As you may recall, Part I of the Plan had us spinning around for about a month or so during June and part of July in the Baltic Sea, Paris, Scotland and London, exploring new destinations and checking off “Bucket List” items. In the meantime, the World Cup was playing its heart out in Cape Town which was, of course, our ultimate destination.
Part II covered the first 2 months in Cape Town, a couple of safaris around Kruger Park and a re-acquaintance with our haunts of previous years. More importantly, we revisited the many friends we had made in the past and naturally, this led to meeting yet more friends and many new places and experiences. Part II also included our first Safari this year and our up-close encounters with (fairly) tame and beguiling wildlife.
Part III covers the rest of September and October, all the way up to early November when it was safe for us to return home, having once again succeeded in keeping the hurricanes away from Key Biscayne. During this period, we emerged from social obscurity as merely another ex-pat, and acquired a bit of fame as discriminating epicureans by organized a Wine Tasting and Food Pairing Event for some forty people. We then relaxed from these labors by visiting the “Cradle of Humanity” near Johannesburg as we began our second Safari experience, this one to Botswana’s Okavango Delta. So, let me begin this third part of the narrative with the wine tasting and food pairing event that had germinated during the Robertson Slow.
Earlier in the summer, we had met Bernhard & Fida Hess, owners of the Montagu Lodge where we had stayed during the Slow, and talked about Cassoulet. Also at that same time, Archie introduced us to his friend Lourens van der Westhausen, the owner of Arendsig, a brilliant new boutique winery. In the course of our visit to Arendsig, Lourens volunteered to provide wine for a wine tasting party and Peter suggested cooking Cassoulet. Needless to say, this idea was enthusiastically accepted. When we chatted about this later in Fida and Bernhard’s kitchen at their hotel, Bernhard weighed in, and it soon was no longer a simple Cassoulet Party. It had morphed into the “Wine and Food Pairing Event” and we were now committed to deliver. Our involvement with the wine people and the Mimosa Lodge owners had injected a communal spirit into the affair instead of allowing it to unroll as the usual egocentric one, ordained exclusively by Lord Cassoulet! The cookery, in other words, changed from a one-man show to a team effort, with Bernhard volunteering to prepare both the Mussels and the Gravlax, these dishes to be paired respectively with the first wine course, Lourens’ delicious Sauvignon Blanc, and his second taste of the night, a lightly wooded Chardonnay. His third wine, pure Shiraz, was perfect for Peter’s Cassoulet, and his barely-sweet Viognier would be served with a cheese course. That just left dessert and coffee, which we would worry about much later!
Choosing a date had been difficult, what with everyone’s schedule, but we settled on Sept. 14th, which had seemed quite far away at the time. But it was now nearly the first of September, we were about to leave on safari, and the party was nearly upon us! So before we left, Joyce put on her marketing hat and created an appropriate party invitation and ‘sorted out’, as they say here, a list of invitees. She invited EVERYBODY, knowing that many would have prior commitments, etc. and not be able to attend … which was OK … except that NOBODY refused! When the list reached 40 people, it seemed impossible to imagine how we would accommodate all these guests. Joyce was panicked, but not defeated! One should never underestimate Joyce’s organizational talents. She managed to pull together a catering staff, a parking guard, a clean-up and serving team as well the necessary equipment to turn the house into a massive party venue! She found a highly talented baker who produced and decorated a variety of gourmet cupcakes adorned with miniature wine bottles for the mignoneries course, and they proved to be one of the big hits of the party. She even got the local press involved in reporting the event as a feature in the “False Bay Echo”! Then, an even more critical item on her agenda crept to the surface – WHATEVER WOULD SHE WEAR?????
Enter the local “king” of Cape Town wedding gowns, a fellow named Paul Van Zyl. She had been gazing with longing in her eyes at several creations in his shop every time we passed the window. So now, she had an excuse not only to meet the man, but to have him perform major surgery on an ostrich skin jacket, adorned with some sort of feather creation that spilled out effervescently and very charmingly from the top of the garment. If I did not think that the whole thing looked so adorable on her, I would have said that this arrangement of skin and feathers was evocative of a hatchling emerging from its shell! It could have been a major crisis, but the surgery on the garment was completed before we left for safari, in plenty of time of the party, after only a dozen trips for fittings, and everyone was deliriously happy with the results.
My agenda was much simpler. All I needed to do was to make sure all the ingredients for the four courses would be available. As I had already identified the sources for the easy-to-get items, all I had to do was to include celery root and goose fat at the Old Biscuit Mill farmer’s market and the charcuterie among the errands that had to be run before we left. It didn’t take me long to find the Duck Confit and Saucissons de Toulouse, which were amply available at GoGo’s Market in neighboring Simons Town. GoGo has since become our favorite purveyor of these kinds of meats and Charcuteries.
As RSVPs started to pour in, Joyce’s sixth sense suggested that, instead of doubling my Cassoulet recipe, which claims to feed 12 to 14 per recipe, I should cook a quantity equal to FIVE TIMES the recipe!!! Namely an amount sufficient to feed EIGHTY PEOPLE!!!! When we returned, all I would have to do was buy the basic things, beginning with a pot large enough to hold all those beans, slap the ingredients together and wind up with the logistics of baking all this in manageable batches. In other words, we were launched! And it started to look as if our party, despite all the crazy odds, would actually come together, and that the house we had rented in Fish Hoek would indeed turn out be an ideal venue for the event.
Our guest of honor, Lourens van der Westhuizen arrived mid-afternoon on the day of the party, together with his wife and an impressive load of wine cases to be consumed and sold in the course of the event. The plan was for them to sleep at our house that night, along with Linda, the American ex-pat we had met at the Champagne tasting and the owners of the Mimosa Lodge in Montagu, Fida and Bernhard Hess. He became my hero when he arrived carrying the delicious Gravlax he had promised when the party was first conceived. Every bed and bedroom in the house was occupied.
