OSTRICH EGGS AND CLAMPED PIPES

We arrived in Cape Town without further incident and spent 2 weeks fixing things. We had the king pin in the steering column repaired, we shopped for pipes and engineering places for braising, filters, bike spares for servicing my bike, food, more pipes, books, clamps, etc. Theo fitted the inverter, the solar panel on the roof, the fridge is working on gas as well as electricity, our shower works and he’s fitted pipes to run the veggie oil. We managed to catch up with old friends but I felt like a foreigner balancing on a bar stool and all that concrete and noise and throwing banana skins in the dustbin seemed wasteful. Pavements, shops and electrical gadgets replaced mountains, peacefulness and fynbos. I missed simplicity but was disappointed in how easy it is to slip back in.

A friend decided to catch a lift with us as far as Oudtshorn to visit some friends. Luckily Arno, our passenger, is easy go lucky since our trip started with problems. Previous mishaps like broken gear levers seemed trivial compared to this. We got as far as the Worcester tunnel when the fuel pipe started sucking air so we plakked there for 2 nights while Theo tried to tighten the clamps and bleed the fuel pipe. We eventually got Keith (brother in law) and his diesel mechanic buddie to come through to help us out. They were startled at Theo’s assortment of connections, pipes and clamps but they managed to get us going again.

The Meiringspoort Pass between Prince Alfred Hamlet and Oudtshoorn is really pretty and I lost count of the times we crossed the river drifts. Unfortunately the Swartberg Pass was not possible in our long bus since the sign recommended 4 x 4 vehicles.

We arrived at Oudtshoorn, a town renowned for ostriches, the Cango Caves and crocodile farms and stayed with our biker friends, Martin and Peta. We enjoyed their hospitality for 2 nights, braaied yummy ostrich steaks and ostrich sausage, visited a dusty museum, and bought a ostrich egg. I’m looking forward to it for breakfast although 1 ostrich egg is the same size as 24 regular eggs. I’ll tell my mother, who is fascinated at the amount of eggs we go through, that we’ve progressed to ostrich eggs, that should give her a laugh.

Then we joined Arno at the farm in Oudtshoorn. His friend works and stays on a huge, busy, dairy farm called Bakenkloof. Life there is simple and I loved it. I was in my element walking around in wellies in the mud and brushing the horses, and drinking wine around a fire watching the sunset, and feeding the calves milk from a bottle and picking peacan nuts and sitting on a crate in the sun shelling them. Piet’s wife showed me how to make butter and she gave me delicious buttermilk, yoghurt and milk. Theo made a huge peacan pie for everyone and we were ready to leave to travel further north.

Going Into The Wild (good movie) has been a great adventure for us. Each day here is like man, life’s good.

We didn’t know what to expect at Simonskloof Organic Farm since the webpage had phrases like “lots of time to meditate” so we weren’t sure if we’d sit around eating tofu or run naked through the fields clutching a crystal in search of our inner self.

Turns out the place superseded all our expectations and Jurgen totally applies the concept of WWOOFING (Willing Workers On Organic Farms) and the 3 of us interacted full time, working and eating together. Simonskloof is a retreat off the grid (no Escom) situated 50km into the Koo valley. There’s just space, tranquility and harmony. We didn’t do any meditation or call on the spirits but we did drink loads of red wine, and had conversations about life, the universe, AC DC and the best way to cook potatoes. I thrived.

Living in a world without light switches, a microwave oven or cell phone reception takes getting used to but you learn to pee by candle light and to find the salt in the dark with just a lantern. I didn’t know much about the whole Permaculture thing so washing tiny tomato paste cans, squashing up egg trays, rinsing beer cans, drying out tea bags and putting biodegradable stuff back into the earth was all very new to me. On top of all that Jurgen is a pedantic Swiss German with many peculiar ways such as colour coding his washing on the line cos it’s aesthetically pleasing and not boring he reckons. I’m a slap dash no frills kinda gal and Theo also takes the shortest route, unless there’s food involved, but the 3 of us got on fantastically. He likes thing in an exact place cos its easier than searching in the dark – makes sense. Folding the spare blankets to resemble a French Chocolate Bun instead of a neat square, well lets just say that’s a bit odd, but it’s those kind of things which make him so unique, (and I thought thoroughly entertaining), and which makes his rustic yet spotless guest houses such a popular weekend getaway. By the time we left I enjoyed laying the table (a task done for all meals) symmetrically cos it looked nice.

Maraletta, Jurgen’s newly wedded bubbly wife, still has a business in Cape Town so at the moment is only able to come through for stretched out weekends to the farm but once the 3 door house is ready she will be adding her personal touch and making more of her delicious Apricot jam and fragrant salts.

