cookin and eatin

My friends made the most AMAZING veggie and red bean curry. You know what made it so amazing? They accidentally doubled the coconut milk the recipe called for😍

We were having a collaborative sort of meal. They had the curry, and I brought wee cornmeal pancakes (which were quite tasty and I have no memory whatsoever of where I got the recipe HAHA OH WELL!) I also brought this tasty creation:

For New Years I made a hippiefied version of the traditional Southern combo of beans+greens+pig which involved

• Dried mung beans (what I had!)
• Trader Joe’s vegan chorizo
• a bunch of collard greens
• a can of fire roasted tomatoes

And I think very little else. It was REALLY good.

My friends sent me home with leftover curry (yessss!) as well as some homemade bread. You can’t really tell by the picture but Kyle, a man, was in charge of slicing the bread which meant the slices were comically large. I cut them in half and still had a hard time finishing the meal below… one slice with hot curry, one slice with cool avocado. Swoon.

When the curry was gone (boooo) I made another round of avocado toast and then made one with cheddar and a fried egg. Plus a homemade latte on the side. Mm.

I got some gorgeous butter lettuce at the farmer’s market and used it to make these lettuce wraps with a few modifications (used frozen veggie crumbles instead of turkey because the ground turkey was shockingly expensive, used bell pepper instead of cucumber because that’s what I had). They were REALLY good!

Oh yeah that first picture was taken before I remembered to put the nuts on top. I didn’t have peanuts so I used cashews. V good.

Another Thai-ish recipe involved this:

A Christmas gift from my dad. The ingredient list was pretty wholesome but the sodium! Yikes!

Fortunately I bulked it up to quite a few servings so the salt was diluted. Added:

• Cod
• bell peppers
• mushrooms

Overhyped recipes that I found a bit boring:

Ottolenghi’s whole roasted cauliflower was a whole ordeal of time and energy and blanching and butter basting for something that tasted like… roasted cauliflower I could have made in 20 minutes. The tahini herb sauce on the side was legit though. I’d make that again.

And I made The Stew. And thought it was…. too thin and pretty boring! Maybe exciting for someone who’s literally never made anything with curry flavors before?

Anyway, the sweet potatoes below came from a recipe I immediately dog-eared in the latest issue of Eating Well and they were SOOOOOOOO good. Make you some miso maple sweet potatoes. You’ll be happy you did.

Don’t worry I ate more avocado.

A random meal consisting of trader joe’s pumpkin pancakes, two fried eggs, avocado and salsa.

Lunch from monuts… salad, soup (I think it was a chicken lemon orzo kale combo), and their EXCELLENT avocado toast which involves deeply buttery bread, pepitas, and spice.

Baked sweet potato+ seasoned black beans+ avocado+ BIG drenching of Trader Joe’s pepita salsa. Mmm.

Behind the scenes of the blog:

Kitty also was interested in the dinner below which is quite funny since she’s a carnivore and the meal was vegan. Quorn burger+ toast with hummus and zhoug+ kale chips.

Amazing flavors…

whole milk greek yogurt with lemon curd and coconut granola

Buffalo hummus with celery (SO tangy! And it tastes like buffalo wings with bleu cheese dressing even though it is dairy free!)

Cooking for others…

The dietitians in my network who I meet with every few months had a potluck. I made melting potatoes (fine but not extraordinary) and threw together a mung bean dal with fire roasted tomatoes, coconut milk, and spices that ended up being quite tasty!

There were also various Whole Foods salads, and some homemade green bean casserole with a biscuit topping that I COULD NOT STOP EATING. Mmm. And an unpictured dessert section (because really, honest, dietitians like dessert too)

Another night I cooked for a dude. I made my aunt’s uh-mazing salmon.

Briefly…. You pat off a salmon filet with paper towels, then rub absurd amounts of grated ginger into it to make a thick coating over the flesh of the salmon. Then put on an absurd amount of curry powder in a thick coating on top of the ginger. Then heat up a pan til it’s screaming hot, put in some olive oil, and put the salmon in, skin side up (ginger and curry side down). Cook until it releases from the pan, and cook just a few minutes on the skin side. THEN, take the salmon out of the pan, add a bit more olive oil, and dump in some sliced leeks. Cook them til golden and put them on top of the salmon. UGH SO GOOD.

