It is now September. The Denisons have left to face their gas shortage in Atlanta, we feel somewhat abandoned…and deprived now that Nancy is no longer with us to make the coffee in the morning and do the dishes. But all good things must come to an end. Unlike last year, we cannot claim to have kept the hurricanes completely away; indeed quite the opposite. 2008 is proving to be a ferociously active season. From where we sit, here in Africa, we’ve already sent five storms towards Florida, the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean, with “Gustav” raging through Haiti and Cuba, and “Ike” creating havoc in Galveston, Texas. Fortunately, Key Biscayne is still unscathed, thanks to our Hurricane Evacuation Plan!

Our planned agenda for September and October was fairly unencumbered…or so we thought!

• We had to extend our Visa for about a month;

This procedure acquainted us more intimately than we would ever have wanted with the bureaucracy of the Republic of South Africa. We had to demonstrate that we had the wherewithal to maintain ourselves during the extension period without becoming a ward of the State. Ridiculous, but in a country besieged with hordes of refugees from surrounding Zimbabwe and other African nations in more dire conditions, it is no wonder that the SA government makes it difficult for people to stay here;

• We visited Franschhoek again and stayed at “La Residence” a little Versailles which, in the course of Joyce’s indefatigable net surfing and travel magazine browsing, she had run across.

The place looked incredibly alluring. We had not seen or experienced nearly enough of this community last year. It was founded in 1688 by some 400 French Huguenot fleeing persecution because of their protestant faith. The French heritage has pretty much disappeared but the names of the farms are mostly French and the Huguenot’s French stock has survived, together with the grapevines they brought with them. The combination of the vines and the ancestry of the Huguenots, I have been told, became the genesis of the South African wine industry and with it, a passionate love of great food.

Last year, we went to Franschhoek for Bastille Day. The Huguenots celebrate this event with great enthusiasm, having evidently forgotten the fact that they had to flee to South Africa, to get safely away from “La Patrie” to escape religious persecution in their home land. Given my own French background, I wanted to join in the festivities. I lured Joyce into the adventure and, at the last moment we were able to secure a magnificent suite (the last one available) in “Le Quartier Francais”, an exceptionally luxurious “Relais & Chateaux property, right in the middle town. This year, however our visit to Franschhoek was more carefully planned. Not as a last minute impulse, but as a product of careful research from my Joyce and “Joyce-the-Travel-Agent”. Indeed “La Residence” was something very special. It is located, not in the middle of town, but on a 30 acre working farm at the border of Franschhoek, amidst its own vineyard, plum orchards and a bucolic environment of gardens, fountains and picturesque rocky escarpments that characterize the Cape Region.

The approach to La Residence is not prepossessing. In fact, its farm-like proportions have been preserved to a point where one would never suspect what lies beyond the reception area. It does not take long however, to realize that this is no ordinary farm. Yet it’s not a chateau. It is too intimate for that. I have not been able to really find an apt nomenclature for this habitat. Perhaps the term Palatial Manor House might fit. The sense of regal grandeur struck as we reached the main entrance. This is where we were greeted by a reflecting pool which serves as foreground to an impressive nine foot high bronze classic sculpture of a female form artistically balanced on a tiny pedestal at the end of the pool as if floating on air.

That is the beginning. The pool with the Lady opens into the reception lobby where a long gallery equivalent to the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles greets the visitor. This gallery is an opulent, cathedral-like multi-purpose space which acts as the living and family room, as well as the area where all the meals and drinks are served. This is also where a large staff is busy and in constant motion to meticulously satisfy every need and whim of the guests…from coffee and breakfast in the morning to night caps in the evening. Two enormous fireplaces are always lit, and warm the large space both in spirit and physical comfort. And, just in case someone is bored, at one end of the gallery there is a short stairway which leads to a library.

The gallery is covered with museum quality oriental rugs strategically deployed over a checkerboard of two-foot square black granite and white marble. With the roof structure of rough hewn open beams and rafters, the contrast with the slick and formal marble floor was as eclectic as it was stunning.

With staff always alert to meet your every need while you sit in overstuffed arm chairs and couches, a glass of superb wine in hand, and with an active fire crackling, we felt that we had landed on “Fantasy Island”!

