It doesn’t quite feel like summer in South Africa until one leaves the city. Then you know. By the angle of the sun. By the look of the trees. By the harvesting of the land, particularly the empty wheat fields and tractors’ wagons laden with grapes. Just as September 21 is the end of summer and the beginning of fall, so March 21 is to South Africa. It is high summer here.
So we left our B&B after another wonderful breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, toast and coffee and headed up to Table Mountain. We had bought our tickets online then headed out but it began to look like a mistake. The ‘table cloth’ was on the mountain; a cloud had descended on Table Mountain. I had seen it several times over the previous days. Very Biblical. It reminded me of the Old Testament story of Moses going up a mountain upon which a cloud rested.
The authorities had closed the cable car rides because of high winds. We would have to try one more time before we left for Pretoria. Instead we drove to Signal Hill and got photos from there. Still spectacular.
I found my way back downtown to the N1 and we headed north and east to wine country. We stopped in at Stellenbosch, the Boer heartland. Here is the Stellenbosch University where, last I heard, courses were still taught in Afrikaans. We heard Afrikaans in the shops, restaurants and on the city streets, much more so than in the Cape. If you know Dutch and English you might pick up the gist of the conversation. It reminds me of Pennsylvania Dutch, which is Alsatian or Swiss German with English mixed in.
At any rate we asked at a locally famous store where we shopped where a nice restaurant might be and she directed us to a very nice place by a creek. It was here that I began to hear the cicadas. The rest of the day I listened for them and noticed their familiar sound everywhere. I loved it. From the time I was a boy I remember the sound of cicadas in summer. My heart and mind associates the sound of cicadas with warm, hazy, lazy summer days.
We drove through Stellenbosch, out of town towards Paarl on a scenic route and arrived mid-afternoon. We stopped at the Information center to try to find Nederburg Winery and got directions. Didn’t matter, we got lost. I was reading the map upside down. By the time we figured it out we were much later in the day than we wanted to be (and I knew certain sections of Paarl much better than I wanted to). So we tried to find our way north and west to Tulbagh to find our B&B, Villa Tarantaal. I managed to find the road leading to Wellington and then to Bains Kloof Mountain Pass. An amazing drive through the mountains ascending and then descending on winding roads and many switchbacks. It was a fun drive for me, but Wanda was nervous imagining all the bad things that could happen as we drove. So then it wasn’t as fun a drive for me. We made it through unscathed. Lord be praised . . .
We found the village of Tulbagh and our B&B. Tulbagh reminds me of small towns in NA, something between Tavistock (bigger) and Stratford (smaller). It is a town that has lots of restaurants and hotels, lodges and B&B’s, a sure sign that this is an area that caters to tourists. There are several churches (Dutch Reformed and Anglican), a gas station (Shell, what else?), and a building supply store among other things. It also reminds me of Niagara-on-the-Lake because the foundation of its tourism is the wine industry. Indeed very similar.
After we settled in in the late afternoon we headed out for supper at one of the restaurants. We found a small restaurant called ‘Readers’. Great food we were told. Indeed the main dishes were great; Wanda had a stuffed chicken breast and I had pork chops with grated bleu cheese on it. Excellent. Our hostess interchanged places with the chef and owner at our table (and the other 2 tables). Our hostess took our wine order (and kept coming up empty when bottle after bottle we ordered wasn’t in stock) and our meal order but the chef/ owner came out to see how we were doing. We moved from inside to outside mid-dinner, a great move. It was so quiet out. This little place was across from a rugby field and after dark that, and really the whole town, was silent. Only the crickets were chirping. Ah, another sign of summer.
We decided to order dessert. Wanda order frozen chocolate mousse. I ordered ‘three kinds of ice cream’. What are the flavors? The hostess refused to tell me, a mystery. H-m-m, ok I can wait. The owner came out, what are the three flavors? That’s for me to know and you to find out, she said with a twinkle in her eyes. Alrighty then, we’ll see. The dish came out. I tried the ice cream. The first scoop, no good to my taste buds. The second scoop, again, nope. The third scoop, I couldn’t be sure, was this vanilla? It looked like it but there wasn’t a strong taste of it. The owner came out, what do you think? I told her honestly, didn’t appeal to me. So what were the three flavors? Balsamic vinegar, cucumber and mint, and olive oil. She was a good sport about it and took the dish back. I ordered a Cape cake with brandy, with vanilla ice cream on top (I think).
Today we’re off wine tasting in wine country, yea!!!
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