I paired the very excellent salmon with polenta and an arugula salad with Craisins and goat cheese and nuts. QUITE the classy homemade meal.

welcoming spring

Squeezed in a bunch of fun things as winter turned to spring.

We had a lovely baby sprinkle for my cousin who had her second baby (and first baby girl!) in February.

A family friend made THE CUTEST little crudites I have ever beheld. I don’t know what made the ranch-y dip pink but it was so cute!

The rest of the spread was also great. I love deviled eggs! And cheese.

Super fun evening out on the town… The Pinhook, a bar in downtown Durham, had a DOLLY PARTON BIRTHDAY PARTY! There were karaoke performances. There were drag queens (“” It’s a good thing I was born a girl, otherwise I’d be a drag queen.”- Dolly Parton). There was a costume contest. It was such good clean fun!

Then my friend Colton had a Star Wars brunch. Star Wars? YES. Brunch? YES.

Colton made a German pancake/Dutch baby and it was soooooo delish.

The rest of the spread was quite tasty too (I made Smitten Kitchen’s breakfast apple crisp).

Colton’s coworkers who joined us were totally adorable… one of them is the daughter of two people who were in an 80s era Star Wars fan club (!) and got collectibles by mail order (!) which we enjoyed flipping through

AND THEN Colton chose to diminish all that awesomeness by deciding we should watch the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad Star Wars PREQUELS. Idiot.

How Colton and I interact:

More time with my cousin and the fam. Doggos:

Toddler:

C has a great play kitchen and enjoys taking your pizza order. However, his great love is tools and taking things apart so he spent a great deal of time poking his toy screwdriver into the oven to “repair” it.

More fun: hosted a clothing swap! As usual went a bit loco on the snacks (it included: homemade chocolate chip cookies, sangria, ants on a log, red pepper dip, a billion kinds of cheese and crackers from Trader Joe’s)

This was the stash AFTER EVERYONE HAD LEFT. Made a lotttt of donations to the local thrift shop.

Went on a really fun girls’ night with the work crew. It’s funny, we look blitzed in this picture and we were not at all hahaha. We were just excited it was warm enough to sit outside I think.

I continue to have fun by spending too much money on food, oy. This is a night I hit up the taco truck… brisket taco and cheese pupusa with delicious cabbage slaw on top. I was taking a picture of it because my coworker was talking about tacos and I couldn’t stop thinking about them for three days til I finally bought them and I had to text her a pic of my loot. Lola is VERY interested in tacos haha.

Bento box from my favorite sushi guys… sashimi, crunch roll, and spicy tuna. Plus free miso soup mm.

I still often do my coffee and crossword weekend ritual at my favorite coffee spot.

And pop into Guglhupf for the occasional coffee beverage and beautiful, complimentary, teeny tiny perfect cookie.

At the beginning of 2019 my resolution was to say yes to more things. That included the activities above and also… getting on dating apps again LOL. I went on an ABSURD amount of dates from January to February 2019. Like, one time I accidentally ended up with two in one day.

As a result I:

1. Had a lot of fun.
2. Met someone I am exclusively dating now (!) which I think I will jinx if I talk about it yet (plus I have a weird tradition of getting dumped/ghosted in April?! So I will wait until May hahahaha)
3. Met a dude who kind of blew it with me on the romantic front but who I think I will be good friends with! So I will chronicle my adventures with him.

Hurray for people who will split THREE ENTREES with you at brunch hahahahahaha. (I promise we took home leftovers of the blueberry pancakes).

He lives in Greensboro so I got to check out some of the scene there including this coffee shop with amazingly named and amazing tasting beverages… I had the Bill Murray and it was soooooooo good.

My Greensboro pal has a dog who is just as cute and zoomy as they come. (Lots of dudes include cute dogs in their pics on dating apps and then it turns out IT’S NOT THEIR DOG and it is total false advertising, but this doggo is the real deal). We took him to a lake for adventures one day.

