Week One

Week One Feb 5 – 12

We awake at the crack of noon. Our tasks are clear: Vehicle. Phone. Internet. The rest of life will take care of itself.

We drive to the other side of Hermanus and the car dealers for our fact finding mission. Started with Nissan, then Toyota, then Hyundai. Mostly new vehicles, and the prices are high. A new 4x4 Hyundai Tucson is 240,000 rand = $34,000. Should we go with 4 wheel drive? Should we go SUV or pickup…bakkie? A bakkie (buck-ee) is the SA nickname for a pickup truck. Decisions. “Around here the roads are fine," the salesman tells us, "but if you’re going into Africa, you’ll want 4x4.” Huh? I thought we WERE in Africa! But the car salesman, and others since refer to everything north of here as "Africa, the REAL Africa."

Next day we drove toward Cape Town, with the Strand Nissan our destination, and maybe a few other dealerships. Continued on the beach road past the surfers and beach towns of Betty’s Bay, Rooiels, Pringle Bay, and finally to Strand. Peter, a kind of Peter Sellers type, is there to meet us in the modern showroom. We test drive the XTrail, 5 speed, 70000 km, 189,000 rand =$25,000.. Not bad, roomy, seats fold flat for sleeping, roof rack, spotlights. He has another coming from Joburg, automatic, demo, 40000km, same price. We’ll be back.

Decided against going into CT any further as it’s getting later and we are pretty much set on the Xtrail. Near Stanford on the return trip, we think about grabbing a bite. As we proceed down main street, Queen Victoria St,. there is quite a gathering of cars and people just behind the Info bureau. Pulling up to a football sized open field, the village green, we see the masses, milling about, sitting on the grass, on lawn chairs, smoke billows from the braai (barbecue, the national pastime) area, music. Wow! What the hell is this?

We shyly tried to mix and discover that the food is free, the wine is flowing (lots of drunk guys), and the occasion is a book signing by a local author. She has sponsored the whole gig. Great! Yes, we bought the book, had her sign it, mingled, went for seconds on the boerwors (SA sausage), had a few beers and made some friends. Notably, Micheal, the chef at the Birkenhead Brewery and Vineyards. Into his cups, he buys me a beer right off, can’t be all bad. We talk US politics and get the update on Obama-Clinton, McCain, since we are without tv or internet. At the end, he invites us out for comp Sunday lunch at the brewery.

Later, Mimi wakes me in the middle of the night shrieking, wailing incomprehensibly like a ghost, a banshee with the screamin' mimi's, spooky as hell. “A, B, C, D…” It goes on for 10 minutes and I elbow her awake. Dazed, she recounts her nightmare in which people in a house must be killed the same way as their previous owners, and knives, and all kinds of awful gory details. A guy dressed in all black. A portent…?

Sunday morning pops up and we go for a nice run, our first since arriving, out to the plaat (beach) and back, about 6 km. Hurriedly showered and dressed and drove to the Birkenhead. Yes, Michael was there, and yes, he remembered the night before as he enters the restaurant from the garden clothed in …all black!!!

I started with the sampler beer set. Loved them all, really. Excellent beers, but went with the pilsner, though the lager is similar to a Heineken. Then he gave us the personalized tour of the works. Cool. Tasted some right out of the big stainless steel tub, mmmmm. Then it was time for lunch. Mimi goes for calamari and I went with chicken/shrimp salad. OMG. A bottle of icy cab sauv. The world is looking very good. Another bottle, please. Then a cake dripping in cream and a coffee and a grappa. Finally, a smooth SA brandy. OMG.

After much frivolity and heavy talk about politics, life, and kids, we are off.

The universe and we are one. Mimi wants to drive, using the "You drank my brandy” rationale. OK. We want to go the beach, and the closest one is through Stanford and out to the plaat. Over the gravel road, past the guard gate, “Yes", he says, "it is OK for this car.” And further toward the sound of the surf we go. Coasting over the loose sand like Arabs on a flying carpet. Drunk Arabs. The last dune between us and the waves is straight ahead….

Whoomp. That’s the sound a car makes when its front wheel is buried up to its chassis in sand. We were.

No problem, we’ll just dig it out and off we go. Heck, we’re desert people, right? Mexico-trained. An hour later, grains of sand in every crevice of our bodies, and the only progress was a meter forward, 100 cm back.

What to do? Call all of our friends. Michael. Mimi clambers up the dune to get a signal (we had gotten Vodacom phone service) and connects, tentatively with him in town. Sure, be right out. As the sky darkens, and the rain snaps on the hood and roof of the rental Toyota, we wait. The buzz is gone. The universe’s bond with us broken.

Eventually the rain lets up and we go back up the dune. And there he comes, the sand man. Sand in the glasses, sand clinging to his half wet black shirt, and looking none too happy.

He’s stuck, too. Just a km back.

Mike phones a friend, a plumber. Good, thinks I, a plumber is much better in this situation than a teacher , ex-teacher, and a chef. He arrives, after another 45 min. ties a far too weak nylon rope to Michael’s submerged (sub-sanded) bakkie, it snaps. After a bit we give up and he takes us, weary, deflated, defeated, back to de Kelders.

After a night of no-sleep, we get up at 6 to be ready for Gerhard to take us to the Birkenhead to meet Michael and attempt Car Rescue Part II. Through not-enough-coffeed eyes, we amble up the hill and he is just pulling out in his white Mercedes 230. He whizzes along the N43 as the skies morph from the deep gray swirls we had over our house to bright blue and cotton white cumulus over Stanford. “It’s a tiny incident in a long life,”opines Gerhard. The road crests a hill and the view down to the rectilinear town is outstanding, mountains flanking it to the inland and green fynbos leading to the sea in the other direction.

Michael is there, having changed from all black to a t-shirt that reads, “I’m not as stressed as I appear.” Yeah right. Koos, and Wilfrid, one older and one younger farming types and two blue dungareed field workers join Mimi and me in the back of the well-worn maroon bakkie, a shovel and a few 1x4’s are the only equipment in sight. Not to worry, as I am relieved that at least we have some “real men” to help out, not a teacher and a chef.

The road goes straight through Stanford and turns to gravel as it nears the river. It passes some large holdings, farms, guest houses, and after some 20 km passes a wooden guard shack. From there, the road loses its quality and slowly turns rougher and rougher and sandier and looser and well, no sober person would ever drive a little Toyota Yaris out there.

Eventually, longer than we’d remembered, we reach Michael’s bakkie, its ass sticking up in the air like a high schooler shooting a moon at us. Some quick digging, roll up the sleeves and a six-person heave ho and, miraculously the truck finds purchase and removes its body backwards from the hole it had dug itself.

Now our car. We walk up the road to it, finding it shooting the same moon. Again, lots of digging, and lots more heave ho, and with some up and back, up and back, we extricate ourselves. Halleluiah.

Gingerly, we 2nd gear it all the way back through yesterday's puddles and rock strewn sand.

Maybe we aren’t quite ready for African adventure yet.