April begins

Hubby's birthday has come and gone...we made a weekend of it, going out to eat, taking in a show, hitting a couple of casinos. It was a great, relaxing weekend.

April in South Africa is roughly equivalent to October in California. The weather is cooling, storms come and go...we've had two bang up rain storms in the last 3 days, one of which has revealed yet another roof leak...and even saturated my convertible sofa. When karma gets around to that lying, cheating, sneaking SOB we bought this house from, he is going to be in a world of serious hurt!!

It is almost too cold for me to go barefoot today, although I am still in sleeveless tops. But before long I will have to unearth my hoodies and long-sleeved Ts, maybe even find my clogs and put away my sandals. Haven't worn my coat in a couple of years now, the cold here is just not that cold, except at night.

The dogs, however, are a different story. Because of my allergies, we have dogs that are single-coated...they never get an insulating undercoat, which means they never shed...but without that undercoat they don't do winter well. The Maltese Mafia have a collection of fleece jerseys...time to take them out and wash and fluff them for the upcoming months...and the Yorkies have velour tracksuits and flannel jammies and nightgowns. Sounds silly, I know, and I'm not trying to fool anyone...my Yorkies wear clothes and I think they look adorable in them...but the winter wear, while undeniably cute, is actually necessary because their outer coat doesn't provide any insulation against the cold. So, they get clothes that go over that outer coat, which then becomes their insulating layer.

We cut a bunch of overgrown trees a couple of weeks ago and uncovered a spindly, sickly little lemon tree beneath the overgrowth, valiantly struggling to find sun. I took a couple of sick-looking leaves to a nursery this weekend and got advice on how to combat the pest infesting it. Just in the short time we've had it uncovered, the lemon tree has begun to thrive. Amazing what a little light and water will do for a plant! Imagine what some fertilizer and compost will do for it!

Little Lovey is growing into a lovely dog. She was five months old a couple of days ago and while she is still brimming over with exuberance and feistiness, she is beginning to "get" the potty pads and such commands as "sit" and "come." She also loves to hear "good girl!"...she gets all quivery and her tail wags like a snapping flag! But she is still a puppy and she is teething just now (time for the big girl teeth) and will chew on anything...last week I caught her chewing on a door!) so she still requires constant supervision (thank goodness for harnesses and long leashes!).

It is overcast today, so I suspect another wave of rain is on its way. I have moved the sofa away from the leaky place and am prepared with pots this time...and I think it is time to go find my slippers as my feet are freezing on this tile floor!

And so autumn comes to South Africa...with luck I'll be seeing a few orange pumpkins in the stores soon (rare here) and then I can make some pumpkin pie (unknown here)...YUM!

Spring is sprung…well, at least it is trying…

Well, typically spring weather is upon us here in the Cape. They say that if you don’t like the weather in Cape Town, just wait a few minutes and it will change for you…and this last week has sure proven that!

Last week it rained buckets…we even had hail, a pretty uncommon thing around here. It was cold…see-your-breath kind of cold…and Thandiswe was fascinated by the “chips of ice” falling out of the sky and quickly melting on the paving stones in the courtyard.

Saturday Hubby and I went out early to run some errands and it was chilly, so we wore long sleeves. Mistake! By noon we had our sleeves rolled up and by one we had arrived back home and changed into short sleeved summer-weight shirts. It became so hot, in fact, that I turned the air conditioner on for the first time this season. Hubby says it got up to 31˚C (88˚F) before the day was over…pretty fierce for a spring day!

Sunday was cold and heavy winds were blowing. In fact, the winds were so strong I asked Hubby to move my car out from under the tree that shades the driveway and move it to the other side, just in case the tree shed another limb. Last time we were soooo lucky! The limb broke and fell onto the windscreen and bonnet of my car, but it didn’t break off! When we examined it carefully, we found the limb suspended just a couple of inches above the car, the drooping leaves and twigs making it look like it was actually on the car. Hubby carefully backed Bertha out of danger and then proceeded to limber up his new chainsaw and remove the offending limb. Last night, however, the wind was fierce and I was afraid we wouldn’t be so lucky this time…my fears proved to be unfounded, but better safe than sorry, right? Mercedes' aren’t cheap to fix, even if you have insurance!