At the appointed time, all the guests somehow made it up the hill upon which our house is perched. Then, they had only three more flights of stairs and a 35 degree driveway to conquer to get inside the house, finally gaining access to our living quarters where the party was held, and where we could greet them properly with a glass of Champagne. I was busy popping Champagne bottles to supply each guest with at least one flute-full as a welcome drink. What I served was the Pierre Jourdan Haute Cabriere Brut Rosé, a lovely bubbly we had enjoyed at that winery two years ago.
It was, to say the least, an eclectic crowd. Of course, Jeff and Ingrid, the owners of our house were there, as were Gill and Peter, who manage the property and rescue us again and again by solving the kind of problems ex-pats experience in a home-away-from-home. Also there were Stan & Carol Berger, who flew down from Johannesburg to attend - we had stayed with them several times in their vacation home in Plettenberg; our doctor, now our friend, Alan Bell and his wife; my trainer Janine, who we planned on introducing to Kayo McGregor, our waiter at the Harbor House, a favorite restaurant of ours (Kayo’s mother writes for “Platters”, the authoritative South African Wine publication); also from Harbor House was Bryan Jennings, who had been serving us there for the past three years, and he brought his French girlfriend, Fan-Fan, with whom I enjoyed chatting in French about her native Bordeaux. Archie Preuss was there of course, with Jax and Robin; Hettie and Frank Guthrie came, they are the parents of Joyce’s manicurist, Belinda Woods, who was also there with her husband Clinton; Sally & Bruce Elliott and John Rhatagen, friends we met through Hettie and Frank, attended, as did several friends we met through Archie – Linda from Franschhoek and Lynette and Mark who had gone to the “Slow” with us; Dawn and Emily from Cheetah Outreach drove down from Stellenbosch; Graham Johansson, a wildlife guide and his wife were there, and there were sundry other guests who have strayed from my mind as, by the time the party was over, said mind was thoroughly addled by wine and our furious level of activity!
My recipe for Cassoulet is as ancient as the French region from which it derived. It is basically a dish of Navy Beans, cooked to tenderness on top of the stove, and seasoned with cloves, thyme, laurel leaves, salt and goose fat. The cooked beans are then stored and cooled overnight. The next day, a huge quantity of fresh garlic is cooked separately with lots of onions and crushed tomatoes. This mixture is then added to the bean pot and enough fresh parsley is stirred in to endow the mixture with an appetizing palette of colors. The Cassoulet is now ready to accept the meats. In the region where I lived, near Toulouse, this included goose or duck confit, one or more kinds of garlic sausages and a bunch of small pork links. In other regions, for example in Carcassonne, veal shoulder is used and it’s really a different taste. All of this can be - and was - made ready before the party got underway. The only thing left to do a short time before the arrival of guests was to deal with logistics of baking the whole thing.
The bean-onion-tomato-etc. mixture had by now completely filled the huge pot where everything had been cooked and its volume far exceeded the capacity of the oven. What we had to do was divide its contents among several oven-proof terrines and baked in batches. Each contained a layer of the beans-onion-tomato mix, alternating with layers of confit and the various kinds of sausages. The whole dish was now ready to be served, along with Celery Remoulade, a quintessentially French kind of salad made with julienned celery root and a dijon mustard and mayonnaise sauce. We had decided to pair the Cassoulet with a Lourens approbation of course, with the Arensig straight Shiraz. Cassoulet is simply the perfect dish to be served with a good solid Shiraz and the one handcrafted by Lourens happens to be extraordinary!
As we were entertaining far more people than we had place settings for, we had opted for an informal seating arrangement whereby the guests would simply drift around the living quarters of the house and group themselves in conversational seating bouquets. The only formality beyond Joyce’s almost business-like, but cheerfully warming welcome speech, was her introduction of Lourens who then took over and dove into the exposition of his wines, his winery, his Terroir and the ethics of his viticulture.
When Lourens finished, Bernhard brought out the mussels that had been simmering in the cast iron “Plat potjie” (pronounced Poy-kee) we had bought for the occasion. This was paired with Lourens’ Sauvignon Blanc, a particularly mellow yet quite fruity and crisp white which would have done France’s Loire valley proud. The second pairing was Bernhard’s Chef d’Oeuvre: the Gravlax, served on oriental spoons, which made it easy to inhale this delicacy without losing a beat in the buzz of conversations that was gaining momentum. The third pairing was, of course, the Cassoulet with its confit and sausages, paired with the Arensig Shiraz. The fourth and last pairing of the night was, as far as Joyce and I were concerned, an epiphany. Wonderful French cheeses - Contal from the Pyrenees and Morbier from the Jura - were paired with Arendsig’s Wild Yeast Viognier. Joyce and I had tasted Viognier before, but we were always left unimpressed, feeling that its real value was more as a blending medium than a grape of its own merit. Lourens proved us oh so wrong! The Arendsig Viognier was neither harsh nor sweet. It is the perfect dessert wine, allowing a seemingly unlimited range of sweets, cheeses or other meal endings to blend elegantly in the most discerning of palates without any hint at taste domination. Bravo Lourens!!! Finally, the adorable cup cakes we had bought from our new Fish Hoek baking artist were served with coffee. The evening must have been a success. Lourens depleted the entire stock of wines he had brought, with departing guests seen lugging cartons of wine bottles down the stairs of our house and into the street. Amazingly almost all the Cassoulet was gone, the Celery Remoulade fared no better and Bernard’s Gravalax had been inhaled. Needless to say, my entire stock of the Haute Cabriere Brut Rosé champagne offered at arrival had also mysteriously disappeared. Never again will I make the mistake of underestimating the gargantuan appetite of our South African friends!!!
