! We decided to eat the impala tonight and leave the other meat for the next nights dinner. Dan set up a great fire, no easy feat as the wood that we were buying from the side of the road was extreme hard, and trying to get it lit was very difficult. We chucked two sweet potatoes into the coals and once the flames got low enough we cooked the impala. It has a different flavour to most I have eaten, very yummy but leaning more towards a beef flavour than a wild game flavour, if that makes any sense.
I got very caught up in reading the book I got from the lodges shelves, and went back to the room to read whilst Dan made friends with a girl called Jenny who had just arrived that evening. She was from London and travelling by herself for a week until she was to go to a wedding in Cape Town the next week. There was music playing loudly and a lot of noise coming from the kids who were here to volunteer as it was their last night at Lidwala. I finished my book at around the same time Dan came to bed, and I made him drink some water before I would let him go to sleep because he had had quite a bit to drink :D
Whilst I was in the shower Dan went to ask about when we could move our things over to the double room from the twin room, which luckily could happen straight away and we didn't need to wait till later. After we had moved our bags over we set off in search of the large craft centre we had been told was a few kms down the road. We initially drove past the centre because it didn't look like "the largest craft village in Swaziland". When we finally got there and started walking around, it became clear that we would be leaving again very shortly. The store owners would all tell you to come into their shop and look around, making you feel bad if you passed by the same things they were selling that you had seen being sold by someone else five seconds previously.
We set the sat nav to take us to the Swazi candle centre. It was brilliant to be there and have a look around, as I have always loved Swazi candles. If you don't know what they are, have a search on google, it's a very distinctive style of candle making. Dan loved looking at all of the different animals, and we contemplated buying a Christmas present for my parents but decided against it as it would probably melt in the car along the way. We got to watch a man make an elephant candle, it was quite amazing! He took a blob of white wax out of an oven in front of him, and once he had rolled it around in his hands a few times he got two brightly coloured patterned squares from the oven and worked them over the top and bottom of the ball of wax. We then watched him mild that into an elephant in about 5 minutes!
There was a really cute cat along the path to the other shops who we obviously had to stop and say hi too. She was so tiny and looked like she was still partly a kitten, but just had kittens, and a black cat who also came to say hi looked like he could be one of them! We walked around the other few shops that were nearby, and decided we should have lunch in the little cafe overlooking the craft stalls. My lunch was delicious, I had two pancakes filled with banana, bacon and syrup, and Dan had a sandwich with mozzarella, chicken, pineapple and sweet chilli sauce.
After walking around the stalls and watching two guys carve giraffe out of wood, we drove to the Mantengu falls. We didn't really want to go on the contrived village tour and watch the Swazi locals dance, so we just paid to enter the reserve and drove to the falls. We parked the car and walked down to have a look, they were quite pretty and made me wish we had brought along a picnic of some sort. When we got bored and walked back to the car I convinced Dan that we should walk down the road with the no entry sign on the off chance it too had a view of the falls. After walking for about a kilometre uphill in the sun and seeing no falls we gave up and went back again.
On our way back to the lodge we stopped at Pick and Pay to buy food for dinner and more braai supplies. We ended up buying a smoked rump steak, some boerwors and some impala chops! We decided to eat the impala tonight and leave the other meat for the next nights dinner. Dan set up a great fire, no easy feat as the wood that we were buying from the side of the road was extreme hard, and trying to get it lit was very difficult. We chucked two sweet potatoes into the coals and once the flames got low enough we cooked the impala. It has a different flavour to most I have eaten, very yummy but leaning more towards a beef flavour than a wild game flavour, if that makes any sense.
I got very caught up in reading the book I got from the lodges shelves, and went back to the room to read whilst Dan made friends with a girl called Jenny who had just arrived that evening. She was from London and travelling by herself for a week until she was to go to a wedding in Cape Town the next week. There was music playing loudly and a lot of noise coming from the kids who were here to volunteer as it was their last night at Lidwala. I finished my book at around the same time Dan came to bed, and I made him drink some water before I would let him go to sleep because he had had quite a bit to drink :D
Tuesday, 23 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 53 -- 21/10/2012 -- Piet Retief to Ezelwini Valley
As it was a Sunday and we were both pretty shattered from all the driving, we both decided to set no alarms for this morning and to wake up whenever we felt like it. Unfortunately that time was around half six anyway! After a snooze we got up to write more blog posts and research accommodation in Swaziland for the next few nights. I found a backpackers to stay in for R365 for a double room, so I emailed them for availability. Once we had packed the car we drove into town to see if we could get some more supplies from our list. I bought contact lens solution from clicks, we found a single blanket for R79 to cover our things in the boot from thieving eyes and we bought a really big and decent map from CNA for R115.
The drive to the border post was an easy 40 minutes away, and as we got there I warned Dan to not say anything, to hide the biltong and to be ready for a hard time. It was so much easier than I was expecting!!! We simply had our passports stamped in one building, paid R50 road tax to drive in Swaziland in another room and that was that, we were in Swaziland!!! No requests for the copious amount of paperwork I have on Snolly, no interrogation, no car searching, and strangest of all is that there was no second border post. All the others I have ever been through have one post for each country, ie you leave South Africa through theirs and enter Swaziland through another. Not the case! Anyway, after that strangeness we set the sat nav to the Ezelwini Valley where I knew the accommodation to be.
Just before we entered Swaziland I had a message from the accommodation saying that it was ok to stay, but that we would have to share a dorm room this evening. No other options available we chose to go ahead with it, but a second email came through before we lost the Internet saying that someone had cancelled so we could have our own twin room for this evening and then a double room for the rest of the time, brilliant! When we arrived at the backpackers lodge we quickly unpacked the car, noticed there were braai facilities, and set off back into town to pick up food for our dinner. Pick and Pay was our first stop and there we found al that we wanted for a much needed braai, except fire wood. Jenny chose some smoked steaks for our dinner but we crucially needed something to cook them on. I asked some security guards outside the store where I may find fire wood. They directed me to xxxxx market just down the road.
The market turned out to be a bit farther away than my help had told me. We even had to stop at a petrol station to confirm that we were headed in the right direction. When we finally got there we were not disappointed, the people we very friendly and Jenny and I felt safer in this local shanty market than we had felt our entire time in South Africa. True to their word this market did sell fire wood for R30 a pile, we bought 2 piles and a cooked ear of corn (which was terrible haha) and headed back to the lodge to start the fire.
The firewood proved quite difficult to light. It was a very hard wood and the braai was recessed which impeded the influx of oxygen to the fire. Jenny and I decided to pass the time by drinking, a sensible solution I think. I started on a bottle of LBV port I had purchased during our wine tour the day that Chris left, and Jenny had a bottle of dessert wine from the Nederburg tasting. The longer the braai took to be ready the more we drank. So much so that we found ourselves most of the way through our respective bottles by the time that we could cook the steaks on the fire.
The food was delicious and just what we needed after a few days of not being able to cook our own dinners. We finished our food, started a fire and went on a short wall around the lodge, mostly gossiping about the white teenage 'volunteers' that were also staying at the lodge. The type of people that pay £3000 to come to Africa for a week and 'help the locals'. When we finished venting we returned to the fire and found it almost out. The fire restarted much easier than it was to light in the first place and we enjoyed the heat and the light for a while. At some point I remembered that we were carrying with us an insane amount of springbok biltong and droewors so I decided to offer some to the volunteers. They had never had any before, they hesitantly took some; commenting on my shirt "are you actually awesome" to which I replied "probably not -- enjoy!" hahaha.
At this point Jenny and I were both feeling the effects of finishing our respective bottles and decided it was time to head to bed. Jenny knew I was more drunk than she was and so was very kind in making sure I had enough water to drink before falling asleep. She felt a lot better than I did and continued writing posts long after I had fallen asleep. She accidentally deleted day 52 while typing and woke me up so I could reassure her that it was ok and we could simply retype it. I fell back asleep and she shortly joined me after some more writing.
The drive to the border post was an easy 40 minutes away, and as we got there I warned Dan to not say anything, to hide the biltong and to be ready for a hard time. It was so much easier than I was expecting!!! We simply had our passports stamped in one building, paid R50 road tax to drive in Swaziland in another room and that was that, we were in Swaziland!!! No requests for the copious amount of paperwork I have on Snolly, no interrogation, no car searching, and strangest of all is that there was no second border post. All the others I have ever been through have one post for each country, ie you leave South Africa through theirs and enter Swaziland through another. Not the case! Anyway, after that strangeness we set the sat nav to the Ezelwini Valley where I knew the accommodation to be.
Just before we entered Swaziland I had a message from the accommodation saying that it was ok to stay, but that we would have to share a dorm room this evening. No other options available we chose to go ahead with it, but a second email came through before we lost the Internet saying that someone had cancelled so we could have our own twin room for this evening and then a double room for the rest of the time, brilliant! When we arrived at the backpackers lodge we quickly unpacked the car, noticed there were braai facilities, and set off back into town to pick up food for our dinner. Pick and Pay was our first stop and there we found al that we wanted for a much needed braai, except fire wood. Jenny chose some smoked steaks for our dinner but we crucially needed something to cook them on. I asked some security guards outside the store where I may find fire wood. They directed me to xxxxx market just down the road.
The market turned out to be a bit farther away than my help had told me. We even had to stop at a petrol station to confirm that we were headed in the right direction. When we finally got there we were not disappointed, the people we very friendly and Jenny and I felt safer in this local shanty market than we had felt our entire time in South Africa. True to their word this market did sell fire wood for R30 a pile, we bought 2 piles and a cooked ear of corn (which was terrible haha) and headed back to the lodge to start the fire.
The firewood proved quite difficult to light. It was a very hard wood and the braai was recessed which impeded the influx of oxygen to the fire. Jenny and I decided to pass the time by drinking, a sensible solution I think. I started on a bottle of LBV port I had purchased during our wine tour the day that Chris left, and Jenny had a bottle of dessert wine from the Nederburg tasting. The longer the braai took to be ready the more we drank. So much so that we found ourselves most of the way through our respective bottles by the time that we could cook the steaks on the fire.
The food was delicious and just what we needed after a few days of not being able to cook our own dinners. We finished our food, started a fire and went on a short wall around the lodge, mostly gossiping about the white teenage 'volunteers' that were also staying at the lodge. The type of people that pay £3000 to come to Africa for a week and 'help the locals'. When we finished venting we returned to the fire and found it almost out. The fire restarted much easier than it was to light in the first place and we enjoyed the heat and the light for a while. At some point I remembered that we were carrying with us an insane amount of springbok biltong and droewors so I decided to offer some to the volunteers. They had never had any before, they hesitantly took some; commenting on my shirt "are you actually awesome" to which I replied "probably not -- enjoy!" hahaha.
At this point Jenny and I were both feeling the effects of finishing our respective bottles and decided it was time to head to bed. Jenny knew I was more drunk than she was and so was very kind in making sure I had enough water to drink before falling asleep. She felt a lot better than I did and continued writing posts long after I had fallen asleep. She accidentally deleted day 52 while typing and woke me up so I could reassure her that it was ok and we could simply retype it. I fell back asleep and she shortly joined me after some more writing.
Epic Adventure -- Day 52 -- 20/10/2012 -- Ficksburg to Piet Retief
Our night in Bela Rosa came with breakfast the next morning, so at around 7:30am we headed for the dining room. We ate fresh pineapple and mango and guava juice before being served a full English breakfast, coffee and tea. Perfect start to the day! The man who served us had a long chat with us about what he thinks of the UK and the people there, and how he has yet to find a wife with blue hair, he was funny albeit a little strange. We settled out bill with him and set off for the town of Clarens, which I was interested in stopping in on the way past as they were having a festival. When we arrived, it was to find the cutest little town I have ever seen! Every shop we went into was really beautiful and quaint, the streets were half dirt and half tar, and their was a real charm to the town. Dad phoned as we got there and I learned from Mum that Jess and James spent their timeshare week here, In a resort called Kiara, just a few kms out of town, I am so jealous!!
We went into numerous shops which if I had have had my way I would have bought everything! Unfortunately Dan made sure I didn't. We stopped in a gallery and both fell in Le with the style of painting of an artist there, who was coincidentally at the gallery painting what easily looked like a canvas blow up of an image not an actual painting! We asked her for her contact details, as a few years down the line when we have our own little family we may contact her to do a commission for us much like the painting we have at the moment of just the two of us! I dragged Dan around as many stores as I could before he told em we should head back to the cat, which I strategically angled for us to walk back through the festival. There was a joker man behind a board a few metres away with a sign above his head, and you could pay R20 to throw three tomatoes at his head! I convinced Dan to have a go, he got one through the mans arm hole but none on his face, it was hilarious though! I bought a type of doughnut filled with caramel and we walked back to the car.
I'm still really disappointed that we did not push on a little bit longer yesterday and stay the night in this gorgeous town, and with hind sight I'm also disappointed that we didn't decided to just stay the night there in any case. Never mind, we continued on our journey and the road took us through the most stunning national park, called The Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Where if you didn't know better you would assume that you were in Scotland.
The road through the park was very twisting and we couldn't make very good time but the views made up for that. The park only lasted about 20km and when we arrived at the exit to the park a guard took down our registration plate and vehicle type (probably to make sure every vehicle in the park leaves before they close the gates) He even noticed the bullet casing I was wearing as a necklace, we told him I had shot a springbok and gave him some of the droewors. Soon after leaving the park we took a look in the rear view mirror and decided we needed to make good time to avoid the weather coming in behind us. The sky behind was black and the storm was headed this way. About 20 km after the park the road turned to gravel; a much worse type than we had encountered before. This time the road was made of fist-sized rocks and the whole car rattled and shook with an intensity that threatened to shed every accessory not nailed down. Going was slow and we weren't able to go any faster than 40 km/hr. The rattling was deafening. And then the inevitable happened, it started to rain.
The storm that was behind us leaving the park had caught up with us on the gravel road. Visibility in front of us was probably 10 km while behind us it was less than 500 meters. You could clearly see the wall of heavier rain approaching behind us. Running water on the road was cutting channels in the dirt that even after the rain stopped would not be easy to cross. We quickly realised that we would need to outrun the storm if we wanted to avoid being stranded in the quickly flooding plain. So for the next 5 minutes I put foot to the floor and sped along the rocky road in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rain.