So, after the sweltering heat of Saturday, this morning it was frigid. We’ve put up heavy lined draperies on all the windows to the bedroom and Hubby’s retreat so the room stays fairly warm at night without a space heater, but when I opened the bedroom door this morning…whoooooweeee! Talk about cold!! I swear my toes turned into fat little blue icicles the second they hit the ceramic tile floor en route to the bathroom! Yow!

It has rained on and off today, but nothing remarkable until it was time for Thandiswe to change out her uniform and go home. Poor thing, she came into my room, wide eyed, pointing to the bedroom window and a brutal onslaught of hail. The wind was blowing it at nearly a 45 degree angle and it looked like blowing snow, it was so thick! From the bedroom window I could see two hadeda birds running to and fro, looking for shelter under the bushes and tree and finding none. They ran around on the lawn, looking bewildered and confused, and finally stalked off on their stilt-like legs into the shelter of the bushes against the garden wall.

The hail continued for about five minutes…a very long time when you are standing watching it and waiting for it to stop. The earth was too warm for the hail to accumulate, however, so we just watched it bounce off the lawn and the paving stones, surrounded by the roaring of the wind.

That was an hour ago. Now, a bright ray of sun is illuminating the very spot where the hadeda birds ran to and fro in a freezing deluge of hail. Yep…it’s springtime in Cape Town, all right.

Whiling away the weekend...

Yellow star: my house. Green star: the vlei

Racing season is upon us. In the stillness of a late winter afternoon I can hear the distant drone of the straining engines as they circle the track. It's one of the signs...Spring will soon be here.

But the weather station is predicting rain in two days time, confirming the message my back and hip have been giving me for two days. The vleis are carpeted with wild calla lilies and the Namaqualand is blooming despite winter’s grip having only loosened. More storms brood in the wings, awaiting their cue to lash us with yet more wind, rain, and frigid temperatures.

Soon we will be out in The Baby, her top down, cruising alongside the coastal waterways, admiring the views and basking in the South African sun. But for now we huddle in the warmth of our bed, coddled with quilts and duvets, and nap away a Saturday afternoon to the lulling buzz of the distant races.

Soon it will be spring.

Photo from http://www.geocities.com/russell_sheldon/tobaccowars/T_001_Killarney.jpg

Rainy days and warm, homey smells...

My house smells wonderful! The bread machine has been churning out fragrant loves since this morning and today Thandiswe reminded me that I wanted to make chocolate chip cookies with the chocolate chips I found at the market last week.

Believe it or not, it has been five whole years since I’ve had chocolate chip cookies. It’s one of those odd little things that you don’t notice are missing from the shelves until you get a craving for choccy chip something and discover nobody has a clue what you are talking about!

But last week I saw Chips Ahoy! cookies in the biscuit aisle (cookies are known as biscuits here) and suddenly I was on my way to the baking goods aisle to see if South Africa had discovered chocolate chips yet. YES!

I suppose I shall have to wait a few more years for milk chocolate chips and white chocolate chips, but that’s ok…my cookie recipe originated with only dark chocolate chips, so although I’ll be stepping back in time a bit, the cookies will be fabulous.

Thandiswe has never tasted chocolate chip cookies, so I guided her through making them and left her to bake the last two batches. Sixty cookies later, the house smells divine, the cookie jar is full, and Thandiswe is grinning from ear to ear…I gave her a bag of cookies to take home for herself and her kids. She thinks everything I cook is “American food”…except for the curries, of course…and after tasting the cookies, she declared she very much liked American food!

It is raining again, but the wind has died down.

It’s a good day to stay snug inside.

Winter wet and windy

It’s the Fourth of July. Today, all over America, people are preparing picnics and cookouts, planning trips to the park or the beach, and looking forward to firework displays. Tomorrow they will b nursing sunburns and hangovers, traditional legacies of America’s celebration of her independence from Britain more than 200 years past.

It is almost 10 in the morning here in Cape Town and it is the dead of winter. The rain alternates between downpour and deluge and, with no central heating, the doggies and I are tucked up in the bed with the mattress pad heater beneath us and a duvet topped by a boutis quilt, weighty and warm, on top of us.

The light is dim, more like immediate post-dawn than approaching noon, and the best news is the infamous Cape Doctor…that stiff and bracing wind so characteristic of these parts…has not decided to pay us a visit concurrent with the monsoon. I’ve never been fond of extreme weather, and one form or another at any given time is all my nerve will take with equanimity. I especially dislike heavy winds and coupling them with a torrential rain is my particular idea of hell.