And whilst there I took a fun self portrait in this cool piece of art.

Speaking of cute animals I went to my fave coffee shop one day and there were cute reptiles there! They had a rep from the NC zoo doing a creature day for little kiddos! It was so cute.

And the cats of my neighborhood also continue to be amusing.

I participated in basketballs season to a reasonable degree. I made these beauuuuuuutiful cupcakes and I’m not saying they are voodoo magic and injured Zion Williamson 30 seconds into our game with Duke but… I’m not saying they didnt!

Another weekend and I weirdly voluntarily spent time with Colton again.

It was his birthday and I’m “glad” he was born so I “celebrated” with him. I bought him brunch! At the always wonderful Monuts.

And then we went adventuring at Duke Gardens. Behold how BEAUTIFUL we both look lolololol.

The following weekend was a real treat.

First I met my lovely friends Bethany and Dan at the DELIGHTFUL Small B+B Cafe in Pittsboro. I was delighted to see their system for food scraps:

I giggled at this sign:

And I sighed with delight to see the outdoor area where we ended up eating. Those shipping container looking areas in the distance are actually tiny houses which you can stay in for the night!

After brunch I went up and scooped up my cousin’s kiddo after his nap to join my friends’ little girls on an adventure! My cousin’s baby had been born by then (!) so I figured Big Brother would enjoy a fun outing and mom and dad could benefit from some solo time as well. Off we went to Celebrity Dairy, a working farm.

Bethany and Dan’s oldest, T, is an experienced big sister and is SO good with little ones! She enjoyed showing C the best tree climbing spot…

And then they bonded “driving” this golf cart together.

She gave him a dandelion and taught him to blow on it to make a wish ❤

And then they performed impressive feats of strength to push T’s little sister in the wheelbarrow. SO MUCH CUTENESS.

I will add that we were actually at Celebrity Dairy which is a goat farm, and there were baby goats and chickens and kitties and musicians… and my cousin’s future engineer largely ignored all those things and instead spent a solid hour just examining the brake and accelerator pedals on the golf cart 😂

Yay for spring!

cape point and farewell

On my last day in South Africa (sob), we’d planned to go to Table Mountain, which is in Capetown and has a gondola and spectacular views and all the things. Table Mountain was shut down for the day due to wind, so instead we took off with Nicholas for Cape Point. Rather than taking the highway by the airport and to Capetown, we took kind of a side route that was along the water for most of the way.

The beachside towns looked like typical American beach towns with various touristy shops. Some were fancy shmancy and some were more chill. I tried speculating which were the white beaches and which were the colored beaches during apartheid, though I wasn’t always right. Regardless, seeing such normalcy in the beach towns and going by the huge townships of shacks continued to be shocking to me.

We got to a little park area and went into Cape Point. After waiting a bit to get through the toll booth, we went on some winding roads and eventually arrived at the very lively parking area. Nicholas told us a very amusing story about a baboon hopping in his car the last time he was there, but we didn’t see any this time.

We took a very booty-burning walk up to the top, where there’s a lighthouse (there was a funicular but what’s the fun in that?) and took in a pretty incredible view.

In one direction was the peninsula, with more dramatic beaches with waves crashing into rocks. More gorgeous multicolored water, more mountains. The usual staggering beauty. Then out ahead of us was ocean… if we’d gone South for long enough we would’ve gotten to Antarctica. Cape Point is almost but not quite the bottom of South Africa, where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic. Apparently on calmer days, there you can see the tides of different temperatures coming together, and they really do look different, which is cool.

Then we took the lighthouse keeper trail, which took us out to the tippy tip. We looked back and couldn’t quite believe how precarious the lighthouse looked, seemingly balanced atop a sheer, dramatic cliff face that was staggeringly high up from the waves crashing into the rocks below.