The party was now over, but the returns were still drifting in: several dinners at Hettie and Frank Guthrie’s; another dinner at Sally and Bruce Elliott’s, an invitation from Archie to see the annual Air-Show from the balcony of his luxurious penthouse, which provided an ideal vantage point to view the daring acrobatics and aerial precision formations performed by the largely piston-engine South African Air Force. There were, of course, a few fighter jets that streaked across the sky accompanied by impressive sonic booms, but by and large the show had an almost nostalgic quality. The future held even more invitations, none of which had the feeling of “pay-back”. The fact that in every case these were family dinners that included friends, pets and other friends as well made us feel very comfortable and accepted in their circles of close friends.
And so the Party helped the rest of September vanish in an instant. Worse than that, October was moving on, and by the tenth of that month we were launched for our next escapade: Three days with the Bergers in their beautiful home in Johannesburg and then off until October 21st into the wilderness of Botswana for a riverboat stay, two safaris and a dozen air hops to get there and back.
Our stay with Carol and Stan Berger was not only delightful, but it served to reinforce a growing friendship which we were learning to cherish. Carol is Scottish and an indefatigable cook - or more correctly “Chef “! I found her kitchen an object of envy and what she produces there is as miraculous as it was delicious. Like Joyce, Carol is a “Shikse”. Stan and I are Jewish but our wives are not. It’s a matter of little concern to us, but it did serve to stimulate an interesting discussion between Stan and me over the question of whether being Jewish meant belonging to a Race or a Religion. The matter has, of course, rested unresolved and I do not intend to confuse this narrative by weighing any further into this complex subject.
I had never spent more than a night or so in Johannesburg, except for passing through for a change of planes. This was an opportunity to learn more. Stan explained that the city, which is quite large, and numbers four or five million inhabitants, has a Central Business District virtually abandoned by the general population, being perceived as dangerous and crime infested to a point where the residential living, shopping and entertainment activities are all grouped in more affluent suburban sub-centers like Sandton, where the Bergers live. Over the years, this has reduced Downtown into a collection of institutional buildings housing such captive functions as banking and government, active during business hours but virtually abandoned the rest of the time. During the active days of my career in Urban Development, this kind of development pattern was known as a “Doughnut City”. Seen in this context, it is really the city of Sandton where much of Johannesburg’s commercial vitality has migrated, which in point of fact is the region’s working CBD.
Over the years, we had been dimly aware that Africa had always been at the forefront of Paleontological finds and that it was deeply involved in studies about the origins of Man. On the second day of our stay with the Bergers, Carol and Stan asked if we would be interested in visiting a World Heritage site and museum called the Cradle of Humanity. We jumped on the opportunity and off we went in search of the cradle. We made it after several hours of driving through a monotonously arid geography. But the trip finally paid off in a really big way.
The museum was housed in a gigantic archeological “Tell” the size of decapitated Egyptian pyramid. It was full of exhibits, including a spectacular underground boat ride designed to show how, millions of years ago, the earth was being formed and prepared with fire and water to accept and sustain life as we know it. The ride through the eons was of course dramatized with lots of sound effects and pyrotechnics. I like to think that It was almost scary! The exhibits were truly amazing, particularly for those of us interested in the evolution of man from ape to the current model. In brief, the museum’s recognition as a World Heritage Site is well deserved. It will stay in my recollections on par with, for example, the Opium Museum in Northern Thailand that had left an indelible mark in my appreciation of the history of Opium and its impact on Humanity.
This was all well and good, but by now the long ride getting to the site and the visit to the museum had triggered our appetite alarm. Fortunately, Carol and Stan had foreseen this eventuality and they had “made a plan”, as they say here. There was, near the Archeological Tell, a top ranked restaurant most appropriately called: “Roots”. I surmised with great expectations that the name had to do with the origins of mankind or life on earth and not something as prosaic as carrots or parsnips. Whatever the case, it did not take long for us to appreciate the fact that we had lucked into a highly sophisticated and very classy eatery where we wound up with a five or six course meal, served outdoors on a beautiful terrace, and paired as per the restaurants specialty, with a selected wine for each course.The wines were good, but the Sommelier was even better - and gorgeous; a beautiful girl with whom I found it impossible to stop kibitzing - less about wine and more about any old subject that would keep her near our table!
On that note, we finally turned back to Johannesburg. That evening, Carol managed to dredge up some delicious snacks, and the next day it was time for us, after an educational sight-seeing ride around the city, to be dropped off at “Tambo”, Johannesburg’s humongous airport, to resume our quest for the wilderness that awaited us in Botswana. It was Safari Time again!
According to plan, we met Bill and Carol … that is, Bill Crowe’s Carol, not Stan’s, in the airports departure hall. They seemed to have recovered from the long flight which had brought them over two continents the previous day from Washington DC to Johannesburg. We checked in to catch a BA flight to Livingstone on the Zambia side of the Zambezi River, the Zimbabwe side having been proscribed by the horrors of the Mugabe regime, a subject too complex and too long to address as part of this recitation. We will never know whether said regime is to be blamed for the complexities of dealing with the conundrum produced by the geography of the area. It certainly has strategic potential. It is a fact that two huge rivers, the Zambezi and the Chobe, intersect in that area and wash on the shores of four abutting independent countries, including Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Zambia. Given that each of these countries exercise (or purport to exercise) tight control over who comes in or out, it is not hard to understand how visitors feel like flotsam in these rivers as they are shunted almost obsessively from one immigration…and emigration… post to another, getting their passports, Visas and whatever other scraps of official paper stamped over and over to a point of causing tennis elbow for the officials employed in this orgy of stamping. We speculated on whether this was a reflection of bureaucratic stupidity or a new Black Empowerment Program.
In any event, it must have taken us the better part of the day to finally get free of the officials and we were finally underway to our destination for the next two days: - a cruise on the Zambezi Queen, which was actually moored on the Namibian banks of the Chobe River! The Zambezi Queen is an interesting vessel. One might call it a House Boat, but one that contains fourteen stacked “houses” which are suites in Queen parlance. Or one could call it a floating hotel, but that does not fit either, as the setting of the Queen and the hospitality concept it embodies are too unique. No, the best description is to suggest that it is a luxurious floating Safari Camp. The decks open up to the shores of the Chobe and are ideally situated for game watching from inside ship. We could sense the wild life around us, despite the fact that there was a paucity of actual sightings. It must have been the profusion of aquatic birds that provided this sensory impression.