But, ever the seeker of the silver lining, I will say this for today’s dim and soggy state: the wind is tolerable, there is no thunder, no lightning, and if I go outside for a bit of a stroll, I won’t get sunburned, only damp…and between the clothes dryer and a cupboard full of fat, fluffy towels, that is quickly and easily remedied…and without lasting ill effect.

But the doggies seem to have the right of it, tucked up warmly in the bed, snoozing the foul weather away. Perhaps I should join them…

Rain, rain, go away...

It is raining cat and dogs. It is also raining lions, tigers and baby elephants....must be, otherwise how to account for the roaring and booming outside?

It is Christmas Eve Day in Cape Town, the land of summer sun and winter rain...it is high summer...and the skies have opened up and simply drenched us! The doggies are inside, huddled in their bed, quaking with each boom of thunder, certain that doom is upon us. And in the middle of the downpour comes a phone call from our holiday tenant, a young man who has rented our cottage for his Christmas holiday, that he has arrived and can we come let him in.

"Did you bring the rain with you?" my husband quipped, knowing our tenant had driven down from Gauteng, the home of summer rain. The man shook his head ruefully and gratefully accepted the proferred umbrella.

We showed him through the property, gave him the keys, and inquired if there was anything we could do for him. "Where's the beach?" he asked hopefully. Hubby gave him directions and he smiled his thanks. A Gautenger in Cape Town is like a Nebraskan in San Francisco...just show him to the big water!

Naturally, as soon as I was no longer struggling with locks and gates and an unwieldy umbrella, the rain stopped. Our Gauteng friend was probably frolicking in the icy Atlantic before my hair was dry, the rain having stopped about the time we handed over the keys.

Oddly enough, we were expecting the rain despite forecasts and barometer readings to the contrary. Two nights ago...when the weather was bright and uncommonly hot, my hip started to ache. I had to take a pain pill to sleep, because it was like a toothache, deep in the bones. Last night it was the other hip aching. We checked the barometer and the Oregon Scientific weather station: one was predicting sun, the other predicting clouds. My hip, it seems, is the only accurate one among the three!

Hubby's Mum and Grandmum have been here for a week and we've enjoyed entertaining them. Grandmother, who turned 80 this year, is not especially impressed with the big malls and their shiny stores...it wasn't until we took a drive to the open-air market in Gatesville on Saturday that she perked up. Several hours (a quite a few rand) later we made our way back home and gratefully retreated to the cooler confines of the house, the sun having been brutal. Hubby decamped to the air conditioned comfort of the bedroom while we women sat around in the dining room unpacking and admiring our purchases. Over the course of the week we managed to decimate a mall full of factory shops and suck down half a tank of petrol finding the factory shops that weren't conveniently clustered together.

Tomorrow is Christmas and they are flying back to Durban in the evening, so tomorrow morning I'll be up early stuffing the turkey and putting together a fat Christmas dinner. We'll be having Christmas pudding and vanilla custard for dessert if I can figure out the proper way to serve them....

Durban Holiday: Out of the frying pan...

In early November, Hubby and I took a holiday to Durban. This is the second in a series of blog entries written on the road.

Sunday, 4 November 2007

I have never liked the town of Harrismith. The first time I was there it struck me as a dirty, dreary, disorganized little hamlet and nothing I have seen since has done anything to disabuse me of that notion. There is just one thing that makes me look forward to entering Harrismith, and that is the certain knowledge that, once we have wended our way through the inexplicable maze of dirty little unkempt streets and placed our tyres firmly on the N3, our journey is near to its end. As a harbinger of better things to come, it is incomparable, but as a destination in its own right, Harrismith is just a boil on the butt of South Africa.

Now, I am not easily intimidated, but Harrismith scares me. When we first entered the town from the northwest, there was a rather confusing confluence of poorly marked streets that gave us pause. Ordinarily when you make a change from one national road to another, you take a turnoff from one highway to the next, an effort generally involving off-ramps and clear signage. Typically the road is in reasonably decent condition and you just follow the sign boards to determine where to exit, which way to turn, and where to enter. It could not be simpler…unless you are attempting to exit the N5 and enter the N3 in Harrismith.

