'dankie' for a 'lekker' time...
We left Stellenbosch on 3rd April having spent just over 2 months living and working there.
Ill really miss the beautiful buildings in the town, amazing scenery, our lovely flat, the friends I made whilst working in the pancake restaurant there and of course, the amazing Cape wines...
Ill really miss the beautiful buildings in the town, amazing scenery, our lovely flat, the friends I made whilst working in the pancake restaurant there and of course, the amazing Cape wines...
Here are are few photos of our time in Stellenbosch...
- THANKS RACHEL AND CHAR!!!! you are the best..
Nick (Dr Evil) with his beloved Frankie the dog (very very cute dog)
Nick (Dr Evil) with his beloved Frankie the dog (very very cute dog)
Hamman St - the street we lived on in Stellenbosch.
A hilarious night out for Nick's leaving drinks with his friends from work - Zanne and Margueritte (below)...
Cape Town weekend
A hilarious night out for Nick's leaving drinks with his friends from work - Zanne and Margueritte (below)...
Cape Town weekend
We had a great weekend in Cape Town some time in March where we met up with Paula and Ian. Paula, for those who don't know is my friend and former boss at Wallis. She was in Cape Town shooting the Wallis summer 07 collection with her partner, Ian - we had a great fun and it was lovely to see familiar faces again...
We had a great evening at The Kraal on Long Street, eating traditional African food and watching the crazy Zulu dancers - see below!
De Soete Inval
Pancakes and all things sweet - working there has really made my sweet tooth bigger! I've got major cheese and carrot cake cravings everywhere we go now - its having an impact on my waistline, but I think we should all enjoy life's little pleasures and in Stellenbosch for me it was wine (the wine is amazing and very cheap) and cake...
Working for Anneke and Peter was great - they were fantastic bosses (are you reading this Anneke??!) and I loved being a waitress again. I love the human interaction with so many different people every day and the buzz you get after a busy shift....it reminds me of my sixth form days working at Brown's Bistro in Clitheroe with Charlotte, Anna, Kal, Holly and co...although here after a busy night there was no chips and gravy at the chinese chippy with the girls which I did miss dearly!!
The customers were generally really nice and after 2 months I was sounding like a broken record as I got so much attention everytime I opened my mouth (which of course I loved)...'oh wow, where are you from? What you doing working in Stellenbosch? So, then I'd repeat the same story everyday, telling them what we were doing...I met loads of people from all around the world - Dutch, German, South African and of course Brits, in fact I even met a couple from Blackburn and a guy from Wigan!!! South Africans are really hospitable, I got so many offers to stay at people's houses on our travels...
Here I am at work with the gang...
I also inspired surprising reactions in some people...one guy loved my accent so much and asked me to read poetry to him - he said I sounded like....this makes me laugh....Helen Mirren!!??! He was being deadly serious. A little boy also told his mum I reminded him of the Queen of Narnia!!?! Not sure whether this is a complement or not - I am told she is a bit of a icey queen!
I worked with some great people - Mina and Wilma (my 'meiser')...Wilma taught me how to make Bobotie (v traditional dish) and Mina taught me some Afrikaans.
Then there was Bethuel, 'Master of cappucino foam making' and generally funny guy who taught me, well, how to make amazingly good milk froth!! Steven who didn't teach me much (sorry steven) as he was a bit of a workaholic - he was all the way from Malawi. And recently Quentin, who is studying to become a vicar/preacher.
Last but most certainly not least ...Antoinette (my best friend in Stellenbosch) - had lots of fun being silly together and having a few bevvies after work...and she taught me some great Afrikaans phrases like 'lekker slaap' (sleep well - 'like a slob') 'es is lief vir yau' (i love you), 'es is yammer' (I am sorry) and more the obvious words that I didn't need any help with were 'dankie' (thank you) and 'lekker' which Afrikaan speaking South Africans use in almost every sentence (it means great, cool, nice) - apparently its even in the South African English dictionary now - so we could well be saying it in England too. Here is Antoinette in the restaurant with Steven...
Road trip...
We said our goodbyes to Tina and guys at The Stumble Inn after spending our last night in a tent freezing with no covers (!) and left Stellenbosch on 3rd April on a road trip with Antoinette, her cousin - Estelle and Sunal headed across the Klein Karoo (desert-like area) to Oudhtshoorn. Here there was a huge Afrikaans music and culture festival happening. We stopped on the way at this really weird bar in the middle of the desert. The guy who owned it had the clever idea of calling it 'Ronnie's Sex Shop' - great marketing strategy as the place was heaving... There were bras and knickers hanging from the bar and all sorts - weird...
We were supposed to camp but when we arrived it was absolutely boiling hot and we ended up staying at Antoinettes parents (who had rented a holiday home there) in the lovely air-conditioned lounge. It was great fun - despite the fact we couldn't understand what the bands were singing about as everything was in Afrikaans. We drank lots of brandy and coke and ate Afrikaans food - lots of fun...
After saying our goodbyes to Antoinette and Sunal we left the next day to start our journey up the Garden Route. First stop, Wilderness - a great place and totally wild as the name suggests. We stayed right by the ocean and could hear the waves last thing at night and first thing in the morning. We walked to some waterfall one day ....
Meeting the animals...
From Wilderness, we managed to get a lift with a lovely couple of girls from New York who were working on a project in the townships of Cape Town. They took us all the way to Port Elizabeth where we visited Addo National Park and saw loads of animals - Elephants, Kudo, Warthog, - almost the whole cast of the Lion King! It was very exciting I loved the Warthogs ('when i was a young warthog..') and Zebras...
Coffee Bay
From Port Elizabeth we headed to Coffee Bay in the Transkei - a really traditional Zhosa area where people still live in the traditional Zhosa mud huts all brightly painted and dotted across the landscape....it almost reminded me of teletubbie land or the land of the Moomins! It was really good to feel like we were actually in Africa again as in SA it's sometimes easy to forget. The hostel was run by the local people which was really refreshing and they cooked us traditional Zhosa food there - a really idyllic spot...
From Coffee Bay we headed to Durban where we stayed for our final week in South Africa. We were heading here to meet a guy with a boat. Nick had put up ads in the yacht clubs in Durban and Cape Town advertising us as crew members and a guy had expressed interest in us joining him all the way to Australia...Although it sounded like a great idea and a chance to see some amazing islands, after meeting the guy and having a look at the boat I decided that I just couldn't spend three months in such a small space - and of course then theres the sick sickness, storms, lack of communication with the outside world etc...So, here's to India....
