Penguins, Dassies, and our first African Sunset

So after the botanical gardens, we discovered another penguin colony. It was bigger than the other one. These creatures are so cute. They are pretty clumsy on the ground and fall down a lot, so they hold a place special in my heart.

There are also these creatures there with the penguins called dassies. They look like really fat squirrels.

On our drive back home, we stopped to see our first true, African sunset. Our home is on the east side of Table Mountain. So the sun goes behind the mountain and we don't really get to see the sun set. So this picture is taken from across the False Bay back on Table Mountain. We live at the bottom of the mountain on the very right hand side of that picture.

Gardens!

Here are the Harold Porter Botanical Gardens in Bettie Bay. The pink flower is a Protea which is prevalent here. It hasn't opened yet, but they are huge when they do. We are excited for the flowers to only get better. Their spring here is in September and the wildflower bloom across the country is apparently incredible.

Holy Gees! Baboons!

So we went to these other, much more secluded, Botanical Gardens (Matt and I are officially members of the South African National Botanical Institute and get in free to all of the botanical gardens!) The gardens had trails leading out of the garden up into the hills. As we came back into the garden, we spotted baboons less than 30 feet from us. The male was huge and I figured could probably eat us.

Our New Car!

We are proud new owners of a Hyundai Elantra. Sorry about the interior pic; we had to sneak it through the cracked window before we bought the car. Believe it or not, the cars here are in general much smaller than our cars. We just managed to find the one that is totally American. It's my first car with the steering wheel on the right side.

Matt's 1st Day!

It's Matt's first day at the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens (Thurs). Isn't he adorable?!

The next picture is Matt in front of a huge, awesome tree in the middle of the city. It is in the Company Gardens. The Company Gardens were the origin of Cape Town. The Dutch East India Company established a garden on the cape to grow vegetables to supply the men on the ships passing around the cape to prevent scurvy.

Something positive

I have begun "working" at the Kirstebosch. The place is amazing. I got to pollinate the special "Mandela Gold" strelitzia, or Bird of Paradise. I got to see the rare plants, including some which do not exist in the wild any longer. I will get to do some propagation, some planting out, and probably some design and planning. I can;t wait to do more.

Last night we had dinner with a wine producer in the area and his wife, Richard and Fi. They are both british and have charming accents. we drank some fantastic wine and had a nice meal as well. They gave us the inside tip on some restaurants and hikes that aren't in the guide books. We stayed their after midnight, wrapped up in some good conversation. We got really lost getting out to their place, ended up being 45 minutes late even though we found out we were doing circles around their place the whole time. it was dark out there, no lights, and a sliver of a moon. Plus nothing is marked well or with any consistency. It is named one thing on one side of the road but something different on the other. and not much of this place is on a grid, so everything eventually seems to get to the same place, or loop around the same places, some routes are just more direct.

We may have found a car, finally. that is one thing that has proved to not be cheap at all. cars hold value here pretty well and everything is imported here, so theres no way for them to keep down prices. same with bicycles. a decent bike that may cost 500-1000 US is gonna be twice that here. and used bikes are hard to come by, as are used surfboards. we will find these things and settle soon.

Cheers

Buddha

I'm sorry to have to post this here. Buddha died. It was obviously unexpected, but it was also unpreventable and hopefully relatively quick. Many of you knew Buddha and what a great dog he was and I know he will be missed by many. He welcomed me home with a wagging tail for 9 years, ate anything possibly edible that was within site, and was truly one of the strangest, sweetest, goofiest dogs I have ever met. I love him more than I could have ever thought possible.

There is no ice cream in Africa

They have given it a try, but officially we have tried 2 different kinds of ice cream, and well, i'm not sure how you can mess up cream, eggs, and sugar, but they have. And I don't have an oven, so I can't bake. So if we could all have a moment for my sweet tooth........it lived a good life.

Table Mountain and odds and ends

Today was our official introduction to Table Mountain. There are apparently a ton of trails up and around the mountain, but they must be top secret because we could only find the main trail up. The hike was beautiful, but it was a tough one. About 75 percent of it is basically climbing switchbacks straight up the mountain. There were a lot of wildflowers, and this spring there are supposed to be gazillions more. So we are really excited for spring. The top of the mountain is a huge plateau; an interesting geological phenomenon. And you can seen around the entire city and cape peninsula. To save our knees, we took the cablecar back down. It really seems like the perfect hike, when you can wear yourself out and then not have to hike back down. The cablecar is similar to the tram in Portland, but a much steeper decline with much more treacherous terrain below.