The Zambezi Queen is really a class act - very slick, very modern and well designed. With the latest in technological comforts and facilities, it eschewed the pseudo-rustic attributes of land based safari camps, opting instead for five star service in a most luxurious and comfortable setting. The flat bottom boat has a superstructure of three decks, two containing fourteen suites with a capacity of 30 passengers. The top deck contains the ship’s lounge, bar, dining room as well as its entertainment facilities and an outdoor pool. The lowest deck includes the boarding area, a reading room and access to the Game Viewing boats brought in for the shore visits.
Our suite was roomy and beautiful, the bathrooms very functional, with excellent showers and lighting. Each suite had its own private terrace which further enhanced the luxury yacht feeling in the ship. When we were first shown the suite, we were informed that we had been upgraded thanks to our travel agent’s affiliation with Virtuoso. This was certainly a welcome salve to mitigate the inconveniences we had suffered during the immigration nonsense!
But there was a major problem. And one that I would consider fatal, at least that time of year! The heat of the day was unbearable. Joyce’s I-phone had indicated that morning that the temperature in the area would rise to something above 105 degrees Fahrenheit and our current level of discomfort now confirmed that the forecast was probably accurate. Even the grace and beauty of the Zambezi Queen could not alter the extent to which the suffocating heat of the place made it intolerable without some sort of cooling or air conditioning facilities. I expressed my concern to Brett McDonald, one of the partners in the ship’s ownership and, though he sympathized with our discomfort, he tried to explain this omission in the ship’s amenities by reminding us that with mechanical ventilation or air conditioning we would not be able to hear the birds sing or the frogs croak!
I did not say anything out loud, but I was tempted to tell Brett that if there was any croaking to be done, it be me, fainting from the heat! But I restrained myself. Brett was really a sweet guy. He is a young, well educated and intelligent Zimbabwean who was dispossessed by the Mugabe regime. The Zambezi Queen project was part of his plan for rebuilding his life. My best wishes are with him.
Well after midnight the frogs were still croaking, but the air had mercifully cooled down a bit. It was a new day and time to climb the safari vehicles that had been prepared for us and, like other land lubbers, visit the Chobe National Park. It wasn’t long after we passed the gates that we encountered what seemed to us as the park’s main population, namely masses and masses of Elephants! In the literature that & Beyond, our safari camp, gave us they estimated that there were roughly 120,000 elephants roaming throughout the park. Our ranger, however, thought it was more like 60,000; I really don’t know who is right, but either way, it’s a lot of elephants. With each animal chewing up leaves, grass, bark, roots and other plant material at the rate of 300 kilograms each per day, it is easy to see why the park seemed tired and denuded. The plant destruction was on such a scale that the park looked as if it had been struck by a cataclysmic event like a hurricane flood or tornado. We felt that, unless the elephants declared an armistice, the Chobe National Park would not live much longer.
As game drives go, there wasn’t much beyond the elephants. I think we saw a giraffe, maybe two. We also spotted a lion, and guess what? He was doing what he does best. He was sleeping! Whatever else we saw evidently did not make an impression on us. It looked to us as if the park had been over-visited and over marketed. The fact that one had to stay on the paved roads also seriously diluted the experience. We really did not see any more wild life until later outside the Chobe National Park, when we piled into one of the ship’s Game Viewing Boats and navigated close to a huge herd of elephants getting organized for a river crossing. They provided non-stop entertainment for quite some time, and wetted our appetite for the two &Beyond safari camps we were scheduled to visit in Botswana’s Okavango Delta.
Back on the ship later that day, in the course of Joyce’s efforts to find a connection to the internet, she blundered into the ship’s library and gift store. There, like the great secret of El-Dorado, she discovered that the room was AIR CONDITIONED!!! As seating was limited, she did not report her find to anybody except her girlfriend Carol Crowe. Both then took possession of the precious space and occupied the only two couches in the room. It wasn’t long before I went looking for her, finding her feeling not one bit guilty! Thus, Bill and I joined the girls in a couple of marginally comfortable chairs, enjoying the cooled air from a 90 degree angle, wistfully watching our spouses snoozing in their prone position. Bill and I are such gentlemen! While it is easy to blame our discomfort on the weather or on Mother Nature, but in my opinion, the extent of our discomfort is simply not justified by hiding it under the high-minded banner of “Responsible Tourism” as proclaimed in the Queen’s official brochure.
As a final note, before moving on to our next safari destination, the Queen did not really travel on the Chobe River. It may have slightly repositioned itself at more or less the same location, but it spent most of the time while we were aboard slowly moving around its mooring, pushed by the currents and prevailing breezes. In other words, we never really “cruised” on the river. That aspect of the experience never materialized. Whatever game viewing did occur, did so from the smaller Game Viewing Boats. Actually that was enough, the great hospitality and quality of the service as well as the innovative concept of the ship itself, made this a worthwhile experience in our journey. With air conditioning, it would have been perfect!
After two nights onboard the Zambezi Queen, we left the posh but hot little boat for the Okavango Delta area, hoping that our destinations there - The Sandibe Lodge on one finger of the Delta and the Xaranna Tented Camp on another - would provide some relief from the heat which, according to Joyce’s I-phone remained in the 105 degree Fahrenheit range. To travel between Zambezi Queen and the two camps involved a bunch of small hops in small, single engine Cessna planes, usually with a five or six passenger capacity. When we had booked the trip we had expected that the travel legs over the Delta would be achieved by helicopter because of massive rains that had been experienced in the region. Alas, the Delta had dried up sufficiently to make these camp destinations reachable via landing strips cleared through the bush and pretty bumpy Land Cruiser rides.
