From where I'm sitting…

So…the funny thing about being at a resort and doing very little other than lying on the beach (in the shade, obviously) reading between meals is that time rather collapses. It’s been a few days since I posted, but there’s not been all that much going on to put together an update. Here’s my best effort:

On Monday: Andrew went water skiing. In the process, he lost one of his contacts. That’s bad in the short term for obvious reasons, but good in the long term because he’s finally agreed to have his eyes lasered. He also stepped on a sea urchin, which put two spines into his left food. He had to go to the infirmary so they could pull them out. He was much less complainy about it than I would have been.

On Tuesday: We went snorkeling. Which was fun, but my back got a little sunburned despite putting on waterproof SPF 30. Oh well. It’s already just tan, so it wasn’t a real sunburn. We saw lots of cool fish, but the coral itself wasn’t nearly as pretty as when we snorkeled at the Blue Hole near Dahab.

Today (Wednesday): We hired a driver to take us all over the island. We went to the botanical gardens (to see the ivy, obviously). Then we went to The Adventure of Sugar, where we learned more about sugar than we ever needed to know. Also a lot about the history of Mauritius. I, for example, didn’t know this is where dodos had lived. Please can someone genetically re-engineer them? Also that there were no native inhabitants. So that was pretty cool. There was TONS to read though. And, at the recommendation of the BA High Life magazine, we went to the attached restaurant, which was good though the service wasn’t great. Andrew had tuna carpaccio and a local sausage dish. I had an aubergine/mozarella thing and then a dry curry with local venison (was this chicken born on this plate? because if it’s any less local than that I can’t eat it).

After lunch we headed to Port Louis, where we visited an old British fort, and the market, and then took the scenic route over the mountains back to the hotel. Now we’re just chilling out before dinner.

So far on this trip, we’ve not had more than 3 days in one place. This has been good for Andrew, who likes to have new things to do, but it doesn’t satisfy my deep desire to do absolutely nothing. In my daily life I spend so much time doing things (rushing places and moving around and getting sh*t done) that I really do value some down time on holiday. Reading for hours at a time. Maybe going to the gym every morning before breakfast and taking a nap every afternoon.

What’s that you say? It sounds like Oxford? Yes, I suppose you’re right: it does. Remind me again why I didn’t take a fourth year to finish my D.Phil.

Anyway, today we left South Africa for Mauritius. We got up at 6am and Rita took us back to the airport. We hung out in the lounge for a bit, and then went to get Andrew some new sunglasses. The flight was long, but BA gave us each a deck of cards to pass the time, so I’m going to (finally) teach Andrew to play Grandpa’s Game, our family version of solitaire, which is awesome.

We arrived and my cheapness paid off, since the group transfer I bought ahead of time actually ended up being a private transfer. I’m very glad we didn’t rent a car, because the roads here are awfully narrow and full of people and animals. So that worked out.

Something else that worked out? The resort we had booked burned down (oops), and so they gave us a choice of 4 other hotels to stay at. A quick tripadvisor search led me to the Beau Rivage but since then it’s been refurbished and brought under Lux Resorts as the Belle Mare. Turns out it’s pretty awesome, even though we seem to be the ONLY gay couple here.

Rather boring evening. We went to dinner at the resort’s Indochinese restaurant (wait? dinner was included in our room price? sweet!) and then sent off our dirty clothes to be washed, and now we’re about to watch Portlandia.

So begins the penultimate leg of our honeymoon. Today we flew from Cape Town up to Johannesburg. We’re here for two nights before we head to Mauritius on Saturday.

We got up at about 8 and read for a little bit before packing and then heading to breakfast. We’ll miss Franschhoek a lot, but move we must. Our only complaint, in the end, was that the A/C in our room didn’t work all that well, so it was hot sleeping. First world problems. Sigh.

Anyway, we drove back to Cape Town airport and listened to a Savage Love podcast. Always enjoyable. That said, it served as a reminder of why, next time we rent a car on holiday, we’ll get something with a rather bigger engine. It would have been nice to have been able to accelerate enough to pass people.

When we got to the lounge, we each had a massage. That was nice. And then we hung out until our flight, which was pleasant and relatively empty. On the approach to Joburg we flew through/into a really cool thunder storm.

Johannesberg is much much greener than I expected. Our friend (and coworker) Julie recommended a driver for us, who took us along to the Westcliff Hotel, which is awfully nice in an old-worldy sort of way. Bizarrely, they thought we had booked two hotel rooms (we hadn’t). On the plus side, they knew it was our honeymoon and we had a bottle of bubbly waiting for us in our room when we got there…we also had a nice card addressed to Mr & Mr House (win!). Anyway, the room is nice, and the view is lovely, but the decor might not be exactly our style:

Andrew went to the gym, and then Keats came and met us at the hotel and helped us drink the bubbly, and then he took us to Thomas Maxwell in Parkmore. The food was very good, but Andrew wasn’t feeling so hot, so he didn’t eat much. He had a salad with halloumi to start, followed by a rabbit & sausage pasta. I had gazpacho and a fillet. Keats had steak tartare and something else I obviously wasn’t paying enough attention to.

Anyway, despite Andrew not feeling great, it was a very nice meal.  Joburg…jury is still out. It seems one must drive everywhere in this city, and that’s one of my least favourite things, but the food was great and it’s wonderful to see Keats.