To say that the furniture and furnishings in the gallery are eclectic would be an outrageous understatement. The space, as well as the 11 guest suites that make up the hotel, defy description. There is a French panache theme that pervades the entire property. The owners, Liz Biden and her husband, had commissioned some 50 or so large crystal chandeliers from India which adorn every room in the estate. They are simply magnificent, and offer yet another interesting contrast with the raw unfinished ceilings. The furniture is of museum quality, a lot of it is Louis XIV, namely heavy, gilded and highly ornamented. The walls are, of course, full of original oils, some with intriguing and far from unpleasant titillating qualities.

The entire place is also replete with art objects, ceramic and fine china knickknacks of all kinds, to a point where everything, even the napkin rings emerge as opportunities to enhance the décor.

Each of the suites has a unique character, a unique color scheme and a unique theme. One, for example, expressed a clearly Chinese vernacular with unabashedly crimson red walls and black lacquered furniture; another, called the Elton John suite, left no doubt about the personality and in our own room, we will never forget the campy bedside lamps which were the shape of three foot high porcelain dogs.

The beds are, of course, king size, canopied and the dimensions of the bathrooms are extremely generous and beautifully equipped with double sinks, antique armoires, armchairs and charming old fashioned tubs that act as center pieces for the room.
Unlike Versailles and the palaces of another age, however, La Residence is impeccably modern and current in its technological aspects. Climate control is silent, invisible and effective. Lighting, notwithstanding the imposing chandeliers, is subtle and controlled via dimmers with state of the art switches. There is, of course telephone service in both the sleeping area and the bathroom. All in all, one feels more like being at home than in some hotel room festooned with notices about water conservation and towel disposal.

In the final analysis, Joyce put it best when she described the place and its character as Elton John meets Louis XIV at Buddha Bar, or in the same vein Erte meets Henry VIII!
In our many travels, there is only one group of hotels that offers this level of attention and hospitality. It is the Aman resorts, where details, attention to the needs of guests and home-like friendliness are almost obsessive. It was in that spirit that, when the manager at La Residence found out that we wanted to eat at “Reubens”, the renowned Franschhoek restaurant, considered by many as the best in South Africa, he provided us with a limo to get us there and back. Reubens turned out to be a magic evening and totally demolished my theory that South Africans really don’t understand duck confit!

When we checked out after two days, we were surprised to find that the rental car which we had been incrementally wrecking on all the rough roads was returned to us washed and even vacuumed. Actually, it really did not surprise us; we had become disgustingly blasé.
Our stay at La Residence was providential. We found out that the Bidens had two other properties. One, “Birkenhead House” is in Hermanus, about an hour and a half from our Cape Town house, on the Atlantic Ocean and the other is the “Royal Malewane”, a spectacular safari game lodge on the Western fringes of the Kruger National Park in the heart of Southern Africa’s “Big-Five” territory. All three properties represent what the Bidens call “The Royal Portfolio”. We stayed at the Birkenhead House on our way to visit our new friends, the Bergers, in Plettenberg and it was, like La Residence, an Aman-quality hospitality with one difference: the dominant theme was not eclectic; it was unabashedly contemporary both in terms of the architecture of the oceanfront villa and in the fixtures and décor of the interiors. If we return to South Africa next year, we will undoubtedly feel compelled to sample the Royal Malewane.

It is interesting to note that all really splendid things in South Africa come in Threes. Liz Biden owns the above three properties and, whether coincidentally or not Liz McGrath owns three comparably luxurious Relais & Chateaux. She calls them “The Collection” and they include: The “Marine” in Hermanus, the “Plettenberg” in the community near the Eastern Cape by that name and the “Cellars” in Constantia. A few days ago, at the request of our travel agent we visited a new, barely completed super luxurious property developed by “Tintswalo” Lodges in Hout Bay, Cape Town. When we asked for a brochure, they gave us one and a folio of photographs depicting their spectacular safari lodge and camp which, like The Royal Malewane”, is also located in the Western fringes of Kruger Park. I would not be surprised if somewhere in the ownership there isn’t a Liz. Nor would I be surprised if there wasn’t a third trio of luxurious hospitalities around Cape Town!

• We got together several times with our Cheetah maven, Alan Strachan, whom we had met some years ago at the De Wildt Cheetah Preserve near Johannesburg.

