Cape Town Finally!! Part 1

 So I have lived in Africa for 2+ years. And I have NEVER been to Cape Town. And everyone nags me about it.... I've meant to go, really it's just that I always thought the kids and I would tag along when Jeff had to go to CT on business when school was out but then we're always traveling when school is out, and our CT trip never materialized. Of course Mom wanted to visit CT also so we decided that enough was enough and we would just DRIVE there. We had one week between the Shipwreck Trail and Christmas and so we headed out on a Monday morning and planned to be back Fri night so we could spend the weekend with Jeff. Those of you who read my last post know that we finished the shipwreck trail on Sun and didn't get home until 5pm Sunday evening so we're talking a QUICK turn-around! Backpacks unpacked and small suitcases out, here we go! We drove 8.5 hours of the 10 hour drive to a small town called Caledon and had chosen a small hotel called the Athenian Villa. It was so cute and we had this super cute room for 4, but then the owner offered Grammy her OWN room so we really got to spread out!

Happy to be done with the drive!

 We headed out to dinner at this rustic local place called "The Barn". Good food and nice people.
Friday would be another long driving day back to PE so we really had 3 full days to take in all we could of the Eastern Cape. We decided to do a Wine Country Day, a City Day, and a Cape of Good Hope Day. Our strategy of only driving to Caledon was perfect as the Wine Country is on the way to Cape Town so we were right there. We got a map  and tried to pick out a vineyard to tour. But there were HUNDREDS of them! Where do you start? My friend Lisa had mentioned in passing that she thought Franschhoek had a wine tram of some sort and we googled it and sure enough, a tram/train tour that would take you to 8 vineyards and you could even pick the blue route or the red route! We were in. We drove to Franschhoek and got some of the last tickets of the day since it was a public holiday.

 Franschhoek is GORGEOUS! A tiny little picturesque town tucked into the mountains with vineyards and lovely Dutch architecture...

 We toured around on the tram and then got to hit the ones accessed by train. What fun!

 On the Wine train.... all aboard!

 Picture-perfect Franschhoek. It makes you want to spin on a mountain like Maria Von Trapp...

 We finished our tour (which would have been a lot more fun if I didn't have to drive to CT afterward...) and then jumped in the car. Capetown was only about 45 minutes down the road. We had rented this little apartment that I found on some crazy website and it was awesome. 2 bedroom, 2 bath, lovely kitchen, and it was on this cute canal... we even had our own little dock!

We were right in this new, modern section of the city called Century City and there was this HUGE (Texas-sized) mall that was adjacent to our apartment. Adjacent like a 3 minute walk through a secret door that we had a key card to. Teddy was feeling sick so he jumped in a bath and Sasha and I walked to the mall and brought home some grub. We ate in our little apartment and hit the sack. It had been a fun but long day in the sun.
The next day was our city day. We headed straight to Table Mountain to ride the cable car to the top:

 There was a massive line for tickets but someone had tipped me off and we had already bought our tickets online (why everyone doesn't do this is beyond me... you'd think the word would be out by now...) So we skipped the entire line, and were ushered straight to the cable car and right on. Woohoo! It was like having a FastPass.... Almost to the top, what a view!

 We had another SPECTACULAR day. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and you could see for miles. We looked all around:

 You could see all the way to the tip of Africa!

 We explored the top and hiked a bit and then took another car down as we had more of the city to see. The floor of the car spins as you go up and down so you get a 360° view as you ride.

 Next we headed to the Victoria and Albert Waterfront. We had 3 goals: 1.) The Scratch Patch at Mineral World, 2.) A cool food Market 3.) A Lego exhibit. First the Scratch Patch. There's this place that has about 1,000,000,000,000,000 polished gemstones and they just have them like half a foot deep in this one area. You can buy a bag of whatever size you want and then in you go and put whatever you want to in your bag. BEST. THING. EVER. First of all it's like ice-skating, trying to walk around on all these polished rocks but it feels really cool. Second getting down IN the rocks and just touching all of them and running them through your hands or making rock angels or whatever is fabulous. And then you get to look at them all and pick the ones you want to take home! We were in heaven.

Looking in every area:

 South African Ball-Pit:

 I asked Grammy if she wanted a bag and she said "No" and I was like "Have you LOST your MIND?" Then she got in there and was like "Yes! Of course I want a bag!!" These 2 were in heaven. The rocks were all warm and toasty from the sun too... luscious. We had so much fun the rest of the trip taking out our rocks, saying why each one was special and why we had picked it, and why our collection was the best. (Mine)

 Then we went to this AMAZING food market where a million incredible vendors sell everything from wild game to coffee to desserts. Foodie PARADISE! I gave the kids their own money and sent them off to scrounge up whatever looked good and they came back with some kind of gorgeous yogurt parfait and a few different meat pies. Mom and I got some specialty samosas, jambalaya and a beautiful piece of Springbok with mash. It was all sensational. I forgot to take pics.... but afterward I had remorse so I took this pic for you of the view of Table Mountain from our outside table:

With our hunger abated we set off to check out the Lego exhibition: "The Art of the Brick." It was pretty cool...

 Our fav! Is this one for sale?!?

 So neat!

 After that we headed back to the food market for the dessert round and got some really yummy ice cream. Headed back to the apartment, had a swim and then headed out to what we had heard was a cool "local" seafood place. It was actually kind of lame and waaaay overpriced but getting hosed as a tourist is part of the deal sometimes. Can't complain about a seafood meal after a great day in CT right?