Just as we managed to outrun the rain we found ourselves thrown onto our first paved road in 50 km, what a relief! A little while later we found our way to a petrol station where we filled the car. Despite all the rock and tumultuous roads we managed to get an amazing 27.5 mpg this time! I had found an accommodation in Piet Retief for R360 per night, and so I set the sat nav to take us there. Along the way I spotted a large sign saying that they had rooms for R250 per night, so I told Dan to pull up and ask at their door. Whilst he was out of the car I noticed a sign up ahead for A1 Accommodation advertising rooms for R150 for a night, so when Dan came back to the car having not been answered we drove there instead! Unfortunately the R150 rooms were taken, but as it was just for a single bed it was not too much of a hassle for us to stay in the twin room for R250. The woman was actually extremely kind and upgraded us to a double room (usually R350) for free!
We unpacked the car and Dan played around with the back seats and figured out that you can hinge them forwards towards the front seats, and basically turn the car into a two seated with a huge boot! We drove into Piet Retief to see if we could find any of the items on our list that we wanted for the rest of the trip, and managed to catch an open pharmacy for indigestion tablets and Pick and Pay for some juice and shampoo. We tried to find a map from one of the petrol stations in the town but none of them had any, so we went to KFC and bought a streetwise five poece chicken for our dinner and went home. I fell asleep pretty quickly after I'd finished eating but Dan very kindly stayed up to write this blog post, which we have now had to completely rewrite because I had a spaz moment coupled with the iPads stupidity and today's completed post was deleated! Its really not much fun to start all over again, I promise :D
We went into numerous shops which if I had have had my way I would have bought everything! Unfortunately Dan made sure I didn't. We stopped in a gallery and both fell in Le with the style of painting of an artist there, who was coincidentally at the gallery painting what easily looked like a canvas blow up of an image not an actual painting! We asked her for her contact details, as a few years down the line when we have our own little family we may contact her to do a commission for us much like the painting we have at the moment of just the two of us! I dragged Dan around as many stores as I could before he told em we should head back to the cat, which I strategically angled for us to walk back through the festival. There was a joker man behind a board a few metres away with a sign above his head, and you could pay R20 to throw three tomatoes at his head! I convinced Dan to have a go, he got one through the mans arm hole but none on his face, it was hilarious though! I bought a type of doughnut filled with caramel and we walked back to the car.
I'm still really disappointed that we did not push on a little bit longer yesterday and stay the night in this gorgeous town, and with hind sight I'm also disappointed that we didn't decided to just stay the night there in any case. Never mind, we continued on our journey and the road took us through the most stunning national park, called The Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Where if you didn't know better you would assume that you were in Scotland.
The road through the park was very twisting and we couldn't make very good time but the views made up for that. The park only lasted about 20km and when we arrived at the exit to the park a guard took down our registration plate and vehicle type (probably to make sure every vehicle in the park leaves before they close the gates) He even noticed the bullet casing I was wearing as a necklace, we told him I had shot a springbok and gave him some of the droewors. Soon after leaving the park we took a look in the rear view mirror and decided we needed to make good time to avoid the weather coming in behind us. The sky behind was black and the storm was headed this way. About 20 km after the park the road turned to gravel; a much worse type than we had encountered before. This time the road was made of fist-sized rocks and the whole car rattled and shook with an intensity that threatened to shed every accessory not nailed down. Going was slow and we weren't able to go any faster than 40 km/hr. The rattling was deafening. And then the inevitable happened, it started to rain.
The storm that was behind us leaving the park had caught up with us on the gravel road. Visibility in front of us was probably 10 km while behind us it was less than 500 meters. You could clearly see the wall of heavier rain approaching behind us. Running water on the road was cutting channels in the dirt that even after the rain stopped would not be easy to cross. We quickly realised that we would need to outrun the storm if we wanted to avoid being stranded in the quickly flooding plain. So for the next 5 minutes I put foot to the floor and sped along the rocky road in an attempt to avoid the worst of the rain.
Just as we managed to outrun the rain we found ourselves thrown onto our first paved road in 50 km, what a relief! A little while later we found our way to a petrol station where we filled the car. Despite all the rock and tumultuous roads we managed to get an amazing 27.5 mpg this time! I had found an accommodation in Piet Retief for R360 per night, and so I set the sat nav to take us there. Along the way I spotted a large sign saying that they had rooms for R250 per night, so I told Dan to pull up and ask at their door. Whilst he was out of the car I noticed a sign up ahead for A1 Accommodation advertising rooms for R150 for a night, so when Dan came back to the car having not been answered we drove there instead! Unfortunately the R150 rooms were taken, but as it was just for a single bed it was not too much of a hassle for us to stay in the twin room for R250. The woman was actually extremely kind and upgraded us to a double room (usually R350) for free!
We unpacked the car and Dan played around with the back seats and figured out that you can hinge them forwards towards the front seats, and basically turn the car into a two seated with a huge boot! We drove into Piet Retief to see if we could find any of the items on our list that we wanted for the rest of the trip, and managed to catch an open pharmacy for indigestion tablets and Pick and Pay for some juice and shampoo. We tried to find a map from one of the petrol stations in the town but none of them had any, so we went to KFC and bought a streetwise five poece chicken for our dinner and went home. I fell asleep pretty quickly after I'd finished eating but Dan very kindly stayed up to write this blog post, which we have now had to completely rewrite because I had a spaz moment coupled with the iPads stupidity and today's completed post was deleated! Its really not much fun to start all over again, I promise :D
Epic Adventure -- Day 51 -- 19/10/2012 -- Craddock to Ficksburg
Despite my protests to have a day where we get to lie in Jenny insisted on getting another early start. We had breakfast with Gavin and Lesley while admiring more of the amazing views from their house. About half way through breakfast we noticed some terrible looking weather headed our way and decided that we should hurry up and get on the road. We set the sat nav to include un-paved roads because it usually overestimates the delay caused. This time however we were in for a surprise.
We started by turning right out of their house onto 6km of dirt roads. We were capable of doing about 70 km/hr on this road but we soon hit sections of road where we could hardly do more than 10 km/hr. It was quite nice to finally feel like we were on a proper road trip, the only issue was that the dirt roads carried on for near 70 km. This meant that the ETA the sat nav predicted was more accurate than we would have liked. Eventually, after what seemed like forever, we found ourselves on a paved road headed to Fricksburg. Just before turning on to the paved road we stopped for Jenny to take a tortoise off the road and save it from getting hit by a car.
Now you would think that driving on paved roads would be much better than the washed out dirt roads of the previous 2 hours. Unfortunately this turned out not to be the case. The roads were so ridden with potholes that we had to weave in and out of both lanes to avoid seriously damaging the suspension of the car. When we had enough of the potholes we pulled over to fill up the car at a Shell station. The last time we got diesel I had noted the milage and we had filled the tank so this time I was keen to see what the gas milage had been since we stopped just short of Port Elizabeth. Turns out that even with the stretch of almost impassable dirt road we were getting 26 mpg!
Jenny decided that she wanted a turn driving and so we switched just after stopping at Shell and she took the last 150 km or so. Because of our delay on the dirt roads we decided to stick the original plan and stay in Ficksburg for the night. We pulled into town around 16:00 and phoned several guest houses to find a place to stay. We stopped by tourist information who were completely useless and so continued our search without using their advice. After phoning a few places who were full, Bella Rosa Guest House had a double room available for R290 a person and we were so tired we took the room immediately.
Once we unpacked the car we realised that we needed some food and so set off for a small cafe Jenny had spotted on the way into town called The Lemon Tree Cafe. It was really lovely inside and had some really pretty pieces of art, all of a similar design. If we had a house Jenny would have certainly bought something! The girl who ran it was very nice and we shared a sandwich, a coke and a milkshake before retiring back to our room for a long session of blog writing and a much needed very early night.
We started by turning right out of their house onto 6km of dirt roads. We were capable of doing about 70 km/hr on this road but we soon hit sections of road where we could hardly do more than 10 km/hr. It was quite nice to finally feel like we were on a proper road trip, the only issue was that the dirt roads carried on for near 70 km. This meant that the ETA the sat nav predicted was more accurate than we would have liked. Eventually, after what seemed like forever, we found ourselves on a paved road headed to Fricksburg. Just before turning on to the paved road we stopped for Jenny to take a tortoise off the road and save it from getting hit by a car.
Now you would think that driving on paved roads would be much better than the washed out dirt roads of the previous 2 hours. Unfortunately this turned out not to be the case. The roads were so ridden with potholes that we had to weave in and out of both lanes to avoid seriously damaging the suspension of the car. When we had enough of the potholes we pulled over to fill up the car at a Shell station. The last time we got diesel I had noted the milage and we had filled the tank so this time I was keen to see what the gas milage had been since we stopped just short of Port Elizabeth. Turns out that even with the stretch of almost impassable dirt road we were getting 26 mpg!
Jenny decided that she wanted a turn driving and so we switched just after stopping at Shell and she took the last 150 km or so. Because of our delay on the dirt roads we decided to stick the original plan and stay in Ficksburg for the night. We pulled into town around 16:00 and phoned several guest houses to find a place to stay. We stopped by tourist information who were completely useless and so continued our search without using their advice. After phoning a few places who were full, Bella Rosa Guest House had a double room available for R290 a person and we were so tired we took the room immediately.
Once we unpacked the car we realised that we needed some food and so set off for a small cafe Jenny had spotted on the way into town called The Lemon Tree Cafe. It was really lovely inside and had some really pretty pieces of art, all of a similar design. If we had a house Jenny would have certainly bought something! The girl who ran it was very nice and we shared a sandwich, a coke and a milkshake before retiring back to our room for a long session of blog writing and a much needed very early night.
Epic Adventure -- Day 50 -- 18/10/2012 -- Graaff-Reintet to Port Elizabeth to Craddock
We woke up at 6, this morning to make sure that we were away with enough time to drop mum off at the airport. We showered and packed the car before driving over to the Holmes house for our last breakfast. It was just as amazing as the previous meals, a delicious bacon and mushroom mix on top of toasted farm bread and sprinkled with cheese, along with tea and juice. What more could you ask for? We got our final puppy cuddles before saying outer goodbyes and climbing into the turquoise steed for the journey to Port Elizabeth airport. The sat nav put our eta at 11am, half an hour later than mum would have wanted to be at the airport for her half 12 flight, but still enough time to get there comfortably. We sang happy birthday to Snolly along the way as she had her 6000th kilometre birthday with us on the trip :D Dan very rightly stated once we registered how far we had driven in Snolly that if (or when!) she dies on us "she's not a car that will die in peacefully in her sleep, she is a car that will fall down the stairs out of a open window off a skyscraper"
Stopping for petrol along the way we happened to hit a station that had an armoured guard at it as they were re cashing the ATM, so it felt really safe! We pulled into the airport with lots of time to get mum checked in, the only hurdle now would be to hopefully get the two bags onto the plane without any issues about weight being made nor her having to repack them! The first bag (which we figured was the lightest) weighed just under 23kgs, the limit for each piece, and the second bag weighed over 26kgs! When the first bag went on I realised that the second would be well over so I started talking to the guy at the desk about how he was and was he having a good day blah blah blah, in the hopes that he would ignore the weight and be nice and let it slide and he did!! See nice people do work at airports!!
We were sad to say goodbye to mum as Dan and I had both wanted her to carry on the trip with us up to Swaziland. Thankfully we will see her and dad again really soon at Victoria falls in December! The two tasks we had to do in PE were go to Dulces and get my favourite ice cream, fudge choc chip, and then go to the land rover garage to get the light fixed. The waterfront where Dulces was was closer time wise to we opted to go there first. We got a comprehensive book about early South African history for Dan, dating from the 1600's to the mid 1900's. As we walked around the corner to ducked it became apparent that there were major refurbishment projects going on on that entire section of sops some was pretty heart broken when I realised there would be no ice cream.
We cheered me up however by finding an arcade to play in! We swapped R20 for some of their coins and proceeded to play a flying pig game, deal or no deal, those coin dropping machines and a duck punching game amongst others! We won 73 tickets, and with that we got three paper airplanes that you assemble and a packet of really rubbish granadilla sherbet. We walked around the waterfront and went to Sweets from heaven, a great sweetie shop where we got a selection of things like teeth, hearts and egg sweets and a packet of Super C's before heading back to the car to go to the mechanic. Koebus in Graafies had recommended Brett from Savoy Motors to diagnose the engine issue for us before we knew it was fixable, so we headed to him to get the light fixed.
He was really helful, he replaced broken light and the old light on the right hand side. The cover on it was a really weird colour, and so we chose to replace it but keep the old one as spare. The piece of bumper that Dan had taken off the day before to fix a piece too Brett re attached for us, but managed to crack it as it was so old! Oops :D Our passenger side window sometimes pops as though it is about to break as the window winds down, but he told us it would be suoer expensive to fix and it should hopefully not break no matter how terrible it actually sounds. The buttons on both keys for Snolly had all been pushed out as they were also quite old, but as a new key casing was R400 each, I said no and fixed them myself with electrical tape! Brett also noticed that our gas cap kept popping open and he fixed that for free, which is really useful as now no one can skim any diesel off us!
We paid him for the work he did to the car and got in, set up the sat nav for Craddock ready to go and he comes to the car to give us an industrial spanner set! He had told us that the spanner set that comes with these landrovers is pretty bad as it tends to make people twist the knuts and not turn them, which can wear the edges and also break the spanner. It was so very very kind of him to give us that spanner set for free, and even more so because he could quite possibly save us from a very sticky situation further along our trip! Thank you Brett :D
We set off on our way to Craddock, a 2 hour journey on a fairly easy road. Mike had given us directions to Lesley and Gavin's farm from Craddock, but they turned out to need some deciphering as the first instruction to follow the Milnerton road out of town with the steers on our left really meant turn left after about 500m onto the road to Milnerton :D the rest of his instructions were great, we got a little confused about which dirt road to turn onto but we eventually got to Gavin and Lesley's farm, on the right 14kms down the road, not the left 16kms down the road ;) just after 6pm.