Under the best of circumstances, making that short little trek is fraught with difficulty. On our first attempt, several years ago, we immediately got lost due to signage that ranged from poor to non-existent. We ended up going the wrong way through a rather dodgy part of town…in the dark…and ultimately had to find a petrol station to get directions. I was desperate for a loo, and while Hubby got directions from the station attendant, I approached the loo with great trepidation, loathe to thread my way through the motley collection of loiterers…many of them quite obviously intoxicated…who were hanging about in front of the door. The condition of the place did nothing to inspire confidence in its sanitation, but beggars can’t be choosers, so I accomplished my mission and got out of there double quick.

I jumped into the car and we sped off, only find the directions questionable. We arrived at the spot where we were supposed to find the entrance to the N3 only to find a battered, barely paved track leading off to the left and under a cement freeway bridge…no lights, no signage. Cautiously we approached…it looked like we were driving into a dark alleyway where thugs could be waiting to swarm over us as soon as we were out of sight of the main body of traffic on the road in front of the Spur, but as we made the curve we found, to our great surprise, a familiar green and white signboard indicating we were on the right path to the N3 and Durban.

Our second slog through Harrismith was little different. There was still no clear signage indicating the direction to the N3 and this time the road had been re-routed so that we had to cross a dismal little watercourse over a narrow bridge. But, once we got to the proper end of town, we recognized the on ramp and merrily headed down towards our destination.

Our most recent experience, however, was the absolute worst. First, we got to Harrismith at twilight. Second, on exiting N5 there was a detour sign directing us left and when we followed it, it took us to a Y intersection devoid of directional signage. Knowing that, as the crow flies, the N3 entrance was to our right, we made the counter-intuitive choice, this being Harrismith after all, and took the left fork. We followed the road under an ancient railroad bridge and soon found ourselves in a queue to cross Harrismith’s dismal little joke of a river…on a one lane bridge! It was nearly dark and the only illumination was the glaring headlights of the cars and trucks on the other side of the bridge, awaiting their turn to cross.

Hubby shook his head, clearly annoyed, and muttered a few imprecations about this being an inexcusable way to connect from one national highway to another…no signs, no lights, no lane! Curbing my own tongue, I thought about those highway interchanges I had seen off in the middle of nowhere between Beaufort West and the road to KwaKwa and thought to myself, these people should be ashamed of this mess! Even if they wanted the traffic to wend its way through their town in a bid to collect a few traveller’s rands, they should have taken a lesson from neighbouring Bethlehem, which routes traffic through a clean, well-kept town, using huge signboards and on clean, wide, well-paved streets. As it is, Harrismith is a place you want to get out of as fast as you can, not a place that encourages you to linger a while and leave a little money behind in the bargain.

Finally, we got over the bridge and, taking direction from a small yellow sign (unlit) propped up in a gutter, we made a right turn onto a paved town street. This worked well for about two blocks after which the paving disappeared. Literally. We were suddenly clunked off the pavement onto a rocky, rutted, uneven mishmash of gravel, dirt, holes, and bits of old pavement still clinging to the original roadbed. The gravel road out to my father’s farm is better terrain than this! What little ambient light remained was weakened by the choking cloud of dust that boiled up around us and the oncoming traffic…a few cars interspersed with a lot of really big trucks…and we decided to take a break from the confusion and have dinner. There was a Spur dimly visible to our right as we finally punched through that cloud of dust, and Hubby was starving.

I don’t know what we were thinking...that the traffic would melt away during our break, perhaps...but Hubby and I had a quick meal and returned to the fray. The situation had not improved in our absence, and the ratio of trucks to cars seemed to have increased in favour of the trucks. But we knew where the entrance to the N3 was and, fortified with a hearty meal and the happy knowledge that we were but three hours from our destination, we again braved Harrismith’s incomprehensible traffic plan and set out to hit the Escarpment and wend our way down to the Indian Ocean.

It wasn’t as easy as we expected. Dodging and weaving between the huge commercial trucks, we got across the street and headed to the on-ramp only to discover that the road that lead to it had disappeared! In its place was an unlit rubble-strewn construction yard littered with stacks of cement pipe, piles of gravel and sand, and construction equipment. We could see the freeway overpass and the opening beneath is that used to be the on-ramp to the N3, but it was on the far side of the construction yard and the signage was gone. Where was the entrance to the N3? Had they constructed a new one? Just exactly how in the hell were we to get to Durban?

Hubby followed a truck, hoping it would be en route to the elusive N3, only to find himself piloting Bertha into a truck yard. Bless his heart, Hubby is not one of those guys who refuses to ask directions…he pulled right up to the truck boss and asked him how get onto the N3 to Durban and, to our horror and surprise, the man pointed to the construction yard!