The walk to the tip had lots more interesting succulents (including some that looked like Tim Burton roses). Nicholas pointed out how lucky we were that it wasn’t very windy, as it could be intense there. I said I felt like I had had way too much good luck on this trip and it seemed inevitable that upon returning home things would have to go badly for awhile to even things out, and this British lady yelled at me and said that kind of thinking would invite bad things and I should think positively. She was a hoot (pretty new age). We walked back to the lighthouse and then I observed that our trail to the point now looked extremely precarious from this vantage point haha.

On our way out of Cape Point we saw baboon friends!

We walked back to the car and realized we were pretty hungry. We stopped in one of the beachside towns and got some fish and chips at a restaurant that was cute on the inside and for some reason had VH1 classic playing 90s music?! So silly!

Ocean view on the drive back:

We drove back to Stellenbosch just in the nick of time to head out to Malindi’s second bridal shower, at a sweet little shop in downtown. Since apparently I had disappointed Malindi previously with the quantity of desserts, I basically just bought one of every kind of cake they had (and two of the millionaire shortbreads) along with some scones and croissants. We enjoyed our beverages and talked about weddings and things and got on a real sugar high.

Fam!

We went back to the house and I enjoyed the last of my time with Oliver and Lucy. The cousins hung out in Marie’s room and watched Son of Patricia, Trevor Noah’s new comedy special on Netflix (though they got it bootleg!) and I continued to despair at my inability to pronounce “Xhosa” with the proper click.

And just like that, it was time to go to the airport. Nicholas wordlessly came along as my luggage assistant, as he was for our entire trip. We got a last look at the shack camp by the airport, as Nick told us that the government put in big overhead lights as a way to deter crime, but that they were still a dangerous place to be, and you’d be in a bad way if you ever had to pull over to the side of the road in that area. He had a colleague who was carjacked and taken there and he said “I won’t tell you what happened to him.”

The trip back was predictably disorienting. My flight took off from Capetown at 12:30pm and it was about 11 hours and 45 minutes to Amsterdam. In the first bit of the flight I did a bit of a twilight sleep doze thing (I had a window seat so I wasn’t really able to get up). Throughout the course of the flight I saw the sun rise over the Sahara desert and then saw the Alps later in the same flight. Gorgeous.

The people sitting next to me were from the Hague and we spoke a bit- the wife talked about growing up and going to a beautiful lake in the Alps that we flew over. They had been on a road trip in South Africa for three or four weeks and were appalled at how short my vacation was.

At the Amsterdam airport there was a confusing interchange where I had to go to Delta’s security point in one section of the airport and answer questions about whether I’d let any terrorists put anything in my bag—“… No”—and then went back to my gate in a different section of the airport. The good news was, I got a hot chocolate that was delicious and absurdly large (I didn’t finish it).

My next flight was to Atlanta- scheduled for 10 hours but done in a brief 8 hours 45 min. The lady sitting next to me was a real adventurer- she’d just finished a cruise around northern Norway looking at the northern lights and hearing from various scientists. She was probably in her 60s but was very active and spry (she was from Asheville and did a lot of hot yoga, natch) and was feeling like the other tourists were struggling to keep up with her. Later in the year she was planning a trip to Rwanda for a “primate tour” (gorillas, monkeys, etc.) She’d recently lost a partner of many years (she’d been widowed before that) and was just living her best life! I didn’t really sleep on this flight but tried to relax with movies and TV. (The Meg was just as terrible as one would expect).

My layover in Atlanta was lengthened due to us arriving early. First I had to go through customs, then I had to retrieve and recheck my bag (for some reason), and then I had a coupel of hours in which I just wandered in laps around my terminal to avoid falling asleep and missing my flight. Of all the travel I had done, this was by far the most tiring leg, though the final flight was like 40 minutes. And by this point the plane terror was at an all time low due to me being freaking exhausted and totally used to being in a bus in the sky.

I arrived home, took a Lyft to my place, and crashed shortly thereafter.

And thus ends my South African adventure. SOMEDAY I WILL GO BACK.

capetown and robben island

After leaving the beach, we drove to downtown Capetown. Our destination was Robben Island, site of the infamous prison that held political prisoners during the apartheid era.