Hiking the Shipwreck Trail.... last 2 days

Lily Pad Hut to Fish River Diner:
The next morning Ted and I woke up early and he started a little fire with the hot coals still in the pit and some new wood. This is officially his first 100% Teddy fire and he was quite proud of it! We sat and talked over cocoa, coffee and some gluten free rusks.

We saw more giraffes on our way out of the reserve:

And then it was back to the beach! This day we had quite a long hike down the beach and then over farmland to an old stone cottage.

But we had to take our time on this section... because there is coal AND shards of pottery from shipwrecks that you can find on the beach with careful hunting. I was skeptical, but we started to look.

The coal was pretty easy to find but we also found pottery shards! Sasha found the first one and after that it was "game on". They were tough to spot... with hard searching you could find 1-2 pieces per hour, but it was addicting and hard to stop looking!

When we found Dave's markers we started our trek though the dunes:

And what dunes they were!

Climbing piles of slippery sand is TOUGH! But the kids just laughed and grabbed each other and we made it to the top of each hill.

Finally we popped out the other side onto solid ground. Check out Teddy's hiking stick... it got more tricked out as the trip went on!

"I think I see the cottage!"

We had a 4 km hike through beautiful fields and lots of cows. Then we came around the corner and spotted this: an old stone cottage built in the 1800's! How cool!

First thing we had to do was check out our stash of shipwreck pottery. We were pretty impressed with our efforts!

A closer look:

This was our last night and it felt like the Stone Cottage was kind of like a halfway house transitioning us back to real life. Lily Pad was pure nature but Stone Cottage had electricity, running water, and a lot of comforts. Can't really call it backpacking but it let us ease back into reality! Dinner in the old kitchen:

Another shot of the cottage:

After dinner we gathered in the little living room with a fire and our book:

The next morning we had yogurt for breakfast and I got to test-drive my wilderness spoon that I made from a shell on the beach and a piece of rib bone we found in the reserve:

Then we had a 14km hike to the mouth of the fish river. The wind was blowing hard but thank heavens, it was at our backs! Teddy likes to climb every dune and you can see the wind whipping the sand off of this one!

Made it to the top!

We passed the Fish River Lighthouse:

And these 2 spent the morning laughing and singing together. What awesome hiking buddies!

All too soon it was time to brush off the sand and put our shoes on for the last time....

Most hikers end their trip with a meal at the Fish River Diner but we were lucky enough to finish on a Sunday when they have a brunch that is locally famous. We got there around 2pm and we were HUNGRY! The brunch didn't disappoint us and we sat down to a fabulous meal of good old fashioned country cooking - Africa style!

It was a trip we will always remember... so many wonderful moments and we have to figure out what to do with all that pottery!

Hiking The Shipwreck Trail...Day 4

3 Sisters to the Lily pad Hut
    It's amazing how sometimes the days that you think might be a total disappointment turn out to be the coolest. We were so excited for day 4 because we had a short hike and then an 8km paddle into a game reserve and our next hut. But that morning, Dave the trail manager called to say that the wind was strong, and it was coming mts to sea so we would have an 8km paddle upstream AND upwind with 2 canoes and a kid in each. No good. And Jeff and I fully agreed. That sounded like an epic in the making. So we opted for a car shuttle to the next hut. It made for an easy day as we settled in and then decided to explore the game reserve on foot and just take a day hike. But first we had to settle into the Lily Pad hut, which turned out to be the coolest hut of the whole trip! Ted and Sash quickly claimed a cabin and then created a new game of rolling off the top bunk onto a stack of mattresses on the floor. How they never managed to injure themselves on this trip is beyond me!

Our main deck:

Looking toward the adult cabin and the braai area:

Adult cabin:

Braai/kitchen:

We set out with lunch in our packs for a "short hike" to a picnic spot. Ted wasn't that keen to leave the hut but we told him that we were pretty much only going to hike to the dam. We spotted some Zebra right away:

There were tons of animals on the reserve and they were totally spooked by 4 people on foot! They see tons of people but all in safari vehicles so we had to walk really quietly and every time we spotted animals they bolted. Nyala:

We found this skeleton and we think it was a zebra. Ted took a bone and I snagged a rib to make a spoon with later.

Then we decided to bushwhack up the hill all the way to the entrance road following game trails. You can see the damn where we had promised to have lunch way in the distance!

Giraffes wondering who we are. They are used to creatures with 4 tires and multiple heads, not 1 head and 2 legs. We were freaky indeed!

We hiked a HUGE loop all the way around the reserve and then along the river. It was about a 3 hour hike and Ted never complained once even though it turned out to be much longer that we had advertised. Sometimes one thing just leads to another! We found a nice picnic spot on the river where we finally sat down and ate our late lunch. There were all these cool flowers with 2 kinds of color. These were yellow and pink and there were also identical flowers that were purple and white. Gorgeous!

Ted and his massive 5 pound bone that he carried for about 4 miles....

That evening we fired up a "donkey boiler" which is this cool thingamajig that heats up water in  pipes. Hot showers for all! You can see the fire in the donkey boiler in the background behind Ted...

Then feeling very clean and refreshed, we decided to take "sundowners" to the game hide near the dam where we could sip our drinks and observe any animals that might be out there. It turns out that there were quite a few:

Animal observation:

We spotted this Mama impala and her baby:

It was a bummer not to get to do the paddle, but it had turned out to be a great day! And we decided to come back in Feb for a weekend trip just to do the paddle leg of the trail.

We had a great evening with dinner, reading and just hanging out:

Jeff was reading and Ted came over, sat in my lap, and passed out about 3 minutes later. These lap pass-outs are getting few and far between and I will cherish each one while I still get them!