The Okavango Delta is an interesting phenomenon of geography which bears a remarkable resemblance to our Florida Everglades, just 50 miles west of where we live in Miami. It is formed by the Okavango River which flows for more than 700 miles from its source in Angola. Then it disappears beneath the sands of Botswana creating a lush island delta amidst an otherwise arid country. The delta is in a constant state of flux, expanding or contracting depending on the weather during the rainy season. All this creates a watery network of large and small channels, islands, lagoons and swamps lined with water lilies, reeds, papyrus and palms of all kind, providing what can only be described as an idyllic habitat for every aquatic bird imaginable. Herons of all kinds may rule the roost, but the beautiful Fish Eagles wear the crown when it comes to regal stature. But then, of course, we have the little Jacana, so prevalent in the delta that it has been suggested as the country’s national bird. And then we can’t ignore the beautiful King Fishersand Rollers, posing almost expectantly on the tree branches lining the waterways, waiting to be photographed.
Sandibe was the first of the two destinations we had booked. The lodge, a tall airy wood structure with traditional barn-like roof framing exuded Safari Charm. It was filled with art and objects that evoked the days of the Great White Hunters. I was impressed by two things. One was a small army of Fruit Bats that were hanging from the ceiling of the lodge, presumably waiting for nightfall to take off on their nocturnal errands. The other, in the area allocated for meal service, was the chilled bottle of lightly wooded Chardonnay from the Winery of Good Hope in Stellenbosch. This was one of my favorite wines, to which I had been introduced by our friend Mia, the winery’s director of marketing. A few days later, I found the same wine at our other Okavango Delta destination, the Xaranna tented camp. It was a real comfort, for me at least, to know that & Beyond, which controlled both destinations, had made it possible to enjoy good wine during both of our stays.
We had arrived at the Sandibe Lodge in the early afternoon in plenty of time for a late day game drive, scheduled to get underway around 4:00 PM. As we were sitting in the lounge portion of the open sided lodge, we were approached by a young man who informed us that his name was Gift, and that he was our guide. This was hard to believe, he seemed so young. But our confidence in him grew as his demeanor gained authority when he introduced Gum, his tracker and game spotter. Later, climbing on the Land Cruiser, we arranged ourselves with Carol and Bill on the back seat and Joyce and I in the middle row. The front row, behind Gift and Gum, was occupied by a honeymoon couple. It seems that a safari as a honeymoon is quite common nowadays. We have certainly shared many safari vehicles with such love birds. It’s not only appropriate, it’s a good and healthy way to launch a romantic life together.
Gift was at the wheel of the Land Cruiser and displayed his considerable knowledge of the bush. Gum, the tracker and spotter, did the same, trying to deduce the movement of animals while identifying the birdlife we encountered. Depending on the kind of game we came across, he alternated his seating between his front seat and his mobile Observation Post, a folding seat screwed into the front fender of the safari vehicle.
Although part of the Delta and on one of its many water channels, Sandibe Lodge, which consists of only 8 thatched en suite cottages, has a land-based orientation. This was evident during the game drives, where we encountered a large jamboree of African Wild Dogs that had taken over a clearing. It was interesting to observe their behavior and guess at their social structure by studying the patterns of their displays of dominance. Water based activities were essentially focused on the prolific bird life for which the Delta is so famous. The fun of this bird watching activity was enhanced by the pleasure of gliding, in a small aluminum runabout, along the narrow avenues of Papyrus which line the dense network of waterways. The challenge is then to be in the right place, among this aquatic vegetation, to catch an unobstructed view the sunset which delivers, on a clear day, the most incredible display of deep yet brilliant bouquets of dramatic colors found on earth.
While the service at Sandibe was superb and certainly qualified as Safari Chic, the same could not be said about the quality of the cooking. The food was almost inedible, and this was a consensus expressed by everyone in our party. We ate that evening in the Boma but quite frankly, we all felt that we could have done with a little less indigenous charm and a more tasty fare. But we only spent two nights at Sandibe, not enough time to fairly pass judgment on the camp. Mercifully, the weather was much cooler than on the Zambezi Queen and, in balance, the Sandibe experience was not a bad one.
The morning of the third day, we tackled the long drive back to the airstrip to meet another little Cessna that would fly us to the Xaranna Tented Camp. The flight was only 15 or minutes or so, but when we got off the plane it was painfully clear that we were in a different weather zone. It was hot as blazes - again! As we squeezed out of the Cessna, we were met by the & Beyond team in the same type of Land Cruiser the company used in Sandibe. By this means and the Bateleur Eagle decal on the doors of the safari vehicle, we felt well branded for the occasion. There was no doubt that we were properly matriculated in the &Beyond corporate culture. Our ranger, waiting for us at the wheel of the Land Cruiser ,was a lanky fellow who introduced himself as Killer. A tracker was with him. He was simply introduced as Joe, an easy name for us Americans to remember.
As we got underway, Killer advised us that he was not used to this Land Cruiser and that we would be fording several waterways on our way to the Camp. After the first water crossing when all four wheels had to be put in gear, it became clear that his problem was really with any 4X4 vehicle and that his experience as a guide was still a work in progress. The reality of the situation became even more clear when Joe began, less and less subtlety, not only to help Killer manipulate the four wheel drive gears every time we crossed a water stream, but also to guide him in every way toward the destination of the Camp.