We climbed aboard the ferry to Robben Island with a big variety of tourists- I heard Spanish, German, British-accented English, etc. The ferry ride was fairly calm and we saw dolphins in the distance which was a thrill. There were also some nice views of Table Mountain, etc. from the water. There was a video playing about the island etc. which most people ignored and we all just gabbed. The safety announcements were on an extremely garbled loudspeaker- it was fortunate there was no emergency (apparently in the past the ferries were prone to sinking hahaha).

We got off the ferry and the setup was a big disorganized. Eventually it was determined there were not enough buses for all the people (possibly one broke down?) so we were told we’d start the tour at the prison and then take the bus around the island. We walked en masse (I felt sorry for a man with a cane) and stopped in front of the prison for a few more minutes to wait for our guide. Eventually we met him- an older man, also with a cane though very agile with it- and learned he was a former prisoner.

He’d been sentenced to 30 years for “treasonous activities” (or something like that?) but fortunately served (only?!) 5 ½ years before the release of the political prisoners in 1990. He was still passionate as he discussed the fight for freedom and seemed to feel a lot of gratitude for the changes that have taken place since the end of apartheid. He also said that initially he did not want to be a tour guide but was convinced over time, and now he loves the job. We were curiously speculating as to whether he lived on the island, since a commute by ferry would be a drag (as we saw later on the tour there was housing- originally built for prison guards- and a church. There used to be a school, but it closed in the past few years and now kids living on the island have to take a boat to mainland schools).

Unsurprisingly the prison was intense. The prisoners did not even have beds until a visit from the Red Cross, initiated by Helen Suzman (my new personal hero?! She was the sole representative of the Progressive Party in Congress for many years during apartheid). Prior to that prisoners got a few blankets, some of which they had to use as mattresses and pillows.

Prisoners who were given the “privilege” of learning had to do their schoolwork in the bathrooms at nighttime.

People who were “colored” got larger rations than people who were black.

We also got to see the courtyard where Nelson Mandela kept his garden (his grapevines are still growing). We learned that there he had hidden the first pages of his autobiography before they were confiscated by a guard and never seen again. He was successful with the second draft, which another prisoner who was released earlier managed to smuggle out behind the pictures in a photo album and then smuggle out of the country.

We also saw Mandela’s cell, and it was hard to wrap my head around the idea he spent 18 years there.

Proving people can be depressing even in places like this, there was a lost Eastern European woman who semi-rudely but mostly cluelessly interrupted our guide like “WHERE MANDELA CELL?!” and he was like “… go see the manager over there. He will help you.” And then everyone in our group was loudly kvetching about her and a loud (of course) American white man went “Lock her up!” Particularly tasteless in front of the former prisoner, who took it in stride. Ugh.

The second part of the Robben Island tour was taking the bus. We went past the limestone quarry where Mandela and the other prisoners spent whole days chipping rocks (Nicholas told us that Mandela ended up going nearly blind later in life because of the damage the bright limestone reflection did to his eyes there). There was a cave in the limestone that served as the bathrooms but also the library, where prisoners would teach other prisoners to read. In the center of the quarry was a pile of stones that was created by former political prisoners who reunited on the island during Mandela’s presidency. The pile of stones is on the new special edition 100 rand bill (issued for the 100^th anniversary of Mandela’s birth). Nick happened to have one of them so our guide borrowed it and showed it to everyone.

We wrapped up our bus tour and got back on the boat, this time getting to be above deck, standing by a rail. I turned into a real wuss as the ride back was considerably bumpier than the ride to the island, and I kept having to essentially hit the deck and sprawl out my limbs in order to feel like I was not going to imminently fall overboard. Oh lord. We did get to see more dolphins SUPER close to the ship thanks to Malindi’s eagle eyes, and I initially kept thinking I was seeing ducks in odd positions before finally, near the end, I realized they were actually seals and what I thought were duck necks were flippers.