He and Linda, his delightful lady companion, stayed with us a couple of times in Fish Hoek. Subsequently, we went to visit him at the Tygerberg Zoo, where he is the curator. On that occasion, he immersed us into a love affair with two white lion cubs. They were about one year old and stood seven feet tall on their rear legs. As with the cheetahs at De Wildt, Alan allowed us to come close and get personal with these powerful carnivores within their enclosure without any barriers other than a little wood stick Alan and his helper used to keep the gigantic cubs at bay. They played like kittens with each other, yet we felt safe even though it was clear that they could kill us or inflict serious unintentional harm with a mere swat of their huge clawed paws if we did not keep our distance. Later, outside the enclosure, we had a chance to touch them through the chicken wire, where Joyce even got licks and a kisses from the cubs. This gave us the opportunity to truly appreciate the friendly attitude and awesome beauty of these furry white, blue-eyed creatures. The fully grown male that was sunning itself in a neighboring enclosure was, of course less playful but enormously impressive, with his stunning blue eyes and the bright white mane surrounding his head resembling a coat of regal ermine.

• We went on an expedition to Plettenberg Bay, to visit our new friends Carol & Stan Berger.

We had met Carol and Stan when we sat at adjoining tables in the “Food Barn”, a rustic restaurant in Noordhoek close to where we are living in Cape Town, where they serve the best lamb chops in the world. They had noticed us at a wine tasting dinner a few nights earlier, but this time, at the Food Barn, Stan came over and started a conversation, which led to all of us sharing a table. Later, after we introduced ourselves properly, Stan and his wife Carol invited us for a nightcap after dinner in the house they recently bought a few steps from the restaurant within the same farm village of which the restaurant was a part.
In the course of the conversation, we found out that they lived in Johannesburg and owned, in addition to their home where we were sitting, a vacation house in Plettenberg Bay. They invited us to visit in October, as they were going to spend the Jewish holidays in that house with their friends who were coming down from Johannesburg. Naturally, as we are always gluttons for solidifying new friendships and new experiences in South Africa, we eagerly accepted the invitation. As they say here, we “made a plan”.

Plettenberg Bay is about 400 to 500 kilometers East of Cape Town, along the famous “Garden Route” which borders the Atlantic Ocean until it turns into the Indian Ocean three quarters of the way along the Route. As we would be passing through Hermanus, which is on the Atlantic Ocean about an hour and a half from Cape Town, we took this opportunity to spend the night at Birkenhead House, hoping that the quality and hospitality of this hotel would be consistent with that of La Residence in Franschhoek. We were not disappointed. With the ocean full of frolicking whales, superb food and service, as well as extremely posh accommodations, it was the perfect stopover for the longish trek to Plettenberg Bay.

The next day, we drove to “Plett” (as we locals all it) and found the Berger house, where Carol and Stan welcomed us warmly into their lovely, two story, four or five bedroom house. The house was located on a cul-de-sac in a zero-lot-line, gated community that was conveniently situated in close proximity to the Plett business center. It was flanked by a boardwalk along an inlet from the ocean. The kayaks stored in the garage left no doubt that the inlet must be serving an important recreation need for the Bergers.

We had arrived on Yom Kippur and the Bergers had been religiously fasting. As the fast would be over at sundown and Stan was on the road driving some 70 kilometers to pick up their Johannesburg friends at the airport, we were left alone to witness Carol turn into “Babette” of “Babette’s Feast”. The well equipped kitchen became a workshop where she masterfully turned out the enormously elaborate feast that would break the fast after the sun set that evening. Needless to say, we were in awe at the professionalism with which she moved around the kitchen, but more importantly by the taste of the product of her labors.
By the time Stan returned from the airport and the Berger’s Johannesburg friends were installed in their room, the sun had set, the fast could now be broken and it was time to gather around the table and celebrate the end of this year’s period of atonement.

