The Most Beautiful Place on Earth: Cape Town

We arrived in Cape Town around five on Tuesday (the 29th). Poor Gordon couldn’t come because he had classes, but Scarlett and Morgy skipped school to accompany John and me. Our flight was mostly uneventful, except for the girls being scandalized by the scantily clad girls in the air magazine. We hadn’t checked any bags, so we got right off the plane and out to the pick-up place. Since our bags, and by our I mean my bags, were so insanely heavy due to the fact that I only got one bag for FOUR days, Scarlett left us in the middle of the sidewalk to look for Mike, who is Mrs. Miskin’s youngest brother. In her motherly manner, she found him, and directed him to the spot where we were waiting. She introduced us to Mike, who I liked immediately. He acted as tour guide on the way to the house, pointing out the University of Cape Town housing, a few land marks, and Table Mountain. The city was amazingly beautiful. Brown: Pretoria as green: Cape Town. The grass and the mountains were an emerald green, shocking against the clear, bright blue of the sky. It was a bit warmer there than in Pretoria, and the air seemed slightly heavier, more humid.

When we arrived at the house, we were accosted by two extremely LARGE German Shepherds named Yanick, who John promptly rechristened as Eunuch, and Mojo. Close behind them was Sera (which is the coolest spelling ever, and I might steal it someday), who is six, and an only child. Her mom, Corné, was next to come out, and she graciously welcomed us inside. She showed us girls our rooms, and told John that he could have his pick of couches. We were also greeted inside by three Scottie Terriers, Fergus, Neem, Listie. We were also overwhelmed by the smell of dogs that permeated the whole house. Aside from that, the house itself was incredible, old Victorianish, with high ceilings and large windows, and beautiful decorations.
Sarah took an immediate liking to John, demanding that he ride her ghost train around the house. He was happy to oblige, telling her that they were zombies, and that they should bite Scarlett, Morgan and I so we could be to. Corné cooked us an amazing supper of chicken pot pie and pumpkin that we devoured as if we hadn’t eaten in days. Mike is a doctor, and he had gotten a call to go set some poor sap’s arm shortly after we got home, but he returned and caught the tail end of supper.

On Wednesday, Mike and Corné both had to work, and Sera went to school, so we were on our own in the morning into the early afternoon. The beautiful weather that had greeted us when we arrived was nowhere to be found; it was rainy and FREEZING cold. The people here have this thing where they don’t CLOSE THE WINDOWS when it’s cold out, so pretty much every window in the house was wide open before I got to them. We slept in, and then Mama Scarlett made us breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and toast.

After that, we weren’t really sure what to do with ourselves, so we decided to watch a movie. Unfortunately for us, the technology was far beyond our intellectual abilities, and after half an hour of frustration and irritation, we gave up on the DVD player. We couldn’t go outside, we couldn’t watch a movie, and reading apparently didn’t occur to us. As a result, we ended up sitting on the couch all huddled up (the ancient Inuit Eskimos used to use body heat to keep warm…) under a mountain of blankets (I literally had five over me) from 11 o’clock until about 2 in the afternoon doing absolutely nothing. It was…great bonding time, if nothing else.
Corne arrived home sometime after that, and thankfully rescued us from a certain death by boredom. She had picked Sera up from school, and the two of them entered in a whirlwind, which was made even more chaotic when Mike arrived almost right behind them. They threw around some options of activities for the rest of the afternoon, before settling on a mall, because Mrs. Miskin’s sister Michelle and her husband, Alex, were coming over for dinner. The mall was mostly uneventful, save for lunch at a gourmet burger place which was pretty good, and there was a hot waiter.

Michelle and Alex, along with their two kids, Finn and Mila, came bearing Chinese food and more noise. Another thing about Mike and Corné’s is that nothing is ever QUIET there. Music simply must be played at top volume to be appreciated, and if the cricket game on TV wasn’t as high as it would go, it was impossible to watch. John played Hey Jude for them all, and was roundly applauded. That got Mike and Alex into a huge conversation about music with John that resulted in a whole bunch of songs being played, of course at top volume, for us to appreciate. There was a lot of laughing, a few tears from the kids, and much chocolate consumed all around. Despite a major sensory overload for me, the evening was one of the most fun I’ve had since I’ve been here.