I’ve always wondered whether I prefer a mountain village or a beach town. This morning that was settled decisively in favour of the mountain village. It could be an unfair battle, since the view from our room here at La Petite Ferme is breathtakingly beautiful. But our view from The Clarendon in Cape Town was lovely too. But a view of the ocean is all rather uniform: look where you might, it will resemble the rest of the view. The valley and mountains in front of us offer more variety:

It may also be the mountain air that I like so much. It was lovely and cool this morning, and even though I didn’t sleep that well last night, I was up by 7am. Andrew got up soon thereafter, and went for a run, this time down into the valley. He tells me there was less traffic, which is good because I’m learning to worry in preparation for motherhood.

After another quick swim, we headed to breakfast. We both had lots of fruit (etc), and then a fritata with parmesan cheese and red onions. It was good, but the view really upstaged the breakfast. Once we were done eating, we met John, the head of the family that runs the vineyard and winery, and who started it all 30 years ago. He gave us a tour of the grapes (which included him asking me all sorts of questions that I had prepared to ask him (sigh), and of the cellars (which I really enjoyed), including letting us taste wines out of the casks (so so exciting). Then we went back up to the bar and tried a wide selection of bottled wines, and had a good discussion about screw tops.

As tour rounded out, we got John’s advice on what other wineries we should visit that day. He sent us to Stony Brook (even smaller than La Petite Ferme) and Le Motte (much much bigger: as John said, we should see how the other half live). Stony Brook was grand. The woman who runs the place with her husband helped us taste about 7 different wines, and we liked several of them quite a lot, so we bought two cases to be shipped up to to London for us. Le Motte was an altogether more formal affair. Prim young women efficiently moving you through the offerings, very helpful if we had a quesiton, but not the type of place to sit back and have a chat. That said, we bought two bottles from them (a Shiraz and a Shiraz-Grenache blend). We’ve been delighted to discover that Shiraz smells like a locker room…in a good way.

We then headed back to La Petite Ferme for lunch, and I’m delighted to say that the food was an equal match for the view. Andrew had Ostrich Carpaccio followed by Bobotie, then chocolate tart. I had a deep fried brie salad followed by rabbit stew, and then milk tart. We drank a Viognier from their cellar and a good desert wine with our puddings.

Since lunch (which we finished at about 5pm) we’ve mostly been reading and napping on our giant wonderful patio. We have to get up tomorrow at 4am to go hot air ballooning, so we’re going to bed as soon as it’s cool enough to sleep.

Today we took a beautiful drive, but we also got sandblasted and ate at a place that sounds like an American all-you-can-eat buffet.

Having been regularly thwarted by clouds in our efforts to visit Table Mountain, today we decided to head south. First we had breakfast at the hotel–have I mentioned the view is Amazing?

Anyway, after breakfast we began our journey down to the Cape of Good Hope. We were unwilling to rush, though, so we decided to head to the beach first.

The people at the Clarendon had warned us that, as the last day of summer holidays, the beaches were likely to be chock full of families and young people. Sub-optimal, right? Well we figured a way around that: nude beach! Well, kinda. We mostly went to Sandy Beach, just outside Llandudno because it’s a 20 minute hike from the parking lot and therefore almost empty. And it was, in fact. There were maybe three dozen people on a huge beach, plus 4 or 5 surfers.. Yes, some of them were naked. We played it cool, but the water played it COLD. I’m really looking forward to Mauritius next week, where the water won’t make me think I’m suffering hypothermia the moment I touch it. Mostly we were at the beach to read, which we did. I finished one of the many LRBs in my backlog, and Andrew read a New Yorker.

The only downside was the winds. At times it felt like we were being sandblasted. And sand ended up in everything. The reading materials, my bags, my ears, my leg hairs. Swimming there didn’t do any good, and it’s taken two showers since I got back to the guest house to rinse off all the sand.

After about 3 hours on the beach we’d had enough. We packed it up and continued southwards. We stopped briefly in Hout Bay to get petrol, then drove the amazingly beautiful Chapman’s Peak Drive. We ended up in Noordhoek, which (thanks be to god) is a foodie haven. It was about 2.25, though, and last lunch seatings seemed to be at 2.30, so we made a snap decision to go to Foodbarn.

Now I know what you’re thinking: Foodbarn sounds like a chain of US buffet restaurants that charge people $12.99 to eat as much as they can from a trough. We thought so too. But the menu and the look of the clientele convinced us otherwise. I had a glass of viognier, amazing calamari, and ____. Andrew started with a cucumber & mint salad with fried halloumi and tallegio followed by _____.

We left very happy and ready to see some penguins. So we headed to Boulders Beach, where we got ice cream (yay!) and saw HUNDREDS of penguins. It was almost impossible for Andrew to tear me away from the beach, but then I saw a penguin with only one leg emerging from the water. It was one of the sweetest, saddest things I’ve ever seen, watching it hobble up the beach. Andrew pointed out that it’s obviously fully grown and it’s obviously not a new problem for it, so it’s surviving just fine, but it did slightly remind me of li’l brudder.

From thence we headed to the Cape of Good Hope. The sign in the parking lot said it would be a 90 minute hike, but it ended up being closer to 45 minutes. Are we fast? Are other people just really really slow? Did we take too direct a route? We may never know, but the view from the southernmost rocks was pretty amazing. And I was only a little bit scared of heights. We saw some wild ostrich type things, but no baboons (sad face). Then we began the long drive home.

Andrew finally got his chance to jump rope, and I read some stuff. Then we went back to Beefcakes for a goodbye hamburger. I had their vodka burger, which was delicious. Andrew had some other burger I can’t remember. Our waiter was shirtless and looked like he should have been on the cover of Men’s Health. Poor guy.