We also signed our lease today for our new place. We are pretty excited. I think its a pretty incredible deal. Its this adorable cottage that is fully furnished and we get to share the owner of the main house's garden. Matt is already making plans for the grapevine that covers the arch off of our patio. And there is an adorable little pool in her garden. We won't move in until the first, so we won't be able to send out pictures until then.

Last night we went "out" for the first time. We found this coffee shop, and this adorable South African guy is the waiter. He's probably about 20 and his name is Rodney. Well, he and his friends were playing jazz last night at the coffee shop so we went. It was him in the guitar and a guy on the drums and then these 3 women got up and sang and were amazing. Then, they grabbed this little 10 year old kid from the crowd and he played the drums and he was incredible. It was a lot of fun. We talk to each other about Rodney like he is our friend, but in reality, he is just the one guy who's name we know. I think he probably thinks of us as the "two old Americans" who keep bothering him. But he's our new best friend until we meet someone else!

Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden and more Penguins!

The Gardens are amazing, and this is winter. The attention to every detail is awesome. All the paths are cobblestoned. The view from the park was also very impressive, both of the city and Table Mountain. The weather this weekend was beautiful as well, around 70 with a light breeze. We are finding our way around the place pretty easily now, both from driving around, and running around. This place is really impressive.

Vivian Frost Hill

We have a niece! On July 16, 2009 for all of you in America, and July 17, 2009, for Matt and I, Vivian Frost Hill was born. The only baby in the family so far that now has 2 birthdays! Nice work, Amy and Troy.

Whales and Penguins, Yes! Penguins!

Today was our first vacation day really. we found this amazing produce market where you get 3 big bags of carrots for 10 rand and 5lbs of onions for 10 rand, and lamb chops for 30 rand. 10 R is just over a dollar! yup, $3 for lamb chops and $1 for all those carrots. Then we proceeded to the southern cape to find penguins. On the way there was an amazing lineup of waves (which should attract plenty of my attention) then all the sudden, whales, just maybe 300 yards off the shore. A mother and baby, just playing around in the shallows. It was amazing. The penguins were also quite a site, pretty good sized little fellas too. Im serious, all this happened between 11 am and 5 pm. crazy right? Yup. oh, the other pics are of University of Cape Town. what a beautiful campus. Megan and I walked to the Rhodes Memorial and were warned about the baboon nearby. Yes, a baboon just right off campus. Did I mention this place is wild? Its crazy. And I love it here!

Arrived 7/13/09

So here we are. We have spent 2 full days here in Cape Town, well, Rondebosch to be exact. Yesterday it was pouring down rain and pretty cold, so we basically felt at home. We have spent the past 2 days trying to establish ourselves here which has been frustrating. First we got a phone and we were pretty proud of ourselves that we could now communicate with the outside world. We found the phone at a mall. The mall basically looked like an American mall plus some extra stores and better fashion. When we got home, I tried the phone and it didn't work. So we returned to the mall, retracing our steps through the city and then the mall, to find the phone shop. Once the phone was fixed we decided to try to find a place to live. We have a map of the city, but not the suburbs, so we look for places on the internet, find them on the yahoo maps, and then try to draw the maps so we can find them as we drive around. Driving is crazy here. First, its on the other side of the road and the car is stick shift. The hardest part is shifting with your left hand, and our car doesn't like to go in reverse, so we have to try to avoid going in reverse at all times. Next, only about 50% of the streets are signed, so even when we kind of know where we are going, we can't find the right streets. Let's just say that finding our way about has so far been the most frustrating part of the trip. We still need to start a bank account, but we can't do that until we have an address, and we need to buy a car, but we can't do that until we have a bank account. So far, we haven't even made it into the actual city because we have been too busy trying to take care of all of these things. So that's our plan tomorrow. Check out the city. So things should start to get a bit more interesting tomorrow. We got pretty excited today when the clouds broke for a bit and we were able to see Table Mountain. It's much bigger than I thought and I realized that since we will live on the east side of it that we will never see a sunset. It's an ok trade though. Its a beautiful mountain and I could see some sort of antelope like animal on it today. There is supposed to be all sorts of wildlife on the mountain. So officially we go to Cape Town tomorrow!