By now it was full dark and that construction yard was unlit. The only light was a feeble spill over from the truck yard’s overhead lights and the intermittent illumination provided by the vehicles that braved the rutted darkness. Hubby saw a truck turn into the gloom and quickly pulled in behind it, using its tail lights as a guide through the plumes of dust churned up by countless wheels rolling through the dirt and gravel. At the last minute our headlights illuminated a sign that directed us under the overhead bridge and Hubby swung Bertha to the right and we plunged into absolutely pitch black hell, the road no more than a series of holes, gravel and a swirling haze of dust. Eventually the road smoothed out, but there was no light save Bertha’s headlights, and so it was with sudden surprise we found ourselves merging into the seething tide of vehicles hurrying their way down the N3 to Durban.

We heaved a sigh of relief at having been safely delivered from Harrismith, and I remarked that I had always disliked the town, that I found it scary. Hubby shook his head slowly and replied that, after navigating this outrageous debacle of disgracefully poor planning and execution, he was afraid of Harrismith, too!

* * *

Our sigh of relief was premature. As we exited the labyrinth of Harrismith and headed towards Van Rienen’s Pass, a bright flash of light off to the right caught my attention. Some kind of beacon, I reasoned, perhaps something to alert aircraft. A few moments later it flashed again but the third flash did not come at the regular interval one would expect of a beacon.

“What’s that?” I asked Hubby, pointing out the window.

“What’s what?” he asked, eyes glued to the dark curving road.

“That flash of light over to the right.”

He rolled his eyes briefly and then fixed them back on the road. “Lightning,” he said, a tinge of exasperation in his voice. How, after all, could I not recognize lightning?

“You’re kidding,” I said. “It had an orangey-red centre…lightning doesn’t have an orangey red centre.”

“It’s lightning, I tell ya,” he said, squinting into the gloom.

“Well, if it is,” I replied, “I hope it doesn’t mean a thunderstorm.”

There is a belief that to name something is to make it real. You do not speak the name of the devil or his minions lest your naming them opens the gates of Hell and releases the little beasties upon you. That belief should be expanded to include weather phenomenon.

The treacherous trip down Van Rienen’s Pass in some serious darkness was accomplished with a minimum of knuckle biting. But when we arrived at the Mooi River toll booth, it was apparent that rain had recently visited the area. Hubby made some comment about the storm being past…a mistake of matchless proportions since it opened those gates a second time. Before we knew it, we were hurtling down a steep winding road in darkness relieved primarily by the blinding high beams of the oncoming traffic…with rain splashing on our windscreen.

“Looks like we are driving into the storm,” I commented innocuously.

Mistake number three…within seconds, the rain was pelting down in sheets and the windscreen wipers, turned up full, could barely handle the downpour. We went on a while, driving through various intensities of rain and I found myself thinking ‘As bad as this is, at least it’s not foggy!’

Yup, you guessed it...within seconds we swopped rain for fog! At first it was ragged little swirly bits that flirted with us, momentarily blanking out the view but then coyly retreating, but it soon tired of the game and attacked us with a vengeance. My lead-footed Hubby actually slowed down after turning on our fog lamps and finding the fog no less impenetrable. At some points we punched through the fog into a mercifully clear patch, but only just long enough to catch our breaths and plunge right back into the all-obscuring wall of thick, opaque mist.

Eventually we got far enough down the mountainside to escape the fog, only to find the sheets of rain had returned. It poured on us all the way into Durban, where it finally let up only minutes before we reached our destination. It was 10:30, we were exhausted, and we were so relieved to have finally arrived that it took a moment to register that the parking area of our B&B was full and there was no place to put Bertha! The night guard came to our rescue and directed us to an alternative, a single garage just a few metres up the hill. It was so narrow that I had to get out of the car before Hubby eased it inside, and he even had to fold up Bertha’s mirrors to make it, but finally we had her ensconced in her snug little berth and we trudged wearily to our room and collapsed into exhausted heaps on the bed. It was morning before I realized that the storm that had dogged us from Harrismith all the way to Durban had spared the Morningside area. Our Bertha, steaming and sodden from her trek through a wet Hell, had deposited us in an area that, despite the humidity that fogged my specs as soon as I exited her air conditioned interior, had received not even a passing nod of acquaintance from the storm that had dogged us for the better part of two hours…Durban was bone dry!