The Berger’s friends turned out to be a somewhat older couple. They had brought along their nine year old granddaughter, Gina Lee, who was as precocious as she was cute. They meticulously observed the arcane Jewish dietary laws and they were obsessively faithful in attending all of the services offered by the local synagogue. As expected, therefore, prior to digging in for supper, Stan said a ritual prayer, and we all shared a moment of reflection. He and his friend, of course, wore a Yarmulke (skull cap) and Stan handed me a spare one to wear. This brought back childhood memories of my adolescent days when I had to wear one of these things that had a way of slipping off my head, when I was living in an orthodox Jewish orphanage in France at the end of WW II. Then, Stan methodically sliced the “Challeh” (Jewish egg bread) and we all eagerly proceeded to enjoy Carol’s astounding culinary creations. It was not a long or tedious ceremony. It was quite brief, but it amply served the purpose for making us feel warm and welcome. We were deeply touched by the way in which these lovely people had brought us into their families and allowed us to participate in a phase of their highest religious holiday. The next day, while the Berger’s friends went to Synagogue, Carol and Stan showed us more of Plett…Joyce bought yet another Ostrich skin handbag…and we had a delightful open air lunch a few kilometers from town at a bucolic Italian restaurant whose gregarious owner and his waiters displayed the kind of rambunctious humor only found in a busy New York deli.

On Stan’s advice, using his Plettenberg house as a base, we had made reservations for a visit to the Shamwari Game Reserve. This is a 50,000 acre wilderness area steeped in Conservation, environmental education, animal rehabilitation and protection. It houses the “Born Free Foundation” which is at the forefront of drawing the public’s attention to the plight of wild animals confined in impoverished captive environments. This private reserve is located some 230 kilometers Northeast of Plettenberg, past Port Elizabeth. In many respects it might be considered an extension of the Garden Route from Cape Town.

The reserve is situated along the Bushman River and the owners are proud to proclaim their well deserved success in having created a bush habitat where the “Big Five” (Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Cape buffalo and Rhino) roam free. Except for the power lines, the electrified perimeter fences, six game lodges, and ancillary facilities, the place feels like the kind of wilderness reserves found near Kruger Park…with the added advantage that if Cape Town is your base, getting there does not require three to five airplane rides, risky transfers and a tedious full day of travel to reach the camp. Even if we hadn’t stopped in Hermanus and Plett, the total distance is less than 500 miles, the roads are excellent and the scenery is spectacular.

We spent three days and two nights at the “Bushmans River Lodge” in the middle of the game preserve and, although everything was as advertized, this was not our favorite safari experience. The game drives were not disappointing, but the food was. The white rhinos were all over the place and this was one of the best experiences we’ve ever had to watch these lumbering, almost prehistoric beasts in action. We were amazed at how a youngster, who was sticking close to his mother, and became extremely aggressive the moment an adult male thrice his size tried to amorously approach his mother, a behavior not exactly unique to the animal kingdom. There were also lots of elephants, commuting single file in their herds from water hole to water hole. We ran into two prides of lion. They seemed so well habituated to humans and safari vehicles that, like one of the elephants we saw, they deliberately took their morning nap across our path, requiring us to make a cross country detour to avoid running them over. At one point, it was thrilling to see a large male lion lope in the direction of our vehicle and pass alongside of it so close that we could’ve petted him. Fortunately Joyce resisted the temptation. The lion had a more important mission - he was pursuing a daunting quest to find the females in his pride and they were hiding from him. We saw large herds of antelopes including the usual suspects like impalas, spring bucks, waterbucks, hartebeests, elands, and kudus. We were surprised, however, by the sight of oryx, with their magnificent, elegant horns. There were also lots of zebras, giraffes and even a few hippos in an almost dried up river bed that might have been a tributary of the Bushman River. It was, in other words, a game park well populated with what seemed to us to be very happy and habituated wild life.

Our ranger, a somewhat portly Cape born-and-raised environmentalist, called Roger, was an excellent driver and seemed to know exactly where the game was hiding, having developed the fine art of tracking animals by analyzing the poop they shed on the road. There were six of us in the Toyota four-wheel “Land Cruiser”, two couples traveling together and us. One of the couples was Americans who had made their retirement home in Breckenridge, Colorado and the other couple came from Britain. We got along quite well, although we did not bond.

