Day 23 – Our First Day of Life in the Cape

Our two bedroom flat is really an attached cottage to a main house with a full kitchen, a living/dining room combination, and one bathroom with a shower/tub combo. The back yard has a nice sized pool and a braii (South African word for barbeque grill). We had some coffee, some milk, and some water. Other than than that, our cupboard was bare (except for plates, pots/pans and cutlery). So, today was designed to get some errands accomplished except that we had no vehicle! Enter our landlord, Franz, and the problem was solved quickly.

He organized for us to borrow a nice late model Mercedes Benz from a friend of his, and he had a nice “cruiser style” Korean motorcycle. I got the car and Reese the motorcycle so he could have a way to school that is about 3 kilometers away. Franz took us to Stellenbosch to get the rest of our luggage we had left there when we headed out to Durban, and he has a pick up (called a bakke here) so it worked nicely. We ended up with a lot of stuff, so we pretty much filled out his pick up bed. I had also pre-purchased a couple of cases of chardonnay from Lanzerac, so I had to pick that up as well. While at it, Franz ended up buying 5 cases for himself! There was a sale on and the bottles cost R12 each, or the equivalent of $1.55 US, and it was very high quality stuff!

We also went to the mall in Somerset West (it is literally 15 minutes to Stellenbosch), and I ended up buying us cell time and internet time there. We went to Pick n Pay and bought groceries, had lunch at the Spur (the same chain we ate at in Durban where a steak costs $12.00). Then we came home and collapsed.

There is a TV in the place, but the cable wasn’t working. Franz said he would organize it for Monday, but this is still a developing country so it ended up being more like Wednesday or Thursday. In the interim we had some good books we wanted to read, so we really did not miss TV much. After all, if we needed anything we had the internet by USB modem on our cell network.

Our beds were simple but firm (my favorite) and had a bottom sheet and a duvee. It is winter here and they do not insulate their homes here for the most part, but the duvee did its job and we both slept quite soundly as Reese was not feeling well. I think the reality of our being here for a while and facing some of the unknowns was starting to set in by now.