The respective roles were de facto established and reversed. Joe was really the guide, and boss of the team, Killer was the helper and trainee. Joe was an unforgettable character. He was a genuine Bushman whose home was in a tribe located a significant distance from the Safari Camps. As a Bushman, Joe, whose full name is really Joe Makulo, is a child of his environment. He seemed to know absolutely everything there was to know about the bush, the trees, the shrubs, the fruits and other plant life. He had grown up with the animals that made their home there and he was an expert in wilderness survival. He understood the geography and the geology of the region, but seemingly not its politics except for the marriage rituals which are, of course, very different from ours. Among other things, for example, it is the father who actually picks the bride. His was purely a tribal upbringing filled with all the traditions which had kept the Bushman nations alive for centuries. Joe Makulo was not only proud of his background, but he did his best to share his knowledge and experience. He showed us how to make a fire, for example, without flint or starter gadgets; he discussed hunting and fishing with us; he showed a remarkable understanding of the weather behavior and the operation of all engines. Of course, tracking and spotting wild life was what he understood best. If I was ever lost in the bush, I could not think of a better man in whom to entrust my life. And we would soon have an opportunity to test this.
It was on then morning of a land based game drive. Killer was moving the Land Cruiser along a swampy road following the tracks of other safari vehicles that had traversed the area at an earlier time. As he moved too cautiously, he predictably got mired down in a particularly deep mud hole and there we were in the middle of a swamp unable to move. Joe immediately got off his spotter’s perch and started chasing branches and other material that could be placed under the wheels to give them traction. This involved raising the heavy vehicle with a jack mercifully clamped inside it. Killer aided in the effort and came back with a few twigs which he found after a lengthy search. In the meantime, Joe reappeared with a huge arm full of branches while he used the Jack to raise one side of the Land Cruiser. Alas, despite all these efforts, the mud was too deep. Eventually help was on its way and another Bushman guide, “TJ”, whose home was from a neighboring tribe, rescued us while Joe and Killer concluded their effort to free the safari vehicle from its prison of mud. The differences between Killer and the Bushmen were simply amazing, with the former always seeming like an aristocratic fish out of water and the latter, behaving like a native perfectly adapted to his environment.
Our stay at Xaranna Tented Camp was to last four nights and must, therefore be considered our principal Botswana Safari destination. It should have been a delightful experience all around. Unfortunately, it wasn’t. Despite the individual plunge pools provided for each tent, the air conditioners, the fans, and the water based orientation of the camp, it was miserably hot! The plunge pools, which seemed so inviting, were way too cold to be of any use; the air conditioners, which were obviously new and certainly well intended, were almost completely ineffective, not even providing psychological relief as they were positioned in a hidden location facing a wall that actually impeded the flow of air. The electric fan, so conveniently mounted on one the four posters of the bed did not work; neither did most of the lights - or the flashlights; seems the switches, or the bulbs, or the batteries were broken and would be replaced immediately. When we left four days later, nothing had been touched!
The architecture of the tents and the way they were configured on their pads with the plunge pool and massage kiosk was sophisticated and functionally attractive, however there were a lot of defects, and the lack of mitigation from the ever present heat trumped all these virtues. There were nine such tents. Carol and Bill had number nine; Joyce and I, number eight! We were at the end of the line and it was a long, long walk from the common service area to our tents. The tents were arrayed in a crooked line all on one side of the common service area, with lots of space between each of the tents, instead of being grouped together. This arrangement exacerbated the distance problem. To make matters worse, the path was unpaved, made of deep silt-like sand that was fine enough to seep through your footwear and leave your feet black and filthy. The endless path was also the favorite venue for every insect in Africa. They had seemingly selected the path to sample all the possible varieties of human skin they could find. It was teeming with all sorts of bugs! It was, in other words, a miserable 15 to 20 minute walk in unbearable heat that stretched longer every time we undertook the trek. The only relief we got was on the second night when a hippo strayed onto the sandy path and the camp management had to drive us to dinner. That night we were spared the ordeal of the charming “nature walk”.
Inside the tent, everything looked exquisite. The furniture was modern and exuded contemporary charm. In fact, it was so charming that the functionality got lost in the décor; there were, for example, so many pillows and useless chi-chi furnishings that we could barely move around…but it was all very pretty… and hot! The design of the tents was innovative and the bathing facilities were very well done with an excellent open shower generously placed in a separate part of the tent rather than confined in a tight enclosure. We also had a beautiful crow-footed bath tub in this bathing area. But, like so many amenities provided by & Beyond, this one bordered on the absurd when, after a steaming hot game drive and the painful burning trudge through the hot sand, we found our tub, crow-feet and all, obligingly filled with HOT, FOAMING water, decorated with some sort of local leaves. It was charming, obviously well intended, but anything hot was the last thing we needed or wanted.
Clearly, it seems that common sense must have taken a holiday. It was time to look for management. We had been introduced to Skipper. Not a ship’s captain, but the assistant camp manager, mostly in charge of the camp’s safari activities and the assignment of personnel and their performance. We had also met the General Manager only perfunctorily for an instant after we had first arrived. Mostly, she was very proud of the fact that she had to abandon us to our own devices in order to fly to Maun with most of the her staff, including most of the help necessary to properly service the guests, in order to help them win a singing competition. Again, it seemed to us as if our comforts had to be subordinated to the ecstasies of local culture. It would have been nice if she had organized a rehearsal for our benefit, but evidently she was too busy or too important for this.
Anyhow, Xaranna won the competition and everyone felt very proud, warm and fuzzy about this! But the win did not do much for us, the paying guests. Quite the opposite; the next day, things got a little busy. New guests had arrived and the camp was filled to capacity. The long walk to and from our tents was elongated further by now having to wait over 30 minutes to be escorted after dark from our tent to the common area, as the phones went unanswered. We had to double up into one of the two skiffs used for our water-based game drives, as one would not start. That vessel was now filled to capacity and any sense of a quiet floating experience was replaced by raucous pattern of jocular humor stimulated by the inability to start up the first boat. We also had to give up on the mokoro (dug-out canoe) ride we had so enjoyed the last time we visited Botswana - seems there weren’t enough personnel left to pole us through the wetlands. Since Bill was a bit hesitant about this part of the adventure anyway, this was not a significant hardship. We have to note, however, that the inability of our camp to satisfy this activity speaks to what we can only suggest was a pattern of laxity and imperfections in the management of the camp inconsistent with the outrageously high tariffs extracted from the guests of & beyond.