Thursday was our day with Johan. Johan is Corné’s brother, and he was really nice. He picked us up around eleven, and our first stop was Long Street. It was a street with lots of little shops with schweet stuff like used book stores, a couple antique-type places, and the like. In a second hand clothes store, we found some incredibly ugly hats that Scarlett, Morgy and I took pictures in, only be to be soundly rebuked by the owner, who informed us that it was generally polite to ASK TO TAKE PICTURES. We cowered out with our tail between our legs. We were starving by then, because we didn’t eat breakfast, so we went to a really good Portuguese chicken place called Nando’s for lunch.

We wandered around Long Street for a little while longer, before heading to the water front. We bought some touristy t-shirts, among other things, and John insulted the sweaters that some poor lady who was selling, despite the fact that the model modeling them was “a model from America”. We stopped at Haagen Dasz and bought exorbitantly priced, but amazingly good, ice cream. We wandered around the pier and had another animal spotting, a seal in the channel. Since the weather was pretty lousy, we hung out in the mall conveniently located right on the water, because we haven’t been to nearly enough malls lately, lol.
On the way home, we stopped at the Cecil Rhodes Memorial, which was in the middle of a mountain and gave a beautiful view over Cape Town and the ocean. We took several amazing pictures, and ran up and down the stairs and sat on the statues and stuff. The traffic in Cape Town is dreadful, so it took us awhile to get home. The rest of the evening passed mostly uneventfully.

The plan for Friday was to head out to the farm in the afternoon. We slept in, had breakfast and such, and left for Corné’s parents farm, which is about an hour outside of Cape Town. Mike drove us and the Scotties out, stopping along the way for gas and lunch. We arrived at the farm after a lengthy detour around the flooded river just a mile from the farm. It rained on and off, but when we got there, it cleared a little. Corné’s parents, Opa and Ouma, were extremely welcoming and hospitable.

We decided to take advantage of the momentary lull in the rain to put on enormous rain boots and take a walk. I wished for my schweet red polka dot ones…Mrs. Sikma, THOSE are what I forgot. The farm was breathtakingly beautiful, lush and green, with mountains all around. The tops of some of the mountains were obscured by wisps of white clouds. There were vineyards all over the place, and a field of Clementine trees, as well. I’m having Calla Lilies at my wedding, and I was delighted to see them growing wild all over the place, along with a myriad of other beautiful wild flowers. We splashed in puddles and mud, enjoying the beauty of creation immensely. The other three accused me of walking too slowly, but I helpfully explained that I was ambling, so hurrying would ruin the amble entirely. Along the way, we saw a bunch of sheep that were afraid of us, and a goat, which wasn’t. He wore a bell and tried to eat Morgy’s scarf. The girls named him Ben-Ben. We also came upon a bunch of geese, which honked at us loudly to be fed.

We returned to the house, only to find that Sera and Corné had arrived safely, and wanted to go on another walk. John and I were a bit tired of walking, and the clouds had returned, promising much rain and storms yet to come, but the group was not the be dissuaded. Scarlett ended up being conned into riding a miniscule bike with Sera. She later informed me that it had seriously messed up her back and knees, poor girl. John and Morgy claimed the four-wheeler, which was rather entertaining, as John had never driven one before. Mike had constructed a cricket field a fifteenish minute walk away, which was where we were going, with only two umbrellas for the 8 of us.

We had just reached the field when I felt the first drops. John and I looked at each other knowingly, claimed an umbrella, and started back. Unfortunately, even with the umbrella, once the rain started, we might as well have been fully exposed. John is a bad umbrella holder, and an even worse path picker. He managed to choose the way with the most enormous puddles and mud. I did, of course, let him pick, and no matter which path he’d chosen, in all fairness, I’m sure I would have objected. None the less, by the time we reached the house, we were soaked clear through, and I was pretty sure I was never going to warm up. Scarlett and Sera rode the four-wheeler back to the house, and they were even worse off than John and I, even though they got there faster. Scarlett said Sera was making little whimpering noises the whole way home, poor thing.

Oupa had cooked us a warm, filling supper that we ate a little while later. At Mike’s house, I was thrilled with the enormous wall of books, and I had chosen A Thousand Splendid Suns, but the same author as The Kite Runner, both of which I’d highly recommend. I finished the book at the farm, so I was equally excited to be shown a large cupboard of even more books, which I went through for awhile. Mike made us a merry fire of yuletide logs that I sat about two inches away from to keep warm. He also hauled out his iPod dock, and made us listen to an entire Damian Rice CD, or “LP” as he called it, before he permitted us to go off and do what we liked for the remainder of the evening.