The game drives, particularly the evening ones, were long and quite chilly after the sun had set. While the game was prolific and scenery wild and full of fearsome looking acacia trees, the rides through the bush were extremely rough. Being the newcomers, Joyce and I had the dubious privilege of sitting in the third row, the last one, behind the driver. This did a lot to greatly magnify the bumps. The game drive turned into an amusement park ride, as we were catapulted again and again against the edges of the vehicle. It was not clear what the cause of this uncomfortable ride was. It was either the roads through the game reserve, which were clearly a work in progress or it was the Toyota safari vehicle. Roger thought it was the latter because it was new and the springs were still a little stiff…just like we were. Thank God, unlike any other safari vehicle rides we had experienced, this was the only one where we were required to wear seat belts.

It was nice to have room in the lodge and not a tent. The bathroom was OK were it not for the fact that the tub had no shower and the shower temperature control was useless because, we were told, there were too many people that night…(three couples???!!!). The bed was comfortable, there was heat and there was an attempt to produce a Victorian interior design. After all, the lodge, so the brochure says, “… is a beautifully restored Victorian homestead”.

Frozen stiff, we were ready for a nice dinner in the comfortable-looking formal dining room inside the lodge. No such luck. This was “Braai” night. We ate on the unheated open veranda where the over braaied game was indeed gamy. It was a terrible meal. The following night, we ate indoors and the food was much better.

We really did not get a good chance to experience the “…pure unadulterated luxury…” of the lodge, as the brochure proclaimed, since Roger’s wake-up call was at 5:30 AM, lunch was a perfunctory exercise in the open and we never got back from the evening gamed drive until after 7:30 PM. Nevertheless, there was a freezing plunge pool on the grounds and there was just enough time for the wife of the British couple to jump into a bathing suit and into the plunge pool. A behavior totally consistent with …wild dogs and Englishmen!

Clearly this was not our best safari experience, but it wasn’t our worst. What troubled us was it was more expensive than some of our most luxurious hotel stays. Our feeling is that, with world economic conditions, as fragile as they are, Africa will soon kill the goose that lays its golden eggs unless safari camps make an effort to ratchet back their prices and make the experience more affordable.

After we got sprung from Shamwari, we spent another two nights with the Bergers in Plett, another heavenly night at Birkenhead House in Hermanus and finally returned to our Fish Hoek house in Cape Town.

We then had less than three weeks left before heading back home to the US, October was nearly over, the whales beneath our windows, on holiday from the Antarctic, were still ever so active and Joyce was already getting frantic about packing.

• We spent a day at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront.

Our purpose was to buy “stuff”, have lunch at one of our favorite restaurants and visit the “Esmeralda” aka “The White Lady”; a four-masted Chilean Tall Ship barqentine on a good-will tour and stop-over in Cape Town. Though reputed as one of the largest of the Tall Ships in the world, it was dwarfed by the American missile launching vessel docked next to the White Lady. The latter seemed huge, and was part of the naval escort for the many times larger behemoth, 97,000 ton, over a 1000 foot long nuclear aircraft carrier “USS Theodore Roosevelt” that stayed anchored a short distance from the harbor, in the middle of Table Bay. Inexplicably, the two enormously impressive American vessels were totally upstaged by the historic Tall Ship from Chili. It goes to show that nostalgia will trump modern wonders any day!

• We saw a provocative ad in the paper about “Smokie”, a British rock band enormously popular in Cape Town for its iconic signature song “Alice” which begs the question, shouted in unison by the audience: “Who the #@%* is Alice?”.

Presumably, the answer to that question requires attendance at a two or three hour long rock concert in the company of some five thousand screaming fans in a place called “The GrandWest Arena”. The latter is, in Coleridge’s words “In Xanadu, Kubla Khan, a stately pleasure dome decreed…” Indeed the arena is imbedded in a mass entertainment complex which includes a Vegas-size casino, high roller bar, cigar lounge and other posh refuges from the tables, four or five destination or specialty restaurants, theme bars and the inevitably more modest food court replete with fast food outlets. There is also an imposing hospitality called, as one would expect: “The Grand Hotel”. It was booked solid, so we had to stay next door on the same property in something called “The City Lodge”. I had visions of “Red Roof” but we were pleasantly surprised to find our one night accommodations at the Lodge both comfortable and competent.

The concert was fun. It started out with an endless warm-up act by a solo singer who performed and talked only in Afrikaans. It was mostly lost on us but he did have a pleasant voice. The crowd was warmed up by the time the “Smokie” quintet came out. There was a highly animated drummer who was referred to by the band leader as “The Animal”, a mandolin, a keyboard artist and two acoustic guitars.

