Johannesburg and Pretoria, RSA

After the museum, we headed over to the Sterkfontein Caves where the fossils of hominids were found.  It is an active dig site.  We thought it was pretty darn cool!  After exploring the caves on a tour, we were pretty tuckered out.  We figured we were done exploring and to call it a trip.  Lance drove us back to the airport.  We were really early, but this ended up being a good thing because we ended up having to stand in 4 lines (one line 2 times) before we could get in the right one to get checked in to our flight at the super crowded airport.  After that was all sorted out, we were still plenty early (we had a midnight flight departure).  We did some final airport shopping and found a nice airport restaurant with a great view for dinner and drinks.  We watched some boys play soccer in the terminal and Jeannette even ran into one of her MIT students in an airport shop!  Then it was time to head to Amsterdam for a super short layover, and before we knew it, we were home and back in our desks at work!

Johannesburg and Pretoria, RSA

Our driver, Lance, took us straight from Jo’Burg to the Cradle of Humankind, near Pretoria.  It was about an hour and a half away.  We started with the Maropeng Museum.  It was geared more for kids, with a fun mist ride and a crazy, fun house-style vortex you had to walk through.  There was an educational, save-the-world agenda pushed.  We had a relaxing time meandering through.  It was a nice, low-key last day in Africa – especially since we were feeling sad about leaving; we didn’t have a lot of energy.

Cape Town, RSA

We woke up early to finish our packing and say our sad goodbyes to our dear Cape Town friends.  They made our South Africa trip so special and we feel we truly experienced the trip of a lifetime.  We have the best memories to reminisce over through the years and we will never forget the great times we had here, the amazing sights we have seen and the kind and welcoming and fun people we met in our travels.  We will certainly aim to be back.

We left for the airport super early to return the car.  When we saw the gas station by the airport we tried to direct ourselves in to top off the tank, but ended up going the wrong way on the road – our first and only mistake while driving on the left hand side of the road!  On the way to return the car!! That flub had us give up on the gas-getting task, we just decided to return the car as is (we had filled up the night before anyways).  This time at the airport was our first run-in with carry-on weight limits… we had to shuffle some of our luggage weight to Jeannette’s purse to make each bag under the limit.  It was silly.  At the Jo’Burg airport we had an easy pickup by our driver, Lance, and Sylvia called us on his phone to assure everything went according to plan.

Franschhoek, RSA

Franschhoek Motor Museum

Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Paarl, and Cape Town, RSA

Our USA flags went back up on our rental car for the day and we wore some of our USA gear to celebrate our Independence Day.  We called Sylvia (from our Jo’burg B&B) for help in arranging a driver tomorrow in Jo’burg.  She totally remembered who we were and was as delightful as ever!  And she got us a driver!  We made one last valiant effort to find stamps to mail our postcards (Thanks again Richard and Carol for taking care of that for us!) and then took off with Claire and Ali on a tour of the Cape Winelands.  We drove through Stellenbosch (and the Stellenbosch campus) and then on to L’Ormarins in Franschhoek for wine tasting and old car viewing.  There is a car museum (Franschhoek Motor Museum) there with a TON of priceless cars on site.  There are so many cars that they rotate the selection through the three viewing warehouses.  Josh really liked checking out the old cars.  After the wine tasting, a worker there gave us a personal tour on the grounds past the historic buildings of the winery with beautiful Cape Dutch architecture.  The worker was quite taken with Josh and was certain that he was famous, but just couldn’t place him.  Ali tried to tell him he was a Kennedy, but the guy thought he saw him in a movie so we told him maybe he thought he was related to Daniel Craig.  It was so funny how sure this guy was that Josh wasn’t related to anybody, but actually WAS in the movies.  After our little tour we moved on to the Fairview winery in Paarl for cheese and wine tasting.  We checked out their goats and then headed back home for a proper braai send-off with Claire and Alistair, Richard and Carol, and Malcolm.  We had a great dinner with amazing people.  We were so sad to leave them.  After Malcolm, Claire and Ali left, we had one last evening of tea and biscuits with Carol and Richard.