We spotted what I assumed to be their new house on the hill from the main dirt road and we trundled our way up there. When we got to the top the front door was open but I called out and walked through the house and no one was about! My phone was acting up when we got there so I couldn't phone Lesley, so we simply waited a few minutes and she came walking up the hill for their store. Their new house is beautiful!!! The views from every single room are magnificent, you can see their entire farm and much much more! The sunset was spectacular, and I can see why Gavin and Ross trucked in sand for Lesley to be able to have her garden up here, as no other house location could compare!
We sat and had a lovely long chat with Lesley before Gavin arrived back from the store. They both decided to go into town for dinner and take us to a pizza place they love called Mila's. Before we left we had a look at their map and decided on a route to do tomorrow as they advised not going into Lesotho. The drive into town on those dirt roads felt so much better in their newer saloon car than our little old Snolly! We enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Milas, I opted for a Pollo pizza, chicken, peppers, mushrooms and sweet chilli sauce with extra bacon. Dan had delicious vegetarian pizza called Al Greco with spinach, feta, and basil. After that delicious meal and the longish day of driving, it felt wonderful to be able to close our eyes and fall asleep with full tummys!
Stopping for petrol along the way we happened to hit a station that had an armoured guard at it as they were re cashing the ATM, so it felt really safe! We pulled into the airport with lots of time to get mum checked in, the only hurdle now would be to hopefully get the two bags onto the plane without any issues about weight being made nor her having to repack them! The first bag (which we figured was the lightest) weighed just under 23kgs, the limit for each piece, and the second bag weighed over 26kgs! When the first bag went on I realised that the second would be well over so I started talking to the guy at the desk about how he was and was he having a good day blah blah blah, in the hopes that he would ignore the weight and be nice and let it slide and he did!! See nice people do work at airports!!
We were sad to say goodbye to mum as Dan and I had both wanted her to carry on the trip with us up to Swaziland. Thankfully we will see her and dad again really soon at Victoria falls in December! The two tasks we had to do in PE were go to Dulces and get my favourite ice cream, fudge choc chip, and then go to the land rover garage to get the light fixed. The waterfront where Dulces was was closer time wise to we opted to go there first. We got a comprehensive book about early South African history for Dan, dating from the 1600's to the mid 1900's. As we walked around the corner to ducked it became apparent that there were major refurbishment projects going on on that entire section of sops some was pretty heart broken when I realised there would be no ice cream.
We cheered me up however by finding an arcade to play in! We swapped R20 for some of their coins and proceeded to play a flying pig game, deal or no deal, those coin dropping machines and a duck punching game amongst others! We won 73 tickets, and with that we got three paper airplanes that you assemble and a packet of really rubbish granadilla sherbet. We walked around the waterfront and went to Sweets from heaven, a great sweetie shop where we got a selection of things like teeth, hearts and egg sweets and a packet of Super C's before heading back to the car to go to the mechanic. Koebus in Graafies had recommended Brett from Savoy Motors to diagnose the engine issue for us before we knew it was fixable, so we headed to him to get the light fixed.
He was really helful, he replaced broken light and the old light on the right hand side. The cover on it was a really weird colour, and so we chose to replace it but keep the old one as spare. The piece of bumper that Dan had taken off the day before to fix a piece too Brett re attached for us, but managed to crack it as it was so old! Oops :D Our passenger side window sometimes pops as though it is about to break as the window winds down, but he told us it would be suoer expensive to fix and it should hopefully not break no matter how terrible it actually sounds. The buttons on both keys for Snolly had all been pushed out as they were also quite old, but as a new key casing was R400 each, I said no and fixed them myself with electrical tape! Brett also noticed that our gas cap kept popping open and he fixed that for free, which is really useful as now no one can skim any diesel off us!
We paid him for the work he did to the car and got in, set up the sat nav for Craddock ready to go and he comes to the car to give us an industrial spanner set! He had told us that the spanner set that comes with these landrovers is pretty bad as it tends to make people twist the knuts and not turn them, which can wear the edges and also break the spanner. It was so very very kind of him to give us that spanner set for free, and even more so because he could quite possibly save us from a very sticky situation further along our trip! Thank you Brett :D
We set off on our way to Craddock, a 2 hour journey on a fairly easy road. Mike had given us directions to Lesley and Gavin's farm from Craddock, but they turned out to need some deciphering as the first instruction to follow the Milnerton road out of town with the steers on our left really meant turn left after about 500m onto the road to Milnerton :D the rest of his instructions were great, we got a little confused about which dirt road to turn onto but we eventually got to Gavin and Lesley's farm, on the right 14kms down the road, not the left 16kms down the road ;) just after 6pm.
We spotted what I assumed to be their new house on the hill from the main dirt road and we trundled our way up there. When we got to the top the front door was open but I called out and walked through the house and no one was about! My phone was acting up when we got there so I couldn't phone Lesley, so we simply waited a few minutes and she came walking up the hill for their store. Their new house is beautiful!!! The views from every single room are magnificent, you can see their entire farm and much much more! The sunset was spectacular, and I can see why Gavin and Ross trucked in sand for Lesley to be able to have her garden up here, as no other house location could compare!
We sat and had a lovely long chat with Lesley before Gavin arrived back from the store. They both decided to go into town for dinner and take us to a pizza place they love called Mila's. Before we left we had a look at their map and decided on a route to do tomorrow as they advised not going into Lesotho. The drive into town on those dirt roads felt so much better in their newer saloon car than our little old Snolly! We enjoyed a fabulous dinner at Milas, I opted for a Pollo pizza, chicken, peppers, mushrooms and sweet chilli sauce with extra bacon. Dan had delicious vegetarian pizza called Al Greco with spinach, feta, and basil. After that delicious meal and the longish day of driving, it felt wonderful to be able to close our eyes and fall asleep with full tummys!
Epic Adventure -- Day 49 -- 17/10/2012 -- Graaff-Reinet
For our delicious breakfast on the farm Evette gave us croissants, with scrambled eggs, jam and cheese. Whichever you wold prefer, not all at the same time obviously! After breakfast Dan, Mum and I drove into town to buy oil for the car, as Mike had very kindly agreed to change it for us. The Castrol oil set us back R480, but as we had put so many kilometres on the car it was necessary!
While we were in town, Jenny and Lesley wanted to walk around some of the small shops that Jenny and I found during our first visit to Graaff-Reinet. I wandered into town while they shopped around and returned a few minutes later after acquiring something to drink. Jenny didn't see me coming up to her in the first shop and let out quite a scream when I hugged her from behind, hahaha! After leaving this shop we walked across the street to a small leather shop that had been closed during our last visit. Lesley bought Jenny a pretty brown and white purse, made of ostrich and cow leather, and we fantasised for the millionth time about owning our own house and what furniture we would fill it with.
All of us then walked back up into town to stop by the bottle shop attached to Spar (Spar Tops!). I had talked to Mike the night before and found out what alcohol his parents really like. Gary and Evette had given us 7 nights accommodation, wonderful hospitality, amazing food and their brilliant company so the least we could do was to buy them some nice booze! We bought a bottle of Bells Select Reserve for Gary and the nicest bottle of red wine we could find for Evette. Once we got back to the farm, Jenny went to the cottage to change as it was quite hot and we left for the train, and left the land rover with Mike. The drive to the train took quite a while, mostly because there had been so much rain the previous two days that the road was very muddy and difficult to drive at any speed as the car would slide. We were actually very lucky to be able to go on the train at all, as we had originally been down to go at 11am but Charles the owner had advised waiting till later as the road was very bad. We got to the train at about 1pm, and what a sweet sweet little train she was! She was actually an old inspection car that they would use to look at the tracks, and her name was Tubby!! My nickname my parents gave me when I was little, much to Dan's amusement, was tublet or tubby as I wore 2 nappies to bed and used to waddle down the corridor. So I was riding n my namesake!!
Charles was very knowledgable about the trains that used the run on the tracks, as he had lived on the farm which they ran through his whole life. His family had owned the farm land since 1906. He took us 11kms down the track on the tour, but he had actually taken her 30kms down the track to the next town! Tubby travelled at around 25kms per hour, so the whole journey took about 2 hours, including the two stops we had. Along the way he pointed out a couple of rocks that looks like a giants bum and a Mexican hat. Once we got to the point where he would turn Tubby around we all got out to have a stretch and walk back down the track to a signpost for photographs. The way she was turned around was brilliant, he got out, cranked down a small circle onto the tracks, cranked her up and then spun he round! Brilliant :D
Our next stop was a little cabin where we sat outside on the picnic bench for drinks and snacks that Evette had brought along for us, yay! The view was so beautiful from up there, and the cabin was built for people to come and have a one night stay over. It was kitted out with every possible amenity you would need, unfortunately it was also kitted out with two rather large holes in the roof. Rain was imminent as a very dark cloud was moving swiftly toward us, I offered a stopgap solution to the holes of putting the washing basins beneath them. Charles had been meaning to fix the holes for a while, so hopefully my helpfulness will save the building from getting destroyed by rain before he finds time to fix it.
The rain started pouring just as we were packing up the chips and drinks back into the bag, so we all scrambled into Tubby and shut the doors for the trip back. It was a beautiful ride back, completely different to the trip up the mountain due to the rain, but we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We thanked Charles profusely when we got back to Tubby's little house and jumped into the car out of the rain. The drive to Neu Bethesda was also very long, the road was dirt and the rain had made it a bit precarious to drive quickly. When we arrived in the quaint little town we all decided to head straight for the brewery to try the beer and have lunch, as we were all starving! It was around 4:30 when we got there, so you can understand why!
It had stopped raining when we arrived, and we walked into brewery section and sat down at one of the tables once it was wiped down. The other side of the room had a roof leak because of the immense amount of rain they had had, 40ml over the last two days. Everyone ordered his honey beer on Gary and Evette's recommendation and I was about to order a coke till he told me he makes his own ginger beer some opted for some of that. Despite being told that it wasn't alcoholic by all at the table, I felt a bit funny after the second one so I think it probably was. Dan agrees as it was most likely to have been fermented to get its carbonation, like Dan did for his ginger beer. We ordered their platter for five and my word was it divine!!
What arrived was a large board filled with fresh olive bread, kudu salami, three hard cheeses, one plain and the others two made with nettles and chives, three soft cheeses covered in pepper, honey and sweet chilli, pickles and beetroot and olives and feta. Phew!! It was just so divine that we asked for more bread to be able to polish off the other yummy bits on the board. My favourite was the soft cheese covered with honey, and second was the sweet chilli soft cheese and kudu salami. It all worked so well together and went perfectly with the beers, both ginger and honey. After our meal Dan and I went to throw sticks for the three dogs, one with three legs and two sheep dogs, one who kept taking the others stick. As we were leading Evette managed to fool us into thinking that one of the plants in the garden was dagga, gullible me thinks!
It started raining as we left, and it was probably a good thing we left then as the river we drove over was flowing even harder over the road and would soon stop cars from coming or going. We stopped quickly at the owl house for Dan to have a look through the fence as it was closed. The owl house is a sort of fascinating Musieum of hundreds of owl sculptures and other sculptures that a lady that lived there used to make, for no reason at all. On the way home we noticed how full all the rivers that lead to Dalham farm were, and Gary told us that it would take about 11 hours for all that rainwater to make it to the river on the farm.
We went to the cottage to pack our things once we got back, and had a peek at the river on the way past which was still at the same level as when we left. Back at the house I sat down for puppy cuddles and Dan opened up a bottle of champagne for us all to enjoy. Gary started a fire for the braai and we sat outside enjoying the lovely evening. Evette brought out some droervors and biltong that had been made out of the springbok Dan shot. It tasted delicious! We also polished off the remainder of the hanepoort as the dinner was being cooked on the braai. Dinner was divine, pork chops, chicken wings, cheese sausages and chicken sosaties, served with a delicious potato bake and salad. Dessert was one each of the last six mocca cubes, but I got to have two as Dan didn't want his!!! After dessert we retired back to the cottage for one last nights sleep on the farm.
While we were in town, Jenny and Lesley wanted to walk around some of the small shops that Jenny and I found during our first visit to Graaff-Reinet. I wandered into town while they shopped around and returned a few minutes later after acquiring something to drink. Jenny didn't see me coming up to her in the first shop and let out quite a scream when I hugged her from behind, hahaha! After leaving this shop we walked across the street to a small leather shop that had been closed during our last visit. Lesley bought Jenny a pretty brown and white purse, made of ostrich and cow leather, and we fantasised for the millionth time about owning our own house and what furniture we would fill it with.
All of us then walked back up into town to stop by the bottle shop attached to Spar (Spar Tops!). I had talked to Mike the night before and found out what alcohol his parents really like. Gary and Evette had given us 7 nights accommodation, wonderful hospitality, amazing food and their brilliant company so the least we could do was to buy them some nice booze! We bought a bottle of Bells Select Reserve for Gary and the nicest bottle of red wine we could find for Evette. Once we got back to the farm, Jenny went to the cottage to change as it was quite hot and we left for the train, and left the land rover with Mike. The drive to the train took quite a while, mostly because there had been so much rain the previous two days that the road was very muddy and difficult to drive at any speed as the car would slide. We were actually very lucky to be able to go on the train at all, as we had originally been down to go at 11am but Charles the owner had advised waiting till later as the road was very bad. We got to the train at about 1pm, and what a sweet sweet little train she was! She was actually an old inspection car that they would use to look at the tracks, and her name was Tubby!! My nickname my parents gave me when I was little, much to Dan's amusement, was tublet or tubby as I wore 2 nappies to bed and used to waddle down the corridor. So I was riding n my namesake!!
