Here I am, writing by the light of an oil lamp--Kraaifontein Cottage does not have electricity, which isn't a problem for anything other than the cell phone, which needs to be charged.
Jesse and I went for a little birding walk at Enjolife this morning after breakfast. Saw some weavers over the river, a barbet in a thorn tree, a longspur in a bush near the farmhouse and both a fiscal flycatcher and a fiscal shrike. We then checked out and headed on our way.
Morning light from our Enjolife chalet.
We first went to Wupperthal and bought some overpriced soap made with rooibos [red tea... the area we were in is where most rooibos is grown. Also where Hoodia, a "diet supplement" currently popular in the US, is grown]. Then we visited the veldskoen [field shoe... simple leather shoes] factory but didn't buy anything. Jesse got a Stony Ginger Beer from the Mission Winkel [store... it was a *very* Afrikaans town] and I bought a loaf of fresh white bread from the bakery, the taste of which took my back on my Parkview days [Parkview is the suburb of Johannesburg I grew up in, and our local Spar store carried fresh, government-subsidized bread loaves. I would sometimes buy a fresh loaf and rip it open to eat the soft, warm innards]! Jesse liked it too, so we ate slice after slice of it as we drove back to the Biedouw Valley turnoff.
Just past the turnoff was a rooibos farm and packing shed, so we went in at the same time as a car full of Swiss and I tracked down the owner to see if we could buy some tea [I just thought to add that there was a bench-full of cute kittens and cats sitting in the sun outside the farmhouse door]. We got a kilogram (!) [~2 pounds] of loose tea for R35 (!!) [that was something like $4.50 at the time] and bought a few boxes of bagged tea as gifts for a bit more money. Then we stopped a zillion times for me to take photos of flowers and scenery ;-)
We slowly made our way to Nieuwoudtville, stopping at a single-lane river crossing next to a very remote farm for lunch. We passed (and were passed by) the same motorcyclists numerous times--we saw them on the way to Wupperthal, in Wupperthal (they were looking for the tea room), at our lunch site, and a few other places.
The one-lane bridge where we stopped to have our lunch.
Finally around 4:30 pm, we made it to Kliprivier Guesthouse, ~1 km from Kraaifontein, and where our hostess, Heidi, lives. I hadn't realized that the cottage doesn't have electricity, but it does have gas stove and hot water. We have a fire going again too, since it is quite chilly here.
The cottage looked a little rundown from the outside, but it has quite a bit of charm and is nicely stocked [and was really nice inside]. And, it has a good supply of blankets, unlike Enjolife! Speaking of Enjolife, Andrea and Moritz Conrad, the proprietors of Enjolife, came over from Germany 3 years ago and have a 2-year old, a 2-month old kid, and a dog, Rocko, who barks at rocks, chases after them, and drags them through the dirt! Cute dog.
Off to my chilly bed I go.
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