I'm waiting at Capetown airport for our Flight to Johannesburg (J'burg). Yesterday we left Montagu where we had a lovely lunch with Shirley our hostess from the UK. She and her husband Paul had lived there for 7 years running Koo Karoo Guest Lodge. We had a lovely two bedroom place with lovely gardens around just behind the church and main streets, Bath and Long streets. It was a very picturesque town up in the mountains with hot thermal springs. I spent yesterday soaking in the indoor pool all by myself relaxing and doing some yoga for about an hour. Then I had scheduled a lovely massage for another hour. It was pouring rain so it was a good choice. Pat and Randy tried to see some birds but they were huddled in the bird tree and not moving whenever they went by. The day before we had stopped at the dried fruit plant and bought some dried peaches and cashews (to add to our gift bags for our family visit later on the trip and the rest to bring home), some figs for Doug's Christmas/birthday box) and some roll up of fruit for the kids. This area is known for their wines (had that at dinner) and fruit trees.
I hadn't realized before that S. Africa was such a breadbasket area with rich farmland but I should have known as it was originally settled by the Dutch seafarers to grow gardens to resupply their ships going to the Far East. Yesterday we also stopped in Franschoek (meaning French corner) where French Huguenots, fleeing from murder and persecution in Catholic France (they had followed Luther into Protestantism). They settled up in this mountainous and rich valley region, brining their grape vines. Franschoek was a lovely small town, very touristy but in a tasteful way. We had a lovely lunch/dinner at the French Connection, and visited the Huguenots Museum and beautiful monument with a woman holding a Bible in one hand and broken chain in the other to represent religious freedom.
We then over the mountains again to Stellenbosch where the oldest university in Capetown. We then had a frustrating time finding our last Airbnb reservation that was supposed to be bucolic. After two frustrating phone calls to Elaine, the owner who talked so fast I finally gave the phone to Randy who didn't have much better luck. We finally found Stanley, the Black caretaker who showed us the apartment. It had 3 bedrooms but had a hook on the door to the outside (Stanley said he was the security and Elaine was elsewhere). It also had a really odd smell and flies buzzing around. We all agreed to give Stanley a tip and tell him to tell Elaine we were leaving and it wasn't as advertised and wouldn't do.
We then drove on to the airport to find the Eurocar rental (Randy was really anxious about getting rid of that Hyundai). They told us they open at 5 a.m.. So we found loading right at the airport and got two rooms for the night. Randy had bumped into a gas pump island on the left hubcap (said it was really hard to judge distance from the right side over on the left) so he ended up being charged an extra R200 (about $20) and turned in the car at Eurocar While Pat and I checked in and got our seats.
Some Chinese tourists just asked us to take a round of pictures with them to show folks at home the freaky Americans! shades of China travels!
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