Xaranna is really water based, fronting a wide channel full of reeds and water lilies, leading to lagoons often filled with colonies of hippos and crocs. It was always a delight and thrill to race, with Joe Makulo deftly operating the powerful twin outboard motors on the aluminum skiff, in search of the elusive wildlife in this part of the Delta. We had initially visited one of the two lagoons where the hippos liked to hang out. We found them toward the end of the day in time for Joyce to snap a good collection of pictures which she could add to her other collections. The next day we went back to the same lagoon but the attendees of the prior day were gone. Nor could we find them in the other lagoon they had been using. As we had already had a surfeit of hippo companionship we did not feel too sad about that and we decided to give it up for the day. The dizzying ride back through the reeds had been enough of a thrill and so was the wind it generated, providing some relief from the ever-present daytime, and now early evening, torrid heat.
On this particular day, Carol and Joyce, with their agendas velcroed to one another other as usual, had booked concurrent massages to be administered outdoors, at their respective tents, in the sweltering heat, near the plunge pool in the gazebo-like space next to our tents. Bill, in the meantime, had expressed the desire to do some fishing, an activity that I, as an urbanite, did not particularly care for, but which he, as a country boy really relished. Our common interest was something else - Gin and Tonic. This was something we could agreed on, both City and Country creatures could easily forget cultural differences with a few of these. Eschewing the formalities of having the camp organize our fishing expedition through Skipper and Killer, we went on a quest for Joe Makulo and he agreed to take us fishing on the Skiff. Well, we spent about two hours draining Joe’s supply of Gin, while getting soaked in the middle of a lagoon from a thundershower that decided to unleash its water content on us. The afternoon was a complete success. Bill and I were floating pretty high. Joe was the only one who, as I secretly expected, managed to catch a tiny fish and released it as per regulation; I had fun bonding with Bill, joking with Joe Makulo, and drying up from the rain and the Gin.
The final blow to & beyond’s credibility came as our Botswana Safari experience was coming to an end, where we watched an incident unfold at the landing strip as we were ready to catch a Cessna milk run to Maun. It involved a family including two small boys, sweltering in the high heat of the day waiting to be picked up after their charter flight. Their destination, we found out, was the other &Beyond safari camp, but something got fouled up in the communications and the family was left stranded. They had been standing around under a crude open shed at the air strip without water or facilities for an hour, and they were understandably mad as hell…and in enormous discomfort! Joe Makulo, our hero, who had driven us to the air strip, made plans to have them rescued, something neither the management of our camp or their sister camp seemed to be able to figure out. I am sure they finally made it safely to camp but I am not so sure that the experience has embellished their love for either safaris or &Beyond.
It was now October 21st and the Botswana Safari was over. But there is no rest for the wicked! We no sooner got back and installed Carol and Bill in one of the bedrooms of our house in Cape Town when, early the very next morning, we headed back to the airport to pick up Jeanette, another girlfriend of Joyce’s. It should be known that these girlfriends have for many years maintained their relationship through a cabal they call “The Onions”. Men are definitely not included. I was now playing host to three of these onions, Carol, Jeanette and, of course, Joyce. On my side, all I had was Bill. Fortunately, my passion for fishing had enabled Bill and me to bond. And Bill went so far to solidify our relationship that, despite his lifelong attachment to Scotch, he was weaned off the stuff and began drinking WINE. It started the first night in Cape Town when we shared a bottle of wine at the Harbor House restaurant where we had dinner after we had installed Jeanette in a second bedroom.
With Carol, Bill and now Jeanette all installed, and after a good night’s sleep, we started on our very full agenda of activities that would last for the next 5 days, when Jeanette would leave us to meet up with the tour she had booked and Carol and Bill would head home to the USA. There were, of course, innumerable other, more touristy, things we could have planned, but as Jeanette would be getting her Cape Town education from the tour she had booked and Bill and Carol had been here before and did not need a refresher, we wraped their visit into a personal context based on our own experiences.
Day 1 started with breakfast and shopping at the Old Biscuit Mill, the most incredible Farmers Market imaginable, where virtually any kind of specialty food is available. This is where I can find a reliable supply of impossible-to-locate Celeriac. This also where I can find French Charcuteries, like confit , goose fat or foie gras and this is where, if you’re clever enough to manage the super-high density crowds elbowing for space at the trestles set up to hold these goods, you can assemble a breakfast consisting of oysters, champagne, eggs benedict with smoked salmon and, of course, any kind combination imaginable for brewing the coffee bean. Then there was lunch at the Leopard Lounge at the Five Star Twelve Apostle, where one can book a table on a sun-bathed terrace that provides a magnificent view of the Atlantic Ocean, framed by the craggy cliffs that define the Camps Bay coast of Cape Town. After lunch, to get back on the Indian Ocean side the Cape where we live, it was the perfect opportunity to take the dizzying high scenic route by circling to the top of Chapman’s Peak instead of merely following the tamer sea-level road. Last year ,Chapman’s Peak was closed for one reason or another. But this year it was triumphantly open and welcoming.
For Day 2, we visited the African Penguins in Simons Town and another favorite restaurant for lunch, the Boulders Inn. That evening, we had organized a Chili Party to introduce our US friends to our Cape Town friends. We found out the hard way the first year in Cape Town that, much to our dismay, our American, or perhaps Tex-Mex style of chili powder was simply not available in Cape Town! So each year we do the logical thing and include several bottles along with the supply Gold Demi-Glace which I use to prepare the sauce for my duck breast. As usual, the party turned into more than I had contemplated. We wound up with at least 15 people. But at least mercifully, this made it possible to reduce our stock of spices and wines which we felt uncomfortable about storing until next year.
Day 3 consisted of shopping and aimless walking in Kalk Bay, the charming fishing village a few kilometers from our house, and a ride on the Water Taxi with Carl, hoping to find whales in the Bay. Carl has the distinction of being able to always find whales, except not that day! Right after we started our journey from Kalk Bay to Simons Town, ominous dark clouds from an incoming southeaster started to appear, the waves got higher and higher, and our trip was cut somewhat short as he hurried back to the safety of the harbor.