Charles was very knowledgable about the trains that used the run on the tracks, as he had lived on the farm which they ran through his whole life. His family had owned the farm land since 1906. He took us 11kms down the track on the tour, but he had actually taken her 30kms down the track to the next town! Tubby travelled at around 25kms per hour, so the whole journey took about 2 hours, including the two stops we had. Along the way he pointed out a couple of rocks that looks like a giants bum and a Mexican hat. Once we got to the point where he would turn Tubby around we all got out to have a stretch and walk back down the track to a signpost for photographs. The way she was turned around was brilliant, he got out, cranked down a small circle onto the tracks, cranked her up and then spun he round! Brilliant :D
Our next stop was a little cabin where we sat outside on the picnic bench for drinks and snacks that Evette had brought along for us, yay! The view was so beautiful from up there, and the cabin was built for people to come and have a one night stay over. It was kitted out with every possible amenity you would need, unfortunately it was also kitted out with two rather large holes in the roof. Rain was imminent as a very dark cloud was moving swiftly toward us, I offered a stopgap solution to the holes of putting the washing basins beneath them. Charles had been meaning to fix the holes for a while, so hopefully my helpfulness will save the building from getting destroyed by rain before he finds time to fix it.
The rain started pouring just as we were packing up the chips and drinks back into the bag, so we all scrambled into Tubby and shut the doors for the trip back. It was a beautiful ride back, completely different to the trip up the mountain due to the rain, but we all thoroughly enjoyed it. We thanked Charles profusely when we got back to Tubby's little house and jumped into the car out of the rain. The drive to Neu Bethesda was also very long, the road was dirt and the rain had made it a bit precarious to drive quickly. When we arrived in the quaint little town we all decided to head straight for the brewery to try the beer and have lunch, as we were all starving! It was around 4:30 when we got there, so you can understand why!
It had stopped raining when we arrived, and we walked into brewery section and sat down at one of the tables once it was wiped down. The other side of the room had a roof leak because of the immense amount of rain they had had, 40ml over the last two days. Everyone ordered his honey beer on Gary and Evette's recommendation and I was about to order a coke till he told me he makes his own ginger beer some opted for some of that. Despite being told that it wasn't alcoholic by all at the table, I felt a bit funny after the second one so I think it probably was. Dan agrees as it was most likely to have been fermented to get its carbonation, like Dan did for his ginger beer. We ordered their platter for five and my word was it divine!!
What arrived was a large board filled with fresh olive bread, kudu salami, three hard cheeses, one plain and the others two made with nettles and chives, three soft cheeses covered in pepper, honey and sweet chilli, pickles and beetroot and olives and feta. Phew!! It was just so divine that we asked for more bread to be able to polish off the other yummy bits on the board. My favourite was the soft cheese covered with honey, and second was the sweet chilli soft cheese and kudu salami. It all worked so well together and went perfectly with the beers, both ginger and honey. After our meal Dan and I went to throw sticks for the three dogs, one with three legs and two sheep dogs, one who kept taking the others stick. As we were leading Evette managed to fool us into thinking that one of the plants in the garden was dagga, gullible me thinks!
It started raining as we left, and it was probably a good thing we left then as the river we drove over was flowing even harder over the road and would soon stop cars from coming or going. We stopped quickly at the owl house for Dan to have a look through the fence as it was closed. The owl house is a sort of fascinating Musieum of hundreds of owl sculptures and other sculptures that a lady that lived there used to make, for no reason at all. On the way home we noticed how full all the rivers that lead to Dalham farm were, and Gary told us that it would take about 11 hours for all that rainwater to make it to the river on the farm.
We went to the cottage to pack our things once we got back, and had a peek at the river on the way past which was still at the same level as when we left. Back at the house I sat down for puppy cuddles and Dan opened up a bottle of champagne for us all to enjoy. Gary started a fire for the braai and we sat outside enjoying the lovely evening. Evette brought out some droervors and biltong that had been made out of the springbok Dan shot. It tasted delicious! We also polished off the remainder of the hanepoort as the dinner was being cooked on the braai. Dinner was divine, pork chops, chicken wings, cheese sausages and chicken sosaties, served with a delicious potato bake and salad. Dessert was one each of the last six mocca cubes, but I got to have two as Dan didn't want his!!! After dessert we retired back to the cottage for one last nights sleep on the farm.
Saturday, 20 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 48 -- 16/10/2012 -- Graaff-Reinet
First thing on the cards this morning was to head to the house for another amazing breakfast. As soon as we got there I realised that someone had made mocca cubes, my absolute favourite thing in the world!! Turns out that Mike and Evette had made them together earlier that morning, so into the fridge they went to set. We all sat down to enjoy a yummy breakfast of fresh scones jam and cheese, and I need to ask Evette for the recipe for those scones, I have never tasted something so light and delicious in my
life! We started without Gary as he was working on something in the study, so I plowed through the rest of the cheese for my scone without realising he hadn't had any yet! I felt so bad that he had to have the cheese slices because I had devoured all the grated cheese!
Dan and I sat down in the lounge to watch some tv whilst Mum used Facebook, Gary and Mike were on the farm and Evette had a meeting in town. The movie we ended up watching was actually really good, a woman gets convicted of a murder she didn't commit, so her husband plans how to break her out and escape with their son to Venezuela! Dan then used Facebook and tried to tag as many people as possible in his dads 474 photographs from the week they were here for the wedding. Evette came home and Mike and I helped her to make nachos for lunch. The nachos were amazing, she had used Doritos tortilla chips which have such a delicious flavour! We also had samosas and sweet chilli with lunch.
Gary called the mechanic again to find out if he was coming today, and it turned out that he woud not be able to make it. So Gary very kindly rang around to all the mechanics in town that he knew, and one called Koebus agreed to see us. We drive straight there and met Koebus who looked a lot like Santa Claus! He took the car on a short test drive with us, and diagnosed a misfire in the engine, and said the transmitting fluid was ok as the gearbox was not slipping. He told us straight away that we would most likely need to go to Port Elizabeth to have the issue diagnosed as the engine was electronic, so he could not figure out what was wrong as he didnt have the correct equipment. He took the cover and top off the engine in any case, I case it was fairly obvious that the issue was mechanical and not electronic, in which case he could fix it for us there.
He unclipped and re clipped all of the fuel injectors and could not see any issues, so he and a worker of his cleaned the seal for the engine and reattached it. Dan and I, grasping at straws obviously, had looked on google and land rovers of a similar age and mileage had all had the same issue, so we asked Koebus if he could have a look at it. Before he could even get there however he had turned the engine on, and the problem was fixed!!!! We think one of the fuel injectors had probably become dislodged when the wheel popped and the car was juddering so much. He refused for us to pay him so we asked his worker what he liked to drink and we walked to Spar and bought him a case of beer and a box of chocolates for the other mechanic. Thank goodness it's fixed!!!
We walked to clicks to buy me some hairspray and then went home for a braai. As it hadn't been raining we could use the fire, so Gary started up the fire and we all sat outside and enjoyed some droervors and hanepoort. On the menu for dinner was a beef stir fry, so once the coals were at the perfect temperature, they pulled out a stir fry pan on legs :D South Africans braai all the time you see, so they have all the apparatus necessary to cook basically anything on the braai. The stir fry was amazing, and was served with noodles and rice. Daddy phoned us on the landline too, I had forgotten to give him the new cell phone number so he couldn't try us on that. After dinner we had tea and coffee and I was able to eat some of those delicious mocca cubes, I'm so lucky!!! :D
life! We started without Gary as he was working on something in the study, so I plowed through the rest of the cheese for my scone without realising he hadn't had any yet! I felt so bad that he had to have the cheese slices because I had devoured all the grated cheese!
Dan and I sat down in the lounge to watch some tv whilst Mum used Facebook, Gary and Mike were on the farm and Evette had a meeting in town. The movie we ended up watching was actually really good, a woman gets convicted of a murder she didn't commit, so her husband plans how to break her out and escape with their son to Venezuela! Dan then used Facebook and tried to tag as many people as possible in his dads 474 photographs from the week they were here for the wedding. Evette came home and Mike and I helped her to make nachos for lunch. The nachos were amazing, she had used Doritos tortilla chips which have such a delicious flavour! We also had samosas and sweet chilli with lunch.
Gary called the mechanic again to find out if he was coming today, and it turned out that he woud not be able to make it. So Gary very kindly rang around to all the mechanics in town that he knew, and one called Koebus agreed to see us. We drive straight there and met Koebus who looked a lot like Santa Claus! He took the car on a short test drive with us, and diagnosed a misfire in the engine, and said the transmitting fluid was ok as the gearbox was not slipping. He told us straight away that we would most likely need to go to Port Elizabeth to have the issue diagnosed as the engine was electronic, so he could not figure out what was wrong as he didnt have the correct equipment. He took the cover and top off the engine in any case, I case it was fairly obvious that the issue was mechanical and not electronic, in which case he could fix it for us there.
He unclipped and re clipped all of the fuel injectors and could not see any issues, so he and a worker of his cleaned the seal for the engine and reattached it. Dan and I, grasping at straws obviously, had looked on google and land rovers of a similar age and mileage had all had the same issue, so we asked Koebus if he could have a look at it. Before he could even get there however he had turned the engine on, and the problem was fixed!!!! We think one of the fuel injectors had probably become dislodged when the wheel popped and the car was juddering so much. He refused for us to pay him so we asked his worker what he liked to drink and we walked to Spar and bought him a case of beer and a box of chocolates for the other mechanic. Thank goodness it's fixed!!!
We walked to clicks to buy me some hairspray and then went home for a braai. As it hadn't been raining we could use the fire, so Gary started up the fire and we all sat outside and enjoyed some droervors and hanepoort. On the menu for dinner was a beef stir fry, so once the coals were at the perfect temperature, they pulled out a stir fry pan on legs :D South Africans braai all the time you see, so they have all the apparatus necessary to cook basically anything on the braai. The stir fry was amazing, and was served with noodles and rice. Daddy phoned us on the landline too, I had forgotten to give him the new cell phone number so he couldn't try us on that. After dinner we had tea and coffee and I was able to eat some of those delicious mocca cubes, I'm so lucky!!! :D
Epic Adventure -- Day 47 -- 15/10/2012 -- Graaff-Reinet
Even though I volunteered to help Gary in the morning on the farm I still got a longer lie in than most days in the past month. My only instructions were to meet Gary and Mike at the house before 7:30 to take some pigs to slaughter. We got the truck in position that we would load the pigs onto and then we herded the correct pigs out of the pens in order to load them into the ruck. We took 25 pigs out and the had a little bit of difficulty rounding them back up. Eventually all 7 of us and the 4 dogs managed to get the pigs onto the truck and we headed into town. We dropped the pigs off at the abattoir and then headed over to a separate building where Gary buys the food for his pigs (10,000 kg per week!) Gary also went inside to chat to the owner about fertiliser prices. When finished we picked up several worker that would be one the farm from Monday until Friday and headed back for some breakfast.
Mum and I had a lovely long lie in in comparison to Dan, I only got out of bed at 8:30! We drove to the house in time for a great breakfast with everyone as Dan and Gary came back from dropping off the pigs. Evette had made fried eggs on top of a delicious tomato mix, and it tastes truly amazing on top of farm bread! I also had a slice of toast with jam and cheese, I can never resist it :D Dan, Mum and I headed into Graafies for the morning, to have a look at a few of the cute shops. The car was behaving itself as we drove into town, but when we got in she had started juddering again. Dan phoned Doug about the situation and once he explained the circumstances Doug offered that it could possibly be a transmission fluid leak that was causing our issues. Dan stayed with the car whilst mum and I walked down to the antique store near the church. There are so many lovely things in that shop that I wish I could buy.
Mum went into the bookstore to have a look around whilst we poked around the engine some more, and a really kind man from the bank offered to help us and directed us to his mechanic if we needed. Whilst we were outside mum had bought Dan a book of random facts about South Africa, how lovey! We stopped in ABSA to pay Mandy for our extra night at Arum Lilly, an exercise in extreme patience. Before we headed back to the farm we stopped in spar to buy some more cider and beer for the farm, we don't want to drink all theirs after all!
The mechanic that Gary had called to try to fix the landrover had not yet arrived, and so we sat down for a delicious lunch of a chicken pasta bake and veggies. Wow Evette makes amazing food!! After the gorgeous lunch and a fill of puppy cuteness we went back to the cottage for an afternoon nap and to try to catch up on blog posts. Whilst we were there it started to rain, which is a very soothing noise on a roof, I had a wonderful nap! It was still raining when we went back to the house for dinner and puppy cuddles. Mike started the weber on the stoep (porch) as obviously we couldn't have a fire in the rain. He cooked chops and boerwors on the weber which we enjoyed with a delicious salad and hanepoort. Whilst we were inside we heard the rain getting harder and harder, so we we t outside to rescue the cushions, only to find that the gutter was spilling over and pouring rainwater straight onto the camping chair that Gary had been sitting it, it was hilarious! After our amazingly tasty dinner we drove back to the cottage for a lovely nights sleep.
Mum and I had a lovely long lie in in comparison to Dan, I only got out of bed at 8:30! We drove to the house in time for a great breakfast with everyone as Dan and Gary came back from dropping off the pigs. Evette had made fried eggs on top of a delicious tomato mix, and it tastes truly amazing on top of farm bread! I also had a slice of toast with jam and cheese, I can never resist it :D Dan, Mum and I headed into Graafies for the morning, to have a look at a few of the cute shops. The car was behaving itself as we drove into town, but when we got in she had started juddering again. Dan phoned Doug about the situation and once he explained the circumstances Doug offered that it could possibly be a transmission fluid leak that was causing our issues. Dan stayed with the car whilst mum and I walked down to the antique store near the church. There are so many lovely things in that shop that I wish I could buy.
Mum went into the bookstore to have a look around whilst we poked around the engine some more, and a really kind man from the bank offered to help us and directed us to his mechanic if we needed. Whilst we were outside mum had bought Dan a book of random facts about South Africa, how lovey! We stopped in ABSA to pay Mandy for our extra night at Arum Lilly, an exercise in extreme patience. Before we headed back to the farm we stopped in spar to buy some more cider and beer for the farm, we don't want to drink all theirs after all!