We got off the ferry and spent a bit of time wandering by the water front, getting hot dogs to fortify ourselves. It was pretty touristy- Nick said in the past there were some unique shops where one could get, for example, antique maps, but there was no sign of anything not mass produced any longer, at least in that area. We walked for a bit and our next stop was Two Oceans Aquarium, which I’d desperately wanted to see. It was a bit of a bummer that their star attraction, the kelp forest, was closed for repairs, but it was still a great aquarium.

Malindi under the ocean tunnel:

Ray cheesin’ it up:

The aquarium also had a really well designed exhibit about plastics in the oceans and how to stop it. Costa Rica gets a reputation for eco tourism but South Africa is also doing some cool, interesting things.

After the aquarium we went to a market with all kinds of different stalls from local artists. Malindi and Nicholas were wiped out so I felt guilty staying long but I got some really nice stuff for gifts.

The drive out of Capetown in traffic was lame but not unbearable, and we got back, did a bit of unloading at the Air BnB, and then joined the gang for dinner.

Marietje made a lamb stew with waterblommetjies which are hard to even describe but they’re a deep green vegetable with kiiiind of the texture of… softer cooked bell peppers? But a flavor more like… artichokes? Spinach? They’re hard to describe but the stew was one of the most delicious things I’ve tasted in my life (it also had lamb).

Chocolate ice cream and gooseberries (!) for dessert.

pringle bay

Okay so. The beach of Pringle Bay, which is a little nook of False Bay, near Capetown.

It’s difficult for me to really put into words how beautiful Pringle Bay is. There’s that same ring of mountains (the beach is sort of a dimple scooped out of False Bay so all the other beaches face South but Pringle Bay faces north) and a beach of beautiful rough water crashing into rocks and then onto perfect sand. The water is sort of a greenish/teal color and it’s full of absolutely enormous pieces of kelp (some of them look like hoses in length and thickness). The water is also astonishingly cold- we were told that the way to swim is to go in a first time, then retreat, then go back again- the key is to make oneself numb. The beach is not at all crowded, and the people who are there are often accompanied by extremely happy dogs. We soaked up the sunshine on our skin. There was wind but apparently it was a lot less strong for us than it was typically, and it is fairly easy to get used to.

We had a nice evening with the rest of the family, who eventually drove in from their days at work.

This is quite a delicious way to be welcomed to a new place:

Oliver the dog, who is clearly Nick’s favorite, snuggled up next to him on the couch and Nick wrapped him up in a blanket where only his nose stuck out.

Marie, our cousin, cooked us the YUMMIEST lasagna for dinner. It involved a garnish of shaved biltong!

We also tried koeksisters, a South African dessert not dissimilar to loukomades (the honey-y Greek donuts! Though a different shape- a long twist).

We woke up in Pringle Bay and enjoyed more blissful beach time. Malindi and I kept trying to take pictures that captured the beauty around us. Marie and Marietje spent the morning grading their students’ exams but then got to relax a bit with us.

Lunch was an enormous spread

With one wild component (!)

My plate:

More dessert. Our family in Joburg eat rather low carb so I went a little nuts with the more carb-friendly side of the family hahaha. The nougat is a South African specialty.

Marie, Nicholas, Malindi and I all piled into Marie’s car (Nick joined us for the first part of this but drove separately to then go off to do his own thing) to see PENGUINS! At a nearby beach called Betty’s Bay. The official name of them is African penguins but their previous, and colloquial, name is “jackass penguins” because of the braying sounds they make. We had so much fun watching the younger ones practice their swimming in the rough surf (they weren’t always great at it). Many of the penguins were molting and looked a bit uncomfortable and awkward. The smell of guano was everywhere and quite intense.

Cousin Marie with penguins:

We also saw really fabulous chameleons and other lizards that looked like mini dinosaurs, all sunbathing happily. We also saw dassies (pronounced like “dussy”) which are apparently actually rock hydraxes. We were informed they are the closest living relatives to elephants, though they look nothing like them. Their babies were the most sweet, goofy looking little wombat-y things, while the older bigger ones were still cute but had a look like “come too close to me and I’ll cut you.”