Jurgen enjoys cooking as much as Theo does so while they cooked up a storm, I cleaned up, making sure the cheese grater went back on the right hook and wondered why my clothes were shrinking.

We stayed in our camper bus down at the campsite although it was really just for sleeping since we were busy all day long building a reed roof on the soon to be finished new house and we did general work including spotlessly cleaning the 2 guest houses. Coffee breaks on the farm stoep, watching hundreds of oak leaves drift in the wind with backdrop of spectacular valleys and mountains, can cut into a working day, ho hum, but the only stress out there was chasing the chickens off the stoep and squeezing the last coffee out of the plunger to dunk your chocolate biscuit into.

I re-discovered a book which I read 20 years ago called Illusions by Richard Bach. I was probably too young and spaced out to really understand it properly first time round but wow, did I hang on every word when I re-read it. Damm, it’s so profound – you just have to read it, if it’s the one thing you do that’s important.

Being Winter, we had a few days of icy wind blowing from the snow surrounding mountains and cracking my face, but mostly we worked in a T shirt and just bundled up at night to keep out the minus zero degrees. I even got used to using the cold outdoor shower at the campsite. The water can be heated but it takes too long and what the heck, a good nipple stand and an instant face lift is a damn good way to start the day although when I washed my hair, the brain freeze made me move in slow motion for about 10 minutes thereafter making it difficult to dress while balanced naked on a rock under a tree.

The campsite’s long drop is great for the daytime if you take your binocs with to watch the birds and it takes the concept of “Leaving no trace” nicely to new frontiers since you don’t even leave skidmarks.

On an off day we rode our bikes down the valley to Keerom dam where Theo had an unsuccessful attempt at trout fishing. I enjoyed the tricky ride even though I hit the deck making me realize the importance of wearing safety clothes – I wasn’t wearing my bike boots and could have prevented a bruise or two on my legs but I was wearing my helmet (even though we were on the farm still) and protected my head when it bumped against a rock.

Another off weekend it was the yearly Wacky Wine Weekend and of course we went. We hooked up with Kyro, our son, and a bunch of our biker friends from Cape Town and for R60 p/p we tasted red wine until eventually they all tasted the same to me. Well, they do anyway but I’m practicing. We slept over with our friends but I’m afraid I don’t remember much of the evening since I got horribly drunk.

Anyway our time at Simonskloof was fantastic but after a month we decided its time to head back to Cape Town to fix the steering, complete the veggie oil conversion and be off on our long trip up to Pilansburg to do the course which we’d finally booked. We could only leave 2 days later than planned cos the bus was stuck in the mud after some heavy rain and we had to wait for the road to dry out. After much digging and towing and revving and smoke and spinning wheels we were pulled out. It was a learning curve but I’ll put money on it that we’ll make the same mistake again. Anyway we eventually got on our way, happy to see the roof completed. We’d stripped and cleaned the reeds which were nailed in as a ceiling. Theo and Jurgen covered them in hessian, then a layer of insulator and finally they cut and nailed in corrugated iron sheeting on the top. I helped wherever I could, but in between all of the work I ended up getting tick bite fever which had me down for a few days with a migraine, body aches and a fever but I managed some interesting reading in the meantime.

I’m starting to have my doubts as to what kind of Field Guides Theo and I will make cos on our trip to Simonskloof, we stopped overnight at the Montagu tunnel. We were surrounded by awesome sheer rock mountain walls and across the road lower down, a river meandered through bushes and reeds.

We stopped in time to watch the sun go down, made a fire, tried to ignore the surprising heavy traffic rushing between Montagu and Ashton (country towns with peak hour traffic??) and polished off the last of Theo’s home made Cherry Liqueur. As it got darker we heard scuttling around in the bushes and wondered if it was a porcupine. The scuttling got noisier and noisier and we even heard grunts and pants. Too late for sleeping baboons, we nervously considered a leopard but the mammal book (after quick reference) stated that leopards are shy animals. Theo was inside the bus, probably pouring the last of the liqueur, but the point is he was inside and I was outside when the grunts and pants started getting nearer and louder and it only took me 3 seconds to cover the 100m from the braai fire back to the bus door, jump in and slam the door shut. We stayed there the rest of the evening except for once when Theo dashed out to fetch the meat off the fire. Field Guides in the making!

Our trip back was as to be expected; eventful. We stopped overnight at a pullover but next morning we realized the battery was flat (we left the lights on?!?). Luckily we had just bought a solar panel in Montagu after seeing how well it worked at Simonskloof. We propped the panel up against the wheel and 3 hours later the battery was charged and we where on our way to Cape Town where…. life…. seems….. strange…………….