The mechanic that Gary had called to try to fix the landrover had not yet arrived, and so we sat down for a delicious lunch of a chicken pasta bake and veggies. Wow Evette makes amazing food!! After the gorgeous lunch and a fill of puppy cuteness we went back to the cottage for an afternoon nap and to try to catch up on blog posts. Whilst we were there it started to rain, which is a very soothing noise on a roof, I had a wonderful nap! It was still raining when we went back to the house for dinner and puppy cuddles. Mike started the weber on the stoep (porch) as obviously we couldn't have a fire in the rain. He cooked chops and boerwors on the weber which we enjoyed with a delicious salad and hanepoort. Whilst we were inside we heard the rain getting harder and harder, so we we t outside to rescue the cushions, only to find that the gutter was spilling over and pouring rainwater straight onto the camping chair that Gary had been sitting it, it was hilarious! After our amazingly tasty dinner we drove back to the cottage for a lovely nights sleep.
Epic Adventure -- Day 46 -- 14/10/2012 -- Arum Lilly to Graaff-Reinet
Putting off the packing until the morning was a brilliant idea last night but this morning it didn't seem like the smartest of decisions. To speed up the process we simply shoved all of our belongings in the bag with the intention of properly packing them once we reached Chantel's family farm. Our aim was to leave at 7:30 and we nearly hit our target, departing from Arum Lilly at 7:40 for a short 90 minute drive to Matjiesfontein.
Matjiesfontein is a small Karoo town founded in the middle of the 19th century that became larger and more prominent when the railroad line that runs through town started using the town as a rest stop on its journey from Joberg to Cape Town. The town remains largely unchanged from its appearance in 1900, a sort of living ghost town. We spent a short time wandering around the museum located in the old train station (which happened to have the currently running blue train stopped for an hour). Jenny even managed to ask one of the workers on the train if she could come aboard and take some photos, which she was permitted to do. She learned that the oldest car on the active train was the dining car built in 1920 and it was restored just 4 years ago.
By this time in the morning we were getting hungry, so we stopped at one of the very few places to eat and sat down for a breakfast in the sun. Jenny had a made to order sandwich and Lesley and I ordered set sandwiches, all of which were spectacular. Jenny and Lesley decided to have a poke around while I sat in the sun and waited for our food to arrive. After our breakfast we decided to have a wander down the towns very short main street. I think we managed to stop in nearly ever building along the way. Our firsts stop was at the town post office which had been converted into a tourist shop. We then found our way next door to the Lord Nelson Hotel, a hotel in which little has changed in the past 100 years; possibly not modern 5 star accommodation but stunning in its own right.
Our final destination in Matjiesfontein was the transport museum. Costing a mere R5 a person admission it was well worth it. The first room was filled to the brim with vintage cars ranging from 1931-1980 including the car the royal family rode in during their 1947 tour of South Africa. Jenny being the disobedient child she is decided to ignore the signs asking you to refrain from opening doors and climbed in most of the cars! Next door to the building housing the cars was a large building containing three retired rail cars. Unlike many museums, where you are not allowed to touch anything, these rail cars were open for us to explore and there were no indications that we were not allowed to.
Mum had actually gone to school when she was a little girl in a train. A similar to the first one we looked in, with one-bed cabins to six-bed cabins. It looked and felt like something out of Harry potter! The middle train was locked up, so naturally Dan and I went to investigate. All of the little rooms were closed off, and when we asked why we were told that a local astronomy group keeps all their equipment in them. After we had exhausted all of the things we could do in that quaint little town, we set off again for Graaff-Reinet.
Whilst we were driving we noticed that Snolly felt really sluggish, and couldn't do any speed over about 100kms per hour. As we have had all the recent issues with her we were really concerned about what could possibly be wrong with her. The engine sounded much more like a tractor than a car! We kept driving, only stopping for diesel at the Bp in Beufort West. We were most certainly lulled into a false sense of security the last time we were at this petrol station, as there were about 50 heavily armed guards there at the same time. This time, Dan got out to check the oil and coolant, and two drugged up guys came to start washing the windscreen despite our protests against it. I yelled at Dan to get back in the car as mum and I were pretty sure the guys were on a drug here called tic, a very cheap and aggravating drug.
Thankfully we managed to escape the station with fuel for the car and our lives, which was more than we could have asked for :) The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at the farm at about half five. Mum was so happy to be back on the farm, it is really such a special place and once you have been there it stays with you forever! Gary and Evette had been kind enough to allow us to come back to the farm with mum, and now they had eight new jack russell puppies too!! Tess finally had her babies just before the wedding, and they really are just so cute! My favourite is the runt of the group, or pile or cuddle as we like to call them, of puppies, as he was so sweet and little and had the best markings out of everyone!
Evette had put us in the two bedroom cottage closest to the house, and we headed there to unpack our bags, shower and write blog posts. Whilst I was having my shower mum had the news turned on and Dan caught on to the fact that Felix Baumgardner was about to attempt the worlds highest flight in a helium balloon, the highest skydive and the fastest skydive, live on the news. We had to leave before the flight to get to the house for dinner, but we told them what was happening so we turned on the news and all watched him break all those world records! Quite something to be able to watch live on the news when we haven't seen a tv nor watched the news since we left Scotland. We had brought over a bottle of hanepoort for us all to enjoy for the evening, and everyone seemed to love it! It's quite strong at 16.5% so we just had little glasses of it. We settled down outside to enjoy one another's company whilst braaing for dinner, and sat down to yet another fantastic dinner with the Holmes's oop die plaas!!
Matjiesfontein is a small Karoo town founded in the middle of the 19th century that became larger and more prominent when the railroad line that runs through town started using the town as a rest stop on its journey from Joberg to Cape Town. The town remains largely unchanged from its appearance in 1900, a sort of living ghost town. We spent a short time wandering around the museum located in the old train station (which happened to have the currently running blue train stopped for an hour). Jenny even managed to ask one of the workers on the train if she could come aboard and take some photos, which she was permitted to do. She learned that the oldest car on the active train was the dining car built in 1920 and it was restored just 4 years ago.
By this time in the morning we were getting hungry, so we stopped at one of the very few places to eat and sat down for a breakfast in the sun. Jenny had a made to order sandwich and Lesley and I ordered set sandwiches, all of which were spectacular. Jenny and Lesley decided to have a poke around while I sat in the sun and waited for our food to arrive. After our breakfast we decided to have a wander down the towns very short main street. I think we managed to stop in nearly ever building along the way. Our firsts stop was at the town post office which had been converted into a tourist shop. We then found our way next door to the Lord Nelson Hotel, a hotel in which little has changed in the past 100 years; possibly not modern 5 star accommodation but stunning in its own right.
Our final destination in Matjiesfontein was the transport museum. Costing a mere R5 a person admission it was well worth it. The first room was filled to the brim with vintage cars ranging from 1931-1980 including the car the royal family rode in during their 1947 tour of South Africa. Jenny being the disobedient child she is decided to ignore the signs asking you to refrain from opening doors and climbed in most of the cars! Next door to the building housing the cars was a large building containing three retired rail cars. Unlike many museums, where you are not allowed to touch anything, these rail cars were open for us to explore and there were no indications that we were not allowed to.
Mum had actually gone to school when she was a little girl in a train. A similar to the first one we looked in, with one-bed cabins to six-bed cabins. It looked and felt like something out of Harry potter! The middle train was locked up, so naturally Dan and I went to investigate. All of the little rooms were closed off, and when we asked why we were told that a local astronomy group keeps all their equipment in them. After we had exhausted all of the things we could do in that quaint little town, we set off again for Graaff-Reinet.
Whilst we were driving we noticed that Snolly felt really sluggish, and couldn't do any speed over about 100kms per hour. As we have had all the recent issues with her we were really concerned about what could possibly be wrong with her. The engine sounded much more like a tractor than a car! We kept driving, only stopping for diesel at the Bp in Beufort West. We were most certainly lulled into a false sense of security the last time we were at this petrol station, as there were about 50 heavily armed guards there at the same time. This time, Dan got out to check the oil and coolant, and two drugged up guys came to start washing the windscreen despite our protests against it. I yelled at Dan to get back in the car as mum and I were pretty sure the guys were on a drug here called tic, a very cheap and aggravating drug.
Thankfully we managed to escape the station with fuel for the car and our lives, which was more than we could have asked for :) The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at the farm at about half five. Mum was so happy to be back on the farm, it is really such a special place and once you have been there it stays with you forever! Gary and Evette had been kind enough to allow us to come back to the farm with mum, and now they had eight new jack russell puppies too!! Tess finally had her babies just before the wedding, and they really are just so cute! My favourite is the runt of the group, or pile or cuddle as we like to call them, of puppies, as he was so sweet and little and had the best markings out of everyone!
Evette had put us in the two bedroom cottage closest to the house, and we headed there to unpack our bags, shower and write blog posts. Whilst I was having my shower mum had the news turned on and Dan caught on to the fact that Felix Baumgardner was about to attempt the worlds highest flight in a helium balloon, the highest skydive and the fastest skydive, live on the news. We had to leave before the flight to get to the house for dinner, but we told them what was happening so we turned on the news and all watched him break all those world records! Quite something to be able to watch live on the news when we haven't seen a tv nor watched the news since we left Scotland. We had brought over a bottle of hanepoort for us all to enjoy for the evening, and everyone seemed to love it! It's quite strong at 16.5% so we just had little glasses of it. We settled down outside to enjoy one another's company whilst braaing for dinner, and sat down to yet another fantastic dinner with the Holmes's oop die plaas!!
Friday, 19 October 2012
Epic Adventure -- Day 45 -- 13/10/2012 -- Arum Lilly
We all woke this morning in our respective accommodations and headed to my parents cottage for a group breakfast. Steve, Sharon, Emma, Paul and Duncan were aiming to leave just after breakfast and drive to Cape Town for a day of shopping and last minute sight-seeing. Duncan was once again in charge of the coffee making while my parents made the food for us all. It was brilliant to be able to have one last gathering to discuss the past week and future plans for everyone. I'm not sure when next we will be able to gather that many members of our families together at the same time (if ever) so we all started to realise what a special week it had been.
Once we had all enjoyed our fill of bacon and eggs, the cottage was cleaned up and the cars were packed with bags for everyone's departure. the last words we heard from Sharon's disembodied voice as they drove down the pear trees was "thank you for marrying our son!" which we had a good giggle at :D Mandy had come over earlier in the day to tell us about a wine festival that was happening in the vineyards nearby, which Mum, Chris, Dan and I set off to enjoy. Mum very kindly agreed to be our designated driver for the day and Chris took his own car with as he would set off for the airport from the road at around 2pm.
We left at around 11:30 and drove to the first vineyard called Bersig. The ticket was R60 for the festival, you got a free glass and the pass was valid from the Friday to the Sunday. I do wish we had been able to stay an extra day do we could fit in the rest of the vineyards, it was an amazing day! There was a port at Bersig that we both particularly enjoyed, so needless to say we bought one for about R60. Our next stop was a vineyard called Botha, where there was very little available parking as there was a rugby match next door. I have always wondered why wine grape varieties never seem to include the grapes that we enjoy from a supermarket or that make grape juice. Well I have finally found two wines made from those grapes! The name of the grapes that make a delicious Ceres juice is hanepoort, and out of it they make an amazing dessert type wine called jeripko! There is a red version of the dessert wine, as hanepoort grapes are the white grapes.
After buying one of each the red and white jeripkos for us and one red for mum we set off for the next stop on the map, Bassberg. When we got there we found it to be much more of a festival than the previous places, there was a tent with music, some stalls selling food and everyone outside having a great time! The guard at the gate tried to make Mum buy a festival ticket just because she was going in to the compound, but we argued with him as she was not drinking the wine. He gave in and we did not need to buy one, yay! Mum and I bought some of the delicious cheese that Waverley Hills uses on their pasta in the tasting menu, and Dan and I opted for steak sandwiches for lunch, mine with both monkey gland and mushroom sauce as I couldn't decide!
Chris decided to make this his last stop on the tour as it was heading towards 2pm and he needed to get to Cape Town for his flight later. Then there were three!! The next stop on our tour did not actually have a wine tasting section, but it did have some lovely crafts and food that we ogled over, before driving to the next stop, Jason's Hill. It was amazingly stunning in their part of the valley, the mountains were just exquisite! They didn't have any of the sweeter wines we seem to have become partial to today, so we didn't stay there for very long. Slanghoek, our next stop was one of my favourite stops because mum and I bought some of their soft serve ice cream! Dan and I tried the dessert wines inside and shared some with mum who was really enjoying them. We bought two there, a dark red jeripko and a lighter red muscadel jeripko.
The next vineyard on the tour was Opstal, and we decided to make it our last stop. I was thoroughly excited when I read the pamphlet that said there was sushi at Opstal, but as we walked in it said that it ended at 3pm :( Their wines were Ok, but none were special enough to buy. The view from the grass outside was spectacular! There were mountains towering above us with vines as far as the eye could see, I couldn't imagine anywhere more beautiful to work. As we walked around the stores outside we spotted the sushi one, which hadn't ended yet as it was really popular! Dan and I each had a 15 piece sushi plate and mum had a 6 piece one. Jenny even kept running back inside to get more wine to go with the sushi.
Once we finished our food we decided it was time to head home. Because we had food so recently we procrastinated packing the car by sitting around the fire and enjoying some more drinks. Once we had a few we were in no mood to pack our bags and decided to leave the packing for the morning.
Once we had all enjoyed our fill of bacon and eggs, the cottage was cleaned up and the cars were packed with bags for everyone's departure. the last words we heard from Sharon's disembodied voice as they drove down the pear trees was "thank you for marrying our son!" which we had a good giggle at :D Mandy had come over earlier in the day to tell us about a wine festival that was happening in the vineyards nearby, which Mum, Chris, Dan and I set off to enjoy. Mum very kindly agreed to be our designated driver for the day and Chris took his own car with as he would set off for the airport from the road at around 2pm.
We left at around 11:30 and drove to the first vineyard called Bersig. The ticket was R60 for the festival, you got a free glass and the pass was valid from the Friday to the Sunday. I do wish we had been able to stay an extra day do we could fit in the rest of the vineyards, it was an amazing day! There was a port at Bersig that we both particularly enjoyed, so needless to say we bought one for about R60. Our next stop was a vineyard called Botha, where there was very little available parking as there was a rugby match next door. I have always wondered why wine grape varieties never seem to include the grapes that we enjoy from a supermarket or that make grape juice. Well I have finally found two wines made from those grapes! The name of the grapes that make a delicious Ceres juice is hanepoort, and out of it they make an amazing dessert type wine called jeripko! There is a red version of the dessert wine, as hanepoort grapes are the white grapes.