Cape Town, RSA

Our previous drives to Hout Bay and to the Cape of Good Hope had left a small stretch of the Cape Town peninsula that we hadn’t seen.  After sleeping off the previous night’s wine and writing some postcards (though no one appears to use regular postal mail service in South Africa – that was a struggle, our lovely hosts Carol and Richard took the hassle on for us! Thanks guys!), we headed to Muizenberg with Claire for brunch at Knead.  There are some super famous changing shacks there for surfers and swimmers.  And Knead is a gorgeous refurbished building, as well.  From there, we drove the rest of the way of our missed loop around the Cape up to Chapman’s Peak, through Hout Bay to Camps Bay.  We stopped at roadside (really, cliffside) stalls for some crafts shopping, but didn’t buy anything.  We were in Camps Bay in time for the day’s first game so we went back to Sandbar.  We got to watch the Germany-Argentina 4-0 blowout and have sundowners (finally, proper sundowners – drinks in hand, with a view of the setting sun).  We also did some more shopping, buying a handmade soccer ball from Vida.  Our loop of the Cape now completed, we drove over the mountain pass back to Claire and Alistair’s house for wine and some Ben time!  We walked over to their neighborhood pub, Caffe Verdi, for dinner and the late Spain-Paraguay game.

Muizenberg:
Changing rooms:

View from Chapman’s Peak:

Josh, J & Claire at Chapman’s Peak:

We noticed how buggy our car got after our road trip while we were here:

Sandbar at Camps Bay:

Our Sundowners:

Enjoying drinks and the game and the view:

Camps Bay at dusk:

Cape Town, RSA

We headed down to the waterfront and found parking near the Clock Tower.  We were able to make it inside (through the line at the door) Paulaner after the 1st Brazil goal (10′).  It is a Beer Hall style establishment and we joined two old German gentlemen, 68 and 72 years old.  This was the 10th World Cup they had attended in a row – 40 years straight!  We got to hear their great stories and we had a good time.  We watched the Dutch beat Brazil!  After the game, we walked around the V&A Waterfront, before settling in at Hildebrand (under Alba, the bar we went to with Claire and Ali when we first arrived in Cape Town) for our anniversary dinner.  It is a grand, old waterfront restaurant.  Formal enough for a 5 year anniversary dinner with candlelit tables outside, under a tent with a heat lamp, on the water, but it still had TVs tucked away in the corners so we could watch the late game!  We had their carbonara and Cape Rock Lobster tail and tried our first Chenin Blanc.  It was an AMAZING CRAZY World Cup game:  a missed PK in the absolute last minute, last play of overtime, due to a handball, leading to a PK shoot out because it was still tied – where the Uruguay goalie then “guessed right” 4/4 times and managed to block 2!  The Africans everywhere were displeased by the “cheater” who handballed it, leading to the PKs in the first place. All Africans were pretty much rooting for the last African team in the Cup – even our formal waiters were lined up at the back of the tent watching the final, tense minutes.  After the craziness we headed home to recap our awesome day of Groot Constantia, District 6, Bo-Kaap, Paulaner Brauhaus, Hildebrand, the V&A Waterfront and two great soccer matches with Richard and Carol over more wine.  We had a GREAT 5th anniversary and we were happy to be back in Cape Town! (And Josh was so glad soccer was back, a great anniversary gift!)

Cape Town, RSA

We visited Bo-Kaap (official), the Malay Quarter.  It is a gorgeous neighborhood of bright pastel houses and buildings.  Many Muslims live there and there are great calls to prayers.  It is definitely unique from all the other neighborhoods and has a very distinct, community feel.  We really enjoyed our time there and had a nice chat with a gentlemen who was returning home after afternoon prayers (he liked that we enjoyed his neighborhood).  We walked all over the neighborhood, up and down the slopes, and found some cute hipster stores encroaching on the edges.  We headed back to the center of Bo-Kaap for a Cape Malay lunch at Biesmiellah.  We had Denningvleis (a yummy lamb dish) and Bobotie.  It was super good.

Cape Town, RSA

We drove from Constantia to the District 6 Museum.  It reminded us a bit of what happened with the forced relocations here in Boston in the West End.  We learned a lot about how the forced removals of black South Africans were legalized and how the museum is a place to keep the memories of the people of District 6.  It was heady stuff.