Unfortunately, the next morning we had to get up and leave right away. Our plane left at 10 am, and we had been planning to leave no later than 8 o’clock. We left only about 15 minutes behind schedule, but, as we were to discover, every minute was important. The drive from the farm back to Cape Town was amazing. The clouds had finally cleared, so the green of the hills was highlighted by the bright blue sky. Furthermore, since the farm was in a valley, we couldn’t see very far in front of us until we headed toward town and broke through the fog of clouds. Once we did, though, the view from the side of the mountain where we stopped for pictures was simply breathtaking. I got an amazing picture that I’ll definitely post when I get home.
We arrived at the airport at 9:40. Yes, our plane was still to leave at 10. Suffice it to say that our goodbyes to Mike were very brief and to the point, something like, “thanksforeverythingitwasreallyfunwe’llseeyoulaterbye!” We sprinted up to the check-in window, only to be told that it had closed 10 minutes before, half an hour before the plane leaves. Our panicked expressions must have swayed the heart of the ticket lady, because she gave us boarding passes despite our tardiness, and pointed us toward our gate. We flew through the airport and made it in time. I only had slight heart failure from the close call. Once on the plane, I discovered that I had been seated in the middle of Scarlett and a rather rotund man who thought it his right to take up his entire space, plus half of mine. Needless to say, I was a bit cozy with Scarlett for most of the flight.

Gordon was supposed to pick us up, but he was nowhere in sight when we emerged from our flight, and Scarlett’s efforts to reach him by phone were futile. We plopped down on a very uncomfortable pole outside to wait. A few minutes later, we got a call from Mrs. Miskin that Gordon and Nathan were, “on the way”, whatever that was supposed to mean. We waited for even longer, before we spotted them walking above us. We decided to embarrass poor Gordon by shrieking loudly and waving our arms. He and Nathan hatched the cunning plan to ignore us completely, despite the fact that they had clearly seen us. We met them eventually, and finally got to set our bags down when we reached the car.

When we reached the Miskin’s house, we discovered Dori and the Kuivenhoven’s, and we made a plan to go to some African market place. The market was 40ish minutes away, but it was mostly worth the drive. It was in a huge warehouse type area, with a million little booths in which the people sold their wares. My major issue with the place was that the people selling things had no qualms about getting in your way and coercing you into their area, with cries of “nice stuff” and “good price for you.” Also, you have to ask the price, and it is considered proper to haggle with them. I’m bad at people being in my space, at asking questions, and also at asserting myself in a haggle type situation. The stuff was really cool, lots of traditional masks and figurines and such, along with modern t-shirts and CD’s and such. We got tired of the market pretty quickly, and wandered around the area, where there were a bunch of cafés and restaurants, as well as a snake park, that Mama Scarlett wouldn’t let us go in because it cost to get in and we had to leave soon, despite the fact that there was a guy trying to break the world record for living with poisonous snakes or something. On the way home, we drove over a river and a pretty dam and stuff, and that night, we turned in after watching Saturday Night Live, our new favorite show.

On Sunday, we again went to Mr. Dr. Rev. Miskin’s church. We continued the series on the Sermon on the Mount, getting to blessed are the merciful, the pure of heart, and the peacemakers. We had only Dori for lunch, so it was pretty quiet. It was then decided that we should go to Rev. Brian DeVries’s church in the afternoon, which started at 3. We dragged ourselves back into our church clothes, and out the door. We arrived at church a bit late, and were befuddled to see that there were no cars in the parking lot. We banged on all the doors before deciding that there must not be a service. Someone called Brian, and he came out of the adjoining house to tell us that indeed, there wasn’t a service at three. We took a quick tour of his house that he shares with two students, before returning home. I took a nap, and then we had another sermon on tape and discussion, before eating French toast for supper.

After dinner, we trooped out to Gordon’s room, ostensibly to study and prepare Bible stories for the kids at the daycare center that John, Scarlett and I were going to visit the next day. Morgy had a bunch of wooden people and shapes that we decided to base our stories around, along with some big pictures from Genesis. It took us awhile to get settled and focused, but eventually I picked the story of creation, Scarlett picked Jesus and the little children, and John the story of Zaccheus. We read the story out of the Bible and rewrote it out in our own words, then practiced them for awhile. Gordon was supposed to be doing accounting or something, but I’m pretty sure he was mostly unsuccessful. We had plans to leave at seven the next morning, so we went to bed around 11.