After buying one of each the red and white jeripkos for us and one red for mum we set off for the next stop on the map, Bassberg. When we got there we found it to be much more of a festival than the previous places, there was a tent with music, some stalls selling food and everyone outside having a great time! The guard at the gate tried to make Mum buy a festival ticket just because she was going in to the compound, but we argued with him as she was not drinking the wine. He gave in and we did not need to buy one, yay! Mum and I bought some of the delicious cheese that Waverley Hills uses on their pasta in the tasting menu, and Dan and I opted for steak sandwiches for lunch, mine with both monkey gland and mushroom sauce as I couldn't decide!
Chris decided to make this his last stop on the tour as it was heading towards 2pm and he needed to get to Cape Town for his flight later. Then there were three!! The next stop on our tour did not actually have a wine tasting section, but it did have some lovely crafts and food that we ogled over, before driving to the next stop, Jason's Hill. It was amazingly stunning in their part of the valley, the mountains were just exquisite! They didn't have any of the sweeter wines we seem to have become partial to today, so we didn't stay there for very long. Slanghoek, our next stop was one of my favourite stops because mum and I bought some of their soft serve ice cream! Dan and I tried the dessert wines inside and shared some with mum who was really enjoying them. We bought two there, a dark red jeripko and a lighter red muscadel jeripko.
The next vineyard on the tour was Opstal, and we decided to make it our last stop. I was thoroughly excited when I read the pamphlet that said there was sushi at Opstal, but as we walked in it said that it ended at 3pm :( Their wines were Ok, but none were special enough to buy. The view from the grass outside was spectacular! There were mountains towering above us with vines as far as the eye could see, I couldn't imagine anywhere more beautiful to work. As we walked around the stores outside we spotted the sushi one, which hadn't ended yet as it was really popular! Dan and I each had a 15 piece sushi plate and mum had a 6 piece one. Jenny even kept running back inside to get more wine to go with the sushi.
Once we finished our food we decided it was time to head home. Because we had food so recently we procrastinated packing the car by sitting around the fire and enjoying some more drinks. Once we had a few we were in no mood to pack our bags and decided to leave the packing for the morning.
Epic Adventure -- Day 44 -- 12/10/2012 -- Ceres and Arum Lilly
After a delicious bacon sandwich and cooked breakfast for Dan with Steve and Sharon, I spent my morning packing up cottage our one bedroom cottage to move back into the two bedroom one with Mum and Duncan whilst the boys took Snolly into town to try to get the car fixed. Dad went in with them to do work in Wimpy and use their internet and find a way to get to Cape Town for his reunion with Dougand Steve went in in his own car so that he could give them a lift back if need be.
The boys were taking ages to come back, so the rest of us ended up gathering in a gorgeous patch of sunshine next to the lake, and opened a bottle of champagne whilst we waited. I also started the fire up for the braai lunch to finish up what was left from the night before. I had already started it when Dan phoned Sharon to let her know they were coming back and to ask her to start a fire! Dan and Duncan eventually arrived back in Snolly at about 12:00, Jeremy at the garage in Ceres had fixed the loss of power by replacing the diesel filter. He fit the coolant system that Doug had brought to the wedding, and also cleaned the car of all the wedding congratulations for us.
Dan threw more wood on the fire when he arrived back, and I went to go get more glasses and drinks for the boys :) I also managed to nearly blow up the iPad as I had been typing blog posts on the grass, I left the iPad there whilst I ran around getting drinks and it became very very very hot!! It told me to take it somewhere cool to let it cool down, a do was barely able to hold it, it was burning my fingers. After some mild panicking it came back on and was just fine, phew! I had volunteered to drive dad into town to catch a taxi to Cape Town, so we left just before 2:00. Unfortunately we missed the 2pm taxi so we unpacked his bags from our car and loaded them into the boot of the taxi. Dad had about half an hour to wait till it left but he had a book to read. I felt really bad about leaving him to fend his own way to Cape Town and I offered to drive him there myself but he said it should be ok and he did get there in one piece!
After checking the tire pressure on the car (which were all wrong, the spare tire was at 1.5 when it should have been 2.6) and filling up the car, i drove back to Arum Lilly. I had a heart attack moment at the gates trying to get back in as checking email had used up the last of the credit and it wouldn't ring the gate. What was the most scary is that there were two guys hitchhiking behind me who were making me very uneasy. I found our new iPhone4 sim card which had airtime on it, so I did live to see another day! Everyone had moved back round the fire for our braai and lunch of boerwors and lamb sandwiches, which I was just in time for.
Chris Duncan and Dan sat drinking and lounging at the hot tub, talking science so mum and I faded inside for an afternoon nap. I spent about an hour trying to catch up on blog posts before I had my nap, so I missed out on the canoe race festivities that happened as the sun was setting. Dan and Duncan were trying to catch a duck but ended up just spraying it with a ton of water from the paddles. After their fun in the sun and I woke up, everyone got ready to go to our food paring at Waverley Hills that Phillip had very kindly agreed to hold for us, as they were not usually open on a Friday. It was wonderful to be able to wear my beautiful wedding high heels to the evening, as I no longer have to worry about keeping them shiny and new for the wedding day!
Phillip and Carrine had set up a table for the nine of us in the wine tasting room and just as the first time the food and wine were truly amazing. Everyone enjoyed an epic meal (The details of which can be found in Day 14's post) and many drinks before we all headed home and prepared to wake early for a group breakfast and almost everyone starting their journeys home.
The boys were taking ages to come back, so the rest of us ended up gathering in a gorgeous patch of sunshine next to the lake, and opened a bottle of champagne whilst we waited. I also started the fire up for the braai lunch to finish up what was left from the night before. I had already started it when Dan phoned Sharon to let her know they were coming back and to ask her to start a fire! Dan and Duncan eventually arrived back in Snolly at about 12:00, Jeremy at the garage in Ceres had fixed the loss of power by replacing the diesel filter. He fit the coolant system that Doug had brought to the wedding, and also cleaned the car of all the wedding congratulations for us.
Dan threw more wood on the fire when he arrived back, and I went to go get more glasses and drinks for the boys :) I also managed to nearly blow up the iPad as I had been typing blog posts on the grass, I left the iPad there whilst I ran around getting drinks and it became very very very hot!! It told me to take it somewhere cool to let it cool down, a do was barely able to hold it, it was burning my fingers. After some mild panicking it came back on and was just fine, phew! I had volunteered to drive dad into town to catch a taxi to Cape Town, so we left just before 2:00. Unfortunately we missed the 2pm taxi so we unpacked his bags from our car and loaded them into the boot of the taxi. Dad had about half an hour to wait till it left but he had a book to read. I felt really bad about leaving him to fend his own way to Cape Town and I offered to drive him there myself but he said it should be ok and he did get there in one piece!
After checking the tire pressure on the car (which were all wrong, the spare tire was at 1.5 when it should have been 2.6) and filling up the car, i drove back to Arum Lilly. I had a heart attack moment at the gates trying to get back in as checking email had used up the last of the credit and it wouldn't ring the gate. What was the most scary is that there were two guys hitchhiking behind me who were making me very uneasy. I found our new iPhone4 sim card which had airtime on it, so I did live to see another day! Everyone had moved back round the fire for our braai and lunch of boerwors and lamb sandwiches, which I was just in time for.
Chris Duncan and Dan sat drinking and lounging at the hot tub, talking science so mum and I faded inside for an afternoon nap. I spent about an hour trying to catch up on blog posts before I had my nap, so I missed out on the canoe race festivities that happened as the sun was setting. Dan and Duncan were trying to catch a duck but ended up just spraying it with a ton of water from the paddles. After their fun in the sun and I woke up, everyone got ready to go to our food paring at Waverley Hills that Phillip had very kindly agreed to hold for us, as they were not usually open on a Friday. It was wonderful to be able to wear my beautiful wedding high heels to the evening, as I no longer have to worry about keeping them shiny and new for the wedding day!
Phillip and Carrine had set up a table for the nine of us in the wine tasting room and just as the first time the food and wine were truly amazing. Everyone enjoyed an epic meal (The details of which can be found in Day 14's post) and many drinks before we all headed home and prepared to wake early for a group breakfast and almost everyone starting their journeys home.
Epic Adventure -- Day 43 -- 11/10/2012 -- Paarl
The first thing Dan and I needed to do this morning was clear up the rest of our things from the venue. Sharon and Steve very kindly came along with us, and helped to organise all of Trendy Decors items onto one table for collection, and gather up the items that were ours to keep. We also took the remainder of the cake and all the desserts, as we didn't want them to go to waste! The brownies were to die for, I'm so glad there were some left :D We left three of the vases with Simone and Nick, who are going to use them for a fundraising rhino awareness function on Friday that they host every year, which is fantastic! Dan's parents went back to their cottage because they had already had breakfast. Dan and i spotted Chris about to leave for breakfast, so we offered him a lift and headed to Waverly Hills to join the rest of the party for food.
We found out after arriving that Waverly Hills doesn't open until 10:00 so there had clearly been some confusion concerning the location of breakfast. We phoned Lesley and found out that everyone was at Winterberg located 500 metres from Olive Rock. Everyone was there or their way, and Dan and I sat at a table with Chris to enjoy breakfast. I had wanted just a bacon sandwich, but the waiter came back and told me that I had to order something from the menu, so I ordered toast and bacon off one of the choices! Dan and Chris both enjoyed a full breakfast. Alice came back soon afterwards from having a look at the hospital in Ceres, and Chantel and her pare to arrived from Waverley Hills in time to say goodbye to everyone.
We had arranged to do a wine tasting tour in Stellenbosch today, and Mandy suggested we do the closer wine tour. Everyone was then in conflict about where to go and which wine tour to do, so I just waited in the car until it was time to program the sat nav :D They ended up deciding to go to Nederberg wine, so we all said goodbye to everyone and left for our first vineyard!
Jenny and I had never driven the land rover loaded with so many people and the car was certainly behaving differently. Earlier in the trip I had been pushing it to 120 km/hr but the car was now struggling to achieve 115. About 15 km shy of Paarl I mentioned to Jenny that the car felt a little shaky, possibly caused by the road conditions. She reassured me that I was overreacting and the car was fine. However once another 30 seconds had passed, and the steering wheel was rattling so much I could barely hold it, it was evident that something was wrong. We pulled over immediately to discover that the back right tire of the car had suffered a puncture and deflated. Because of the age of the tires once it deflated the tire wall failed and what used to be a tire now flapped and hung precariously from the wheel.
Luckly we had Duncan with us and before any of us could even process what happened he had already jacked the car up and was in the process of changing the tire. Duncan and his wife Helen had taken a similar honeymoon African adventure in a landrover, so we were very grateful to have his expertise in this situation! About five minutes after our tire had popped we watched the same thing happen to a truck, so whatever punctured our tire must have still been in the road. The truck driver is possibly luckier though, as he has two wheels per side and so could just set off straight away. Once our very own Super Duncan had replaced the tire we all set off again and drove a little slower for the rest of the journey.
As we arrived at Nederberg we were greeted with a glass of bubbly! They took us all into their tasting room and started off a 10 minute movie about the vineyard, and it seemed very commercial and not very informative about the way in which their wines are made differently which makes them unique, instead they used the word gentle about 500 times, and told us their wines were wonderful. To be fair, once the wine tasting started, their wines are delicious! Everyone enjoyed the tasting, Chris ended up buying a red called Two Centuries, and the rest of us bought their noble late harvest dessert wine, it is delicious!!
Dan and I didnt have to pay for our wine tasting as we each bought a R100 wine passport to use at the specific vineyards when we come back to Cape Town. We also got 20% off our two dessert wines! We set the sat nav to find the next winery on it's list, which was called Ashanti, only to find after a very long and bumpy ride that it did not do wine tastings! As we were leaving a group of guys told us to follow them to a place they thought did wine tastings. It was very confusing, because they put their hazards on at one right hand turn but they meant the next turn. Eventually we got to where we wanted to go, and Duncan went inside before we all disembarked to find out if they did wine tastings. Unfortunately not!! They did give us a map and advise on a vineyard not too far away that may do tastings, and a restaurant called Pappa Grappa.
The next place also ended up being closed, and as we were all swiftly losing our patience we headed straight for the restaurant and bypassed every sign for a vineyard we saw along the way. Once there and after having a look at the menu we decided to order Flammkuchen, what sounded like unlimited pizza. It turned out to be just a pizza base and bacon on top, and they were not unlimited as the menu made it sound like. Needless to say the five we ordered for the table of 14 was not nearly enough. Alice and I decided to then share a starter and a main, kudu carpaggio and springbok ravioli. The service was quite slow and everyone's food came out at different times as we were starving and couldn't wait. The last meal to be served was the ravioli, it didn't actually look like ravioli but was so so divine! The place had a grappa tasting room which I went into, and as no one was there I tried the grappa on the sly with Duncan and JD. We only tasted the Muscat one, which smelt great but tasted like methylated spirits!
Whilst everyone was sitting enjoying drinks in the sun, I went to find Dan at the car. He was severely stressed as the car key had come off of the fob!! He called a couple more people to help look for it and thankfully JD managed to find it in the car. Our drive home also became eventful, as the land rover then decided that she would not go over 60kms per hour. The engine was rattling an immense amount, and we all agreed that to stop the car would be a terrible decision, as we were unsure if she would start again! We limped our way back to Arum Lilly, and since Snolly was out of commission we sent Dad, JD and Steve into Ceres to get some food for the braai. They only just made it into the shop as it was closing, and came back with an assortment of delicious braai food. Everyone regrouped back at the cottages and we enjoyed one last meal together before Patricia, Toby, Alice, JD and Charlotte left the next morning.