Next we went to a little strip of shops in the next town over. We didn’t buy much (a few dried fruit snacks and other food souvenirs) but did enjoy sitting at a waterside restaurant and getting drinks, followed by having ice cream cones. While getting drinks I saw a pod of dolphins in the distance and became ludicrously happy. Nicholas and Marie told us a bit more about South African life, including that marijuana is legal for individual growing/using in South Africa lol.

Marie is happy working as a teacher and pretty introverted the rest of the time. Nicholas has been spending time in Sweden helping Peter (Nick and Mike’s older brother) with his business which is creating fancy gardens for Swedish millionaires, basically.

When we ate ice cream cones we went out on a jetty. This public beach was much more diverse than Pringle Bay and we saw some families happily splashing around.

Then we went back to the house and Nick cooked us yet another braii. We all sat around outside around the grill (called the braii as well) and gabbed while the meat cooked. The side of cheese and jam sandwiches, also grilled, is traditional and real tasty.

After we ate dinner we took another beach walk and looked at the dazzling display of stars (trying and failing to find the Southern Cross). There is sometimes really excellent water phosphorescence there apparently… we might have seen a little bit of it? Or maybe I just wanted to believe haha. Then we enjoyed a hilariously huge dessert selection and went to bed.

Malindi and Nick picked up these guys:

I picked up these guys at the ice cream shop pretty much purely for their name (coconut meringue-y cookies)

And ice cream too hahaha. Yay carbs!

The next morning I woke up early enough that I got to join Nick and the adorable dogs for their morning walk on the beach and captured some excellent photos.

On our way back to the house we took a shortcut through a vacant lot (the walk is a bit meandering due to lots of cul de sacs) and Oliver was absolutely ecstatic to bound through the underbrush. Then I joined Marie and Marietje for a trip to Lemon and Lime, the local deli that would not have been out of place as a hipster brunch spot in Durham but also had some fun souvenirs, edible and otherwise, that I pocketed. I was bummed to be full from breakfast since they had a gorgeous selection of pastries. Later in the morning I took a second walk with Malindi and we took more photos trying to look like mermaids amid the lovely scenery. I fell in love with these transluscent snails that had the most gorgeous green shells. You’d see them as the waves washed out and then they’d burrow their way back under the sand.

In the afternoon we joined Marie and Nicholas and visited the Harold Porter botanical garden. There was a beautiful formal garden full of lovely native plants (including a medicinal area with, for example, aloes, like the ones I’d used to treat the previous day’s mild sunburn). The real treat, though, was doing a short walk up to the waterfall. The walk through the woods was lovely and we went along a stream that was an interesting tea color- Nicholas informed us that came from the tannins in the native plants, which Marie told us actually made the water more nutritious.

There were also some beautiful irises which grow naturally in the area- it was cool seeing them in their native habitat.

There was an obnoxious group of 15 or so people just brazenly violating two posted signs and a locked gate (!) down swimming in the pool at the base of the waterfall. A park guide made them stop and when one lady was kind of rude and passive aggressive about it being unclear I loudly went “Yeah the two signs were super unclear.” I hate rule breakers. I am a pathological follower of rules.

The famous plant is the protea, which we saw some of (the national flower- very big and dramatic) and there’s also something they pronounced like geser but is apparently also called disa that we didn’t get to see but blooms near the waterfall in mid December.

The walk down from the waterfall involved more amazing mountain vistas and we saw the national flower some more, along with the pretty puffy guys.

We drove back to the house and took in more gorgeous views of the water, and then the rest of the afternoon was pretty lazy. Marie and Marietje had to pack up but the rest of us hung out and read and listened to the wind. Nick again fired up the grill and made lamb, and I kept having to go outside and smell the amazing aroma wafting off the grill.

The day began early-ish since we wanted to leave by 8 to make the ferry to Robben Island from Capetown. I got up early for one last moment of gawking at the beautiful beach.

I needn’t have worried about running out of beauty because the drive to Capetown along the water was absolutely spectacular- it 100% would have been appropriate for a James Bond scene. Cliffs and hills and mist and more of the fabulous green water crashing into rocks. And the occasional baboon.

Next stop, Capetown!