We also wanted our friends to visit the Winelands. This is a large region, radiating out from Cape Town, which I would estimate covers several hundred square kilometers, and where some 6,000 wines are produced in seemingly as many wine estates. These wines are usually of a quality which in my personal opinion beats anything found in the Napa Valley, or for that matter in California! But I am certainly willing to be challenged on that point. In fact, I would enjoy it!
The Cape region originally started growing grapes thanks to the Huguenots, some three hundred of them, escaping religious persecutions because of their dogma. Legend has it that they brought with them grape vine cuttings, which were able to thrive in both the climate and the soil composition they found in South Africa. The reality, however, differs somewhat. The Huguenots had landed in South Africa around the 16th century and, though they did in fact settle in Franschhoek and kept all of their French names, the wine they produced was more accidental than studied. The real wine industry, as we know it to-day, supported by science and research, did not blossom until much later, around 1970, and wasn’t perfected until after the fall of apartheid when international markets opened to exports from South Africa.
Given the scale of that industry, it is naïve to think that a tasting or two of wines at a wine farm will endow the casual visitor with a special understanding of the region. And so, what we did was to zero in on two of our favorite wineries - lunch at Terroir on the Kleine Zalze Estate and a tasting at a winery in Franschhoek called Boekenhoutskloof. The wines it produces are well known, all with solid reputations. The estate markets its products under three basic labels - The Chocolate Block, a shiraz-based blend of Grenache, Cabernet Sauvignon, Viognier and Cinsault. The second label is called Porcupine Ridge and under it the winery markets its glorious Sauvignon Blanc as well as some red blends. The third label is called Wolf Trap but I must admit that I do not know enough about it to comment.
This was Joyce’s and my second trip to Franschhoek this year and our second visit to the Boekenhoutskloof Winery. During our first visit, before the arrival of our guests, we had receive an update on the ’09 Chocolate Block. As had happened last year, we were gratified to see that Innocent was still there manning the Tasting Room, and that he had remembered us. Innocent basically mans all of winery’s sales operations and, having been there for many years, he knows everything about his stock and product. Thus he was proud of the fact that the ’09 Chocolate Block was out, and that with the slight increase in the Grenache component the blend, it should be even smoother…we whole heartedly agreed!
And, like the “fish” I had become when it came to wine, Innocent was able to get me squarely on the hook for not only two cases of 2009 Chocolate Block but also a larger wood crate containing an extensive sampling of the winery’s complete product line, including a bottle of the 2007 Journeyman. This wine can’t be bought in stores, it is not for sale. Yet some of these precious bottles have made it out of the wine farm at a price, Innocent informed us, of over $500.00 a bottle. The Journeyman had gained discreet fame when, a few years ago, a bottle had brought in several thousand dollars at auction and it is considered an almost mythical treasure among wine collectors. I really do not know about that, but I was impressed with the fact that of all the wines in the wood crate, the only one that really seemed to matter was the Journeyman. Needless to say, we have absolutely no intention whatsoever of sharing the Journeyman. And we bought it all knowing that it would be completely impractical to try to take the stuff home with us. We had tried bringing a prized bottle in a prior year and wound up as victims of thievery, practiced by the TSA in the holy name of “Security”! And so, our Cape Town Cellar continues to be a “work in progress” and, as usual, our trove of special wines will, once again, remain a hostage of the owners of the house.
Finally, no visit to Cape Town is complete without tasting the delights of its fine dining. Given the limited amount of time available, we compressed the experience into just four meals. First, of course, was Dinner at the Harbor House when everybody had arrived. Our last meal, lunch on the way to drop Carol and Bill at the airport and Jeanette at her hotel was what I would consider the “Piece de Resistance” - the epicurean masterpieces crafted by La Colombe, recently rated the number one restaurant on the African Continent.
As previously mentioned, the third restaurant was the unprepossessing Boulders Restaurant, located at a beach filled with…guess what…huge boulders that act, along with the ambient shrubbery, as habitat for the endangered South African Penguin. The Boulders serves simple and exceedingly well prepared seafood, particularly the crayfish which is a sort of cross between a tiny lobster and a very large prawn. Sitting on the sea-facing terrace watching the huge expanse of False Bay - with or without whales doing their surfacing act - while sipping wine, probably a nicely chilled Dornier Rosė, has always represented for us a delightful way to spend some time. We wanted Carol Jeanette and Bill to experience this!
Also as previously mentioned, the fourth restaurant was Le Terroir, the superb eatery of the Kleine Zalze Winery in Stellenbosch. Terroir is almost as famous as La Colombe, which shares its location and is generally associated with the Constantia Uitsig Winery, so famous for its outstanding Semillions. The lavish lunch at Terroir was graced by my favorite Sauvignon Blanc, identified as the Kleine Zalze Family Reserve.
October was waning faster than a sunset. With everyone now gone and with the house to ourselves again, it was our turn to organize, pack and prepare for our long voyage home. There were still a few more dinner parties, like the one given by Brian, FanFan and Kayo, where we met Kayo’s charming mother, Lindsaye McGregor. Lindsaye writes for Platters, the ultimate and undisputed encyclopedic authority on South African wines. In the short time we had before we left she taught me a lot about the subject and hopefully next year, as our friendship grows, so the depth of my knowledge of the South African wine industry will as well. She also gave us a braai (barbecue to us Americans) cookbook she co-authored, so we will plan on many good meals too!
And so, as we must finally say goodbye to our friends in Cape Town. We can do so this year, unlike last year when we left fearing the obstacles the World Cup might place in our way, without any ambivalence - WE SHALL DEFINITELY BE BACK!!!!
Thanks for coming to what will become our way of entertaining our favorite people at our “home away from home”!
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