We found out after arriving that Waverly Hills doesn't open until 10:00 so there had clearly been some confusion concerning the location of breakfast. We phoned Lesley and found out that everyone was at Winterberg located 500 metres from Olive Rock. Everyone was there or their way, and Dan and I sat at a table with Chris to enjoy breakfast. I had wanted just a bacon sandwich, but the waiter came back and told me that I had to order something from the menu, so I ordered toast and bacon off one of the choices! Dan and Chris both enjoyed a full breakfast. Alice came back soon afterwards from having a look at the hospital in Ceres, and Chantel and her pare to arrived from Waverley Hills in time to say goodbye to everyone.
We had arranged to do a wine tasting tour in Stellenbosch today, and Mandy suggested we do the closer wine tour. Everyone was then in conflict about where to go and which wine tour to do, so I just waited in the car until it was time to program the sat nav :D They ended up deciding to go to Nederberg wine, so we all said goodbye to everyone and left for our first vineyard!
Jenny and I had never driven the land rover loaded with so many people and the car was certainly behaving differently. Earlier in the trip I had been pushing it to 120 km/hr but the car was now struggling to achieve 115. About 15 km shy of Paarl I mentioned to Jenny that the car felt a little shaky, possibly caused by the road conditions. She reassured me that I was overreacting and the car was fine. However once another 30 seconds had passed, and the steering wheel was rattling so much I could barely hold it, it was evident that something was wrong. We pulled over immediately to discover that the back right tire of the car had suffered a puncture and deflated. Because of the age of the tires once it deflated the tire wall failed and what used to be a tire now flapped and hung precariously from the wheel.
Luckly we had Duncan with us and before any of us could even process what happened he had already jacked the car up and was in the process of changing the tire. Duncan and his wife Helen had taken a similar honeymoon African adventure in a landrover, so we were very grateful to have his expertise in this situation! About five minutes after our tire had popped we watched the same thing happen to a truck, so whatever punctured our tire must have still been in the road. The truck driver is possibly luckier though, as he has two wheels per side and so could just set off straight away. Once our very own Super Duncan had replaced the tire we all set off again and drove a little slower for the rest of the journey.
As we arrived at Nederberg we were greeted with a glass of bubbly! They took us all into their tasting room and started off a 10 minute movie about the vineyard, and it seemed very commercial and not very informative about the way in which their wines are made differently which makes them unique, instead they used the word gentle about 500 times, and told us their wines were wonderful. To be fair, once the wine tasting started, their wines are delicious! Everyone enjoyed the tasting, Chris ended up buying a red called Two Centuries, and the rest of us bought their noble late harvest dessert wine, it is delicious!!
Dan and I didnt have to pay for our wine tasting as we each bought a R100 wine passport to use at the specific vineyards when we come back to Cape Town. We also got 20% off our two dessert wines! We set the sat nav to find the next winery on it's list, which was called Ashanti, only to find after a very long and bumpy ride that it did not do wine tastings! As we were leaving a group of guys told us to follow them to a place they thought did wine tastings. It was very confusing, because they put their hazards on at one right hand turn but they meant the next turn. Eventually we got to where we wanted to go, and Duncan went inside before we all disembarked to find out if they did wine tastings. Unfortunately not!! They did give us a map and advise on a vineyard not too far away that may do tastings, and a restaurant called Pappa Grappa.
The next place also ended up being closed, and as we were all swiftly losing our patience we headed straight for the restaurant and bypassed every sign for a vineyard we saw along the way. Once there and after having a look at the menu we decided to order Flammkuchen, what sounded like unlimited pizza. It turned out to be just a pizza base and bacon on top, and they were not unlimited as the menu made it sound like. Needless to say the five we ordered for the table of 14 was not nearly enough. Alice and I decided to then share a starter and a main, kudu carpaggio and springbok ravioli. The service was quite slow and everyone's food came out at different times as we were starving and couldn't wait. The last meal to be served was the ravioli, it didn't actually look like ravioli but was so so divine! The place had a grappa tasting room which I went into, and as no one was there I tried the grappa on the sly with Duncan and JD. We only tasted the Muscat one, which smelt great but tasted like methylated spirits!
Whilst everyone was sitting enjoying drinks in the sun, I went to find Dan at the car. He was severely stressed as the car key had come off of the fob!! He called a couple more people to help look for it and thankfully JD managed to find it in the car. Our drive home also became eventful, as the land rover then decided that she would not go over 60kms per hour. The engine was rattling an immense amount, and we all agreed that to stop the car would be a terrible decision, as we were unsure if she would start again! We limped our way back to Arum Lilly, and since Snolly was out of commission we sent Dad, JD and Steve into Ceres to get some food for the braai. They only just made it into the shop as it was closing, and came back with an assortment of delicious braai food. Everyone regrouped back at the cottages and we enjoyed one last meal together before Patricia, Toby, Alice, JD and Charlotte left the next morning.
Epic Adventure -- Day 42 -- 10/10/2012 -- Wedding Day
Jenny: Yay, its our Wedding Day!! We got up at about seven to have a bath, as the hair and makeup artists were arriving at eight. The boys had a few jobs to do in the morning whilst we were all getting ready, and the first of which my dad failed on :D We had written out a list the day before, the first task being go get the bridesmaids before 8, and I walked into their cabin to find dad having coffee in his underpants, mum not showered and Duncan still in his PJs! Needless to say I freaked out a little bit, but thankfully they were not far away, and Sharon and Emma started on their hair and makeup, so at least Carla and her team were not sitting around doing nothing. Dad got back really quickly with everyone else, so all was sorted :) The next task the boys had was to go to Wolseley and get our breakfast and lunch from the home industries there, we had ordered bran muffins and little finger pies for lunch.
The girls all sat in our cabin drinking champagne, fruit juice, eating bran muffins with jam and cheese. I also spent the majority of the morning sorting out the music for the reception, as Dan had done some of it, but not finished it yet!! We ended up having an iPod with the reception music, the iPad with the music for the meal, mums iPhone with the African music for the canapés after the wedding, and the iPod and Dan's iPhone for the music for walking down and back up the isle! Sounds convoluted but as a DJ was about R4000, and we were having such a small wedding we decided to just do it ourselves. Carla started on my hair first, along with the second hairstylist, and they each curled parts of my hair and pinned them up to set. Carla unfortunately burned the left side of my face with curling tags, a complete accident and thankfully my fringe covered most of the mark. My makeup and hair were both completed by about 12:00, and looked absolutely gorgeous, if I do say so myself. They did an absolutely amazing job with everyones hair and make up, all of us looked stunning!!
I will however say that I was disappointed to learn from Carrine at Waverley Hills that Carla and her team from Anuk did not immediately head to the salon to deal with the other clients they apparently had booked up for the rest of the day, instead they went and enjoyed Phillips pizza and wine straight afterwards. You will understand why I was disappointed when I explain that I had booked Anuk months before hand, and told Carla that the wedding started at 3pm. I was told that everyone must be ready at 8 to start hair and makeup to be finished in time for the wedding, which is what should have been the case, not in time for their lunch. I would have happily provided pizzas from Waverly Hills if that was what they wanted, but instead I sat for the next three hours with nothing to do, trying to fix parts of my curls that were coming undone. I would have loved for Heather to be able to take my bridal photographs with my hair still looking gorgeous and freshly done, not annoying me :(
Anyways! After waiting around for another two hours before Heather was scheduled to arrive, she took photographs of the dress, shoes, jewellery, perfume, and garter. We then went upstairs to the bedroom to dress me, and it was so hot up there!! The morning had been pretty cold so we had a fire going, but as all the heat had risen the upstairs felt like a furnace, so being laced into my dress in that heat was not too fun :D Thankfully Chantel brought me a coke to cool me down. I also had to make sure that the dress was not laced too tight, as at one stage I found it really hard to breath. The girls did an amazing job though, helping me get dressed and putting up with me complaining about my hair :D We did group photos with Heather and my individual photos, before dad helped us into the car and we set off to Olive Rock to get married!!!
Dan: So the big day was finally upon us. In comparison to Jenny I had very little getting ready to do in the morning which left my schedule open to do all the errands which needed doing. Jennys dad had already been given the task of delegating but had misplaced the list the night before so I had taken over the task of making sure all Jenny's tasks were complete. My first job was to head into Wolseley with Duncan and pick up the food that Jenny and her mom had ordered from the home industries. We also were instructed to pick up some jam, not knowing which type to get Duncan and I frantically grabbed three random flavours and headed back to the houses.
Once we had fetched the food I then enlisted James' help with some of my other tasks. Our first job was to run into Ceres and fetch the flowers from the florist. The flowers were actually very nice and James and I loaded them into his car (they barely fit!) before running down the road to pick up the cake. She. We arrived at @funtion they informed us that the cake was on its way and should be there shortly. We sat and had a coffee while we waited for the cake and once it arrived we took the flowers and the cake to the wedding venue and completed a separate list of tasks that Jenny had left for the reception.
Once all of these jobs were complete we drove back to the cottages and relaxed for a while in the guys cabin. I still had to write my vows somewhere in the middle of all these errands so I removed myself from the guys cabin and went to sit in Lesley and Joe's accommodation to write. When I finished writing my mom joined me in the cabin for a crash course dance lesson for our first dance tonight. It seemed very simple in theory, more difficult in practice.
I eventually wandered back to the guys cabin where I needed to start getting ready. Heather, the wedding photographer, showed up a little after 13:00 to take some photos of the guys getting ready. When I had finished dressing we all gathered on the porch outside our cabin for some champagne and waited for our orders to leave for the venue. When we arrived at the venue JD and I clarified some details about the groomsmens placement with Charles Mercer and waited anxiously for Jenny's arrival.
Jenny: As we arrived in the car, Duncan came running towards us to tell us to wait, as James had to go get an iPhone charger so we could use mums iPhone for music. He came tearing down the road at full pelt like a rally car racer, and parked that little car with such expertise and finesse I really could imagine him as one :D I yelled out YAAY as we pulled up, which got a laugh out of everyone :) The girls piled out of the car first and got their bouquets ready, and lined up whilst Dad helped me out of the car.
Walking down the isle was really surreal, sort of slow motion but sped up at the same time. Dad did a wonderful job walking me down the isle, he made sure I didn't fall over thankfully, and didn't bring along any sticks to whack me with as he did yesterday evening for our rehearsal :D Seeing Dan's face was my most favourite thing, he couldn't have been more happy or smiling any wider, and I hope I never forget that image. Dad gave me to Dan when we got to the top of the isle, or in his own words "take it and go" and we stood facing our guests for the ceremony. Charles gave a lovely address to begin with, followed by a reading from Corinthians by Paul:
Love is patient and love is kind. It is never jealous.
Love is never boastful or conceited, it is never rude or selfish.
Love does not take offense, nor is it resentful.
Love is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, to protect and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end.
There are three things that last, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
Charles then called for the vows which Chantel passed over. Dan and I had written our own vows to each other, something I had felt very strongly about as I don't think we fit into the traditional vows, and they don't feel very special to me. Our vows in comparison were amazing, Dan was trying very hard not to cry, which obviously almost set me off when I read mine. His vows were beautiful and heartfelt, anymore than I could have asked for. I promised Dan to always be silly, always hold his hand and always love him. Duncan kindly agreed to do our second reading for us, entitled Blessing for a Marriage by James Dillet Freeman:
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice, but not compel one another.
May you embrace, but not encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.
May you have happiness, and may you find it by making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it by loving one another.
JD then passed our rings to us, for our "with this ring I thee wed" phrase. We had to agree to the legal preamble that Charles then told us, as in we do want to get married, there are no lawful impediments etc, and then he pronounced us husband and wife!! Dan then kissed his new bride :D :D we walked back up the isle to a song called 'All that I need is this moment, to send me away with a smile on my face", to a room to sign the register. Mum and Chantel came with to be witnesses, as they both had South African ID books that we could certify before the wedding day to give to Charles. After we had signed the register and officially become legally married in the eyes of the law, we hung back for a few moments before walking through a shower of confetti into the lawn for the reception.
An amazing surprise awaited us as Peppi and Simone had been extremely gracious and generous enough to arrange a local youth marimba band to play for us at the beginning of the reception and they were amazing!!! Even more amazing when you consider that none of them had practiced solidly together before the previous week, and only been playing about once a month for a few months before that, it was a truly special arrangement! Everyone adored the band and it added such a magical touch to our special day.
Jenny and I then had a few brief moments to have some drinks and mingle with people before the family photos started. I think we now have every combination of family photo we will ever need! :) We were able to enjoy all of the amazing canapés that Nick had prepared for us, even though it is extremely hard to chose a favorite as they were all divine, mine was the sundried tomato and basil pesto cups and Jenny loved the lamb wraps! The bridesmaids and groomsmen joined both of us at the river below Olive Rock for some wedding party photographs.
Jenny and I then left with Heather in her car for about and hour and a half worth of photos of just the two of us. She had chosen some spectacular spots around the farm, and we had fun giggling and smiling whilst she took countless photos of us, all of which I know will be wonderful. Jenny got a grass stain on her dress during the photos as we had to k eel down, but as she had won it, it really didn't matter! :) We had to wait outside the venue for a few minutes whilst Heather set up her equipment inside, and Gary and Evette came back from their house trailing the sweetest little cat ever! He is topped only by Mo, which makes me want to think that Mo sent him here to say hi to Dan and I on our wedding day, and to let us know he is thinking about us!
When we walked in, we were introduced for the first time as Mr. And Mrs. Whiteley, we then had a little more time for mingling and drinks before Chris kindly called for everyone to take their seats for dinner. Nick's food was absolutely wonderful, so good in fact that I feel I am becoming too accustomed to fine food and dining in South Africa. Jenny really did outdo herself when she chose Olive Rock, it is so stunning here, Nick and Simone are wonderful hosts and to be topped off with such magnificent food is an amazing bonus! The whole room descended into silence as we ate and the starter of smoked springbok carpaggio on a rocket and parmesan salad. The main course disappeared just as quickly, a rump steak, beans and deliciois potato stack. We offered Chris a second helping of the steak, which he happily agreed to enjoy, as we know his love for red meat very well and we had a couple of seats empty meaning we had a couple of meals spare!