Joyce was, of course, well used to these kinds of events and she was totally in sync with the huge crowd. She was swinging, waiving her arms and following enthusiastically the rhythms emanating from the stage. Of course, my capacity to appreciate this art form, to say nothing of my ability to “get with it” was dismally lacking! Her hips were particularly active, which was OK with me. What was not OK, however, was that in the midst of all this swinging, noise and gesticulations, a huge hippopotamus of a woman who had come late succeeded in squeezing herself into her seat next to me. This necessitated usurping half of mine, as her derriere was shamelessly lapping over the limits of her designated territory. My lebensraum was now assaulted as well as my eardrums. Somewhat later, towards the end of the concert, it got worse. As the expectations for the “Alice” piece reached a paroxysm of fervor, Joyce and my hippo neighbor accelerated their peripatetic rhythms and I felt pushed around and crowded - like being in the middle of Times Square watching the annual ball descend from the tower.

Relief came eventually, when everybody got on their feet and continued their antics in a standing position. I was able to get up and I was no longer bound in my chair, wedged in by my active hippo neighbor and Joyce.

That was it in the way of calendared activities for what we thought would be a fairly unencumbered September and October. What we had not calendared, however, and what never showed up on Joyce’s spread sheet, was the amount of time we would spend glued to CNN International - our excursion into the ethereal world of high finance where we were exposed to the excruciating perambulations of the stock market, exacerbated by the horrendous credit freeze, and the effects of all this on our faltering economy.

The global extent of this crisis and the heroic efforts by our Central Bank, as well as those of Europe and many other nations to loosen the frozen condition of the banking and lending systems, as well as restoring confidence in the marketplace, made all these events all the more excruciating, exiting and dramatic. They might even be considered entertaining, were it not for the fact that that we were passive participant in the prevailing malaise, to a point where we started to imagine what our life would be like should our assets melt away in a global financial Gotterdammerung.

Ironically, it was the failure of the $700 Billion that our Treasury was authorized to make available to help remedy the situation, which moved the European economies to subordinate their usual nationalistic tendencies to a more reasoned approach and agree to move forward in unison on a coordinated and collaborative basis. This now appears to meet, temporarily at least, with some success in mitigating the crisis and stemming the mounting panic… that is, until the still elusive bottom is found.

All the while, our anxieties were somewhat deflected and diluted by the tragic-comedic saga of the Presidential election campaigns. We were able to take in all the debates and SNL opening skits, and it will not require much persuasion for Joyce and me to arrive at a consensus on how we shall vote.

We have a busy agenda before leaving:

• We have to renegotiate our rental for next year as we’re still not tired of the place, and now we know the area so much better.

• The Rand, which was 7 to the dollar when we got here last June has now shrunk to 12 to the dollar. It therefore makes sense for us to pay whenever possible in Rands. For this reason, and to add flexibility while we live here, we’ve decided to open an account in one of the local banks. This is no simple matter because to do this we must prove that we have had an account with our bank, an institution that has seemingly replaced all humans with machines. As adept as Joyce is with technology, she has not been able to contact a human at Citibank.

• We are going to revisit and say goodbye to the white lion cubs, to Alan Strachan and to his friend Linda.

• We are finally going to the theater … twice. Once to the cute Kalk Bay 80 seat dinner theater and a second time, in Camps Bay to see “Defending the Caveman”, a hilarious one man show we had seen some years ago in Miami.

• We have a date to visit the Cheetah Outreach Project at the Spier winery in the hopes of playing, as we did last year, with some baby cheetah cubs.

• Packing, of course, figures high on the agenda, as we must sort out what we take with us, what we leave here and what we donate to our landlord. This process has already been started, as we had invited our cellar master and wine maven Francois for a dinner of maigret and entrusted him to store and watch over, while we are gone, our collection of wines we had accumulated during our stay in Cape Town.

• Finally, there are at least half a dozen wineries, eateries and other such destinations that we will attempt to visit, that have their place on Joyce’s spread sheet. If we are lucky we should be able to cover six or seven places.

And so ends another hurricane season for us, except for the fact that the economic hurricane is still with us.