At this stage we took a long break before dessert and filled said break with customary wedding activities. The first of which was the speeches by Joe, Steve, myself and JD in that order. Joe' speech was incredibly funny and it was nice to hear him say so much at once; in fact I think I heard Joe speak more in those 5 minutes than the previously 4 years combined :Di loved dads speech, I knew it would be hilarious and it most certainly was, but it was also extremely clever and thoughtful, I'm so glad I have a copy of that from Chantel's video camera!! Steve then read some messages from friends and family who could not attend the wedding, including one from Thebe, Jenny's black Labrador in Zambia. My speech was very short and improvised as didn't realise I was expected to speak. I had forgotten to tell Dan that he had to do a speech too, but as he is so very eloquent with words it was short, sweet but poignant and funny! JDs best man speech was next and certainly fulfilled it's role as a verbal assault of Dan's personality :D He spoke amazingly well, also an hilarious hilarious speech!!! My favourite part by far was when he thanked Mike and Judith, the owners of the Golf Shop if St Andrews where Dan and I worked, for their paying me to sit on my ass all day and win things for our wedding :D Seeing as I had won the dress, garter, veil, favours, fans, decoration, cake toppers, cake knife and a honeymoon in the Maldives to name a few, you can see he had a point :D We are also really glad to have a video of his speech, as I'm sure it is also one that will go down in history like dads!
We followed up the speeches with the garter toss and the bouquet toss; won by Toby and Chantel respectively before cutting of the cake and the serving of desserts, delicious brownies, red velvet cupcakes, and koeksisters. What Dan neglects to mention here is that he had to venture up my skirt to pull the garter off with his teeth, a sight I will never forget :D Towards the end of the desserts we realised that neither one of us had remembered to put the first dance song on the iPod and we had no way of getting it in time for Heather to take photos of the dance. Luckily the bartender had a phone that could download music amazingly fast and Charmaine still had the portable speaker we used for the ceremony, so after a short period of panic we had our music, and had our first dance to owl city 'if my heart was a house'.
When our dance was finished Heather packed up and our guests enjoyed tea and coffee before the drinks properly started flowing. Jenny and I decided to close the original bar tab (which only included beer and wine) and use the rest of the money as a truly open bar. This way everyone could have the drink of their choice while toasting marshmallows on the braai and dancing away. Some of us may have overindulged on the shot front (hem hem, Mike :D) but that was too be expected, it truly was a day for celebration. And as our guests began to head home I came to realise that if given the chance to do it again, I wouldn't change a thing. (Neither would I, Jenny pipes up from the sidelines!!! I'm married to my Dan, hurray!!! :D)
The girls all sat in our cabin drinking champagne, fruit juice, eating bran muffins with jam and cheese. I also spent the majority of the morning sorting out the music for the reception, as Dan had done some of it, but not finished it yet!! We ended up having an iPod with the reception music, the iPad with the music for the meal, mums iPhone with the African music for the canapés after the wedding, and the iPod and Dan's iPhone for the music for walking down and back up the isle! Sounds convoluted but as a DJ was about R4000, and we were having such a small wedding we decided to just do it ourselves. Carla started on my hair first, along with the second hairstylist, and they each curled parts of my hair and pinned them up to set. Carla unfortunately burned the left side of my face with curling tags, a complete accident and thankfully my fringe covered most of the mark. My makeup and hair were both completed by about 12:00, and looked absolutely gorgeous, if I do say so myself. They did an absolutely amazing job with everyones hair and make up, all of us looked stunning!!
I will however say that I was disappointed to learn from Carrine at Waverley Hills that Carla and her team from Anuk did not immediately head to the salon to deal with the other clients they apparently had booked up for the rest of the day, instead they went and enjoyed Phillips pizza and wine straight afterwards. You will understand why I was disappointed when I explain that I had booked Anuk months before hand, and told Carla that the wedding started at 3pm. I was told that everyone must be ready at 8 to start hair and makeup to be finished in time for the wedding, which is what should have been the case, not in time for their lunch. I would have happily provided pizzas from Waverly Hills if that was what they wanted, but instead I sat for the next three hours with nothing to do, trying to fix parts of my curls that were coming undone. I would have loved for Heather to be able to take my bridal photographs with my hair still looking gorgeous and freshly done, not annoying me :(
Anyways! After waiting around for another two hours before Heather was scheduled to arrive, she took photographs of the dress, shoes, jewellery, perfume, and garter. We then went upstairs to the bedroom to dress me, and it was so hot up there!! The morning had been pretty cold so we had a fire going, but as all the heat had risen the upstairs felt like a furnace, so being laced into my dress in that heat was not too fun :D Thankfully Chantel brought me a coke to cool me down. I also had to make sure that the dress was not laced too tight, as at one stage I found it really hard to breath. The girls did an amazing job though, helping me get dressed and putting up with me complaining about my hair :D We did group photos with Heather and my individual photos, before dad helped us into the car and we set off to Olive Rock to get married!!!
Dan: So the big day was finally upon us. In comparison to Jenny I had very little getting ready to do in the morning which left my schedule open to do all the errands which needed doing. Jennys dad had already been given the task of delegating but had misplaced the list the night before so I had taken over the task of making sure all Jenny's tasks were complete. My first job was to head into Wolseley with Duncan and pick up the food that Jenny and her mom had ordered from the home industries. We also were instructed to pick up some jam, not knowing which type to get Duncan and I frantically grabbed three random flavours and headed back to the houses.
Once we had fetched the food I then enlisted James' help with some of my other tasks. Our first job was to run into Ceres and fetch the flowers from the florist. The flowers were actually very nice and James and I loaded them into his car (they barely fit!) before running down the road to pick up the cake. She. We arrived at @funtion they informed us that the cake was on its way and should be there shortly. We sat and had a coffee while we waited for the cake and once it arrived we took the flowers and the cake to the wedding venue and completed a separate list of tasks that Jenny had left for the reception.
Once all of these jobs were complete we drove back to the cottages and relaxed for a while in the guys cabin. I still had to write my vows somewhere in the middle of all these errands so I removed myself from the guys cabin and went to sit in Lesley and Joe's accommodation to write. When I finished writing my mom joined me in the cabin for a crash course dance lesson for our first dance tonight. It seemed very simple in theory, more difficult in practice.
I eventually wandered back to the guys cabin where I needed to start getting ready. Heather, the wedding photographer, showed up a little after 13:00 to take some photos of the guys getting ready. When I had finished dressing we all gathered on the porch outside our cabin for some champagne and waited for our orders to leave for the venue. When we arrived at the venue JD and I clarified some details about the groomsmens placement with Charles Mercer and waited anxiously for Jenny's arrival.
Jenny: As we arrived in the car, Duncan came running towards us to tell us to wait, as James had to go get an iPhone charger so we could use mums iPhone for music. He came tearing down the road at full pelt like a rally car racer, and parked that little car with such expertise and finesse I really could imagine him as one :D I yelled out YAAY as we pulled up, which got a laugh out of everyone :) The girls piled out of the car first and got their bouquets ready, and lined up whilst Dad helped me out of the car.
Walking down the isle was really surreal, sort of slow motion but sped up at the same time. Dad did a wonderful job walking me down the isle, he made sure I didn't fall over thankfully, and didn't bring along any sticks to whack me with as he did yesterday evening for our rehearsal :D Seeing Dan's face was my most favourite thing, he couldn't have been more happy or smiling any wider, and I hope I never forget that image. Dad gave me to Dan when we got to the top of the isle, or in his own words "take it and go" and we stood facing our guests for the ceremony. Charles gave a lovely address to begin with, followed by a reading from Corinthians by Paul:
Love is patient and love is kind. It is never jealous.
Love is never boastful or conceited, it is never rude or selfish.
Love does not take offense, nor is it resentful.
Love is always ready to excuse, to trust, to hope, to protect and to endure whatever comes. Love does not come to an end.
There are three things that last, faith, hope and love, and the greatest of these is love.
Charles then called for the vows which Chantel passed over. Dan and I had written our own vows to each other, something I had felt very strongly about as I don't think we fit into the traditional vows, and they don't feel very special to me. Our vows in comparison were amazing, Dan was trying very hard not to cry, which obviously almost set me off when I read mine. His vows were beautiful and heartfelt, anymore than I could have asked for. I promised Dan to always be silly, always hold his hand and always love him. Duncan kindly agreed to do our second reading for us, entitled Blessing for a Marriage by James Dillet Freeman:
May your marriage bring you all the exquisite excitements a marriage should bring, and may life grant you also patience, tolerance, and understanding.
May you always need one another - not so much to fill your emptiness as to help you to know your fullness.
May you need one another, but not out of weakness.
May you want one another, but not out of lack.
May you entice, but not compel one another.
May you embrace, but not encircle one another.
May you succeed in all important ways with one another, and not fail in the little graces.
May you look for things to praise, often say, "I love you!" and take no notice of small faults.
If you have quarrels that push you apart, may both of you hope to have good sense enough to take the first step back.
May you have happiness, and may you find it by making one another happy.
May you have love, and may you find it by loving one another.
JD then passed our rings to us, for our "with this ring I thee wed" phrase. We had to agree to the legal preamble that Charles then told us, as in we do want to get married, there are no lawful impediments etc, and then he pronounced us husband and wife!! Dan then kissed his new bride :D :D we walked back up the isle to a song called 'All that I need is this moment, to send me away with a smile on my face", to a room to sign the register. Mum and Chantel came with to be witnesses, as they both had South African ID books that we could certify before the wedding day to give to Charles. After we had signed the register and officially become legally married in the eyes of the law, we hung back for a few moments before walking through a shower of confetti into the lawn for the reception.
An amazing surprise awaited us as Peppi and Simone had been extremely gracious and generous enough to arrange a local youth marimba band to play for us at the beginning of the reception and they were amazing!!! Even more amazing when you consider that none of them had practiced solidly together before the previous week, and only been playing about once a month for a few months before that, it was a truly special arrangement! Everyone adored the band and it added such a magical touch to our special day.
Jenny and I then had a few brief moments to have some drinks and mingle with people before the family photos started. I think we now have every combination of family photo we will ever need! :) We were able to enjoy all of the amazing canapés that Nick had prepared for us, even though it is extremely hard to chose a favorite as they were all divine, mine was the sundried tomato and basil pesto cups and Jenny loved the lamb wraps! The bridesmaids and groomsmen joined both of us at the river below Olive Rock for some wedding party photographs.
Jenny and I then left with Heather in her car for about and hour and a half worth of photos of just the two of us. She had chosen some spectacular spots around the farm, and we had fun giggling and smiling whilst she took countless photos of us, all of which I know will be wonderful. Jenny got a grass stain on her dress during the photos as we had to k eel down, but as she had won it, it really didn't matter! :) We had to wait outside the venue for a few minutes whilst Heather set up her equipment inside, and Gary and Evette came back from their house trailing the sweetest little cat ever! He is topped only by Mo, which makes me want to think that Mo sent him here to say hi to Dan and I on our wedding day, and to let us know he is thinking about us!
When we walked in, we were introduced for the first time as Mr. And Mrs. Whiteley, we then had a little more time for mingling and drinks before Chris kindly called for everyone to take their seats for dinner. Nick's food was absolutely wonderful, so good in fact that I feel I am becoming too accustomed to fine food and dining in South Africa. Jenny really did outdo herself when she chose Olive Rock, it is so stunning here, Nick and Simone are wonderful hosts and to be topped off with such magnificent food is an amazing bonus! The whole room descended into silence as we ate and the starter of smoked springbok carpaggio on a rocket and parmesan salad. The main course disappeared just as quickly, a rump steak, beans and deliciois potato stack. We offered Chris a second helping of the steak, which he happily agreed to enjoy, as we know his love for red meat very well and we had a couple of seats empty meaning we had a couple of meals spare!
At this stage we took a long break before dessert and filled said break with customary wedding activities. The first of which was the speeches by Joe, Steve, myself and JD in that order. Joe' speech was incredibly funny and it was nice to hear him say so much at once; in fact I think I heard Joe speak more in those 5 minutes than the previously 4 years combined :Di loved dads speech, I knew it would be hilarious and it most certainly was, but it was also extremely clever and thoughtful, I'm so glad I have a copy of that from Chantel's video camera!! Steve then read some messages from friends and family who could not attend the wedding, including one from Thebe, Jenny's black Labrador in Zambia. My speech was very short and improvised as didn't realise I was expected to speak. I had forgotten to tell Dan that he had to do a speech too, but as he is so very eloquent with words it was short, sweet but poignant and funny! JDs best man speech was next and certainly fulfilled it's role as a verbal assault of Dan's personality :D He spoke amazingly well, also an hilarious hilarious speech!!! My favourite part by far was when he thanked Mike and Judith, the owners of the Golf Shop if St Andrews where Dan and I worked, for their paying me to sit on my ass all day and win things for our wedding :D Seeing as I had won the dress, garter, veil, favours, fans, decoration, cake toppers, cake knife and a honeymoon in the Maldives to name a few, you can see he had a point :D We are also really glad to have a video of his speech, as I'm sure it is also one that will go down in history like dads!
We followed up the speeches with the garter toss and the bouquet toss; won by Toby and Chantel respectively before cutting of the cake and the serving of desserts, delicious brownies, red velvet cupcakes, and koeksisters. What Dan neglects to mention here is that he had to venture up my skirt to pull the garter off with his teeth, a sight I will never forget :D Towards the end of the desserts we realised that neither one of us had remembered to put the first dance song on the iPod and we had no way of getting it in time for Heather to take photos of the dance. Luckily the bartender had a phone that could download music amazingly fast and Charmaine still had the portable speaker we used for the ceremony, so after a short period of panic we had our music, and had our first dance to owl city 'if my heart was a house'.
When our dance was finished Heather packed up and our guests enjoyed tea and coffee before the drinks properly started flowing. Jenny and I decided to close the original bar tab (which only included beer and wine) and use the rest of the money as a truly open bar. This way everyone could have the drink of their choice while toasting marshmallows on the braai and dancing away. Some of us may have overindulged on the shot front (hem hem, Mike :D) but that was too be expected, it truly was a day for celebration. And as our guests began to head home I came to realise that if given the chance to do it again, I wouldn't change a thing. (Neither would I, Jenny pipes up from the sidelines!!! I'm married to my Dan, hurray!!! :D)
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