I was up dark and early, sealing the last box that I wanted to pack in, finalising the contents of my tog bag and getting ready for work. The morning did not get off to the greatest of starts as I promptly smashed a big red wine glass to pieces as I was making my breakfast and managed to stub my toe while getting out of the shower. Nevertheless, I persevered on and actually managed to lug my luggage, my packed box and my work bags (including the laptop) down to the car, on time and in one single load.
The plan for Friday was simple enough. Full day of work ahead of me, of which I would work until 15:00 before racing off to Gordon’s Bay, dropping off some more stuff for the move and picking Chantelle up in order to pick our way through to Franskraal for our well deserved weekend away. Easy stuff.
For the record, Franskraal is a little seaside village just past Gansbaai which itself is just past Hermanus. If you don’t know where Hermanus, please have a whale of a time finding it yourself :P
The day in the office went pretty well, with most of my time being spent of tinkering around on Silent Hunter and working on a couple of other systems. The office was pretty quiet with only Jason and myself left standing from 12:00 onwards which meant the day passed pretty quickly because the damn phone never stopped ringing!
From there I hopped onto the N2 and sat in some traffic on my way to Gordon’s Bay and C’s flat. She was out shopping for our trip so I let myself in and got to unpacking some of my stuff that has been steadily piling up over these last couple of weeks. In the end there was just enough time for me to finish setting up my little corner of junk and other man stuff before she arrived home and we hit the road in our holiday trip car of choice – the green Getzie.
Thanks to a few hiccups and misunderstandings (blame the jeans), it was dark by the time we finally reached our destination, but thanks to Chantelle’s excellent sense of direction (where I would have ended up in De Aar) we found all the places we needed to stop over at without any hassle whatsoever. On arrival, we stumbled upon a slight screw up on the house we had rented that saw the shutoff valve to the toilet malfunctioning, meaning that I had to keep going and turning on and off the outside water supply whenever we needed water, but other than that the quaint little brick seaside house was perfect for our purposes.
Chantelle made some delicious vetkoek with curry filling which we sat and chowed outside under the star-filled night sky. It is always so wonderful coming to these little towns so far removed from big city centres because it is only once you are out from all the surrounding light that the stars truly come out to play. We were treated to an absolute stunning night-time spectacle and that alone was worth the trip (and made up for the stupid water supply tap with which I became so familiar).
Seeing as I had come straight from work, the laptop had made the trip with us, so we ended off an absolutely tranquil and relaxing night with a late night movie that kept us up to the wee hours of the morning, complete with coffee and cookies to keep us occupied.
After a good night’s rest, we woke up to an absolute stunning day and after a delicious breakfast of leftover vetkoeks, we headed out to the beach for a long walk along what can only be described as one of the most pristine beaches ever. We spent a lovely relaxed day in each other’s company, even enjoying a nice extended afternoon nap!
Saturday evening saw a little bit of a breeze whip up and so we jumped into the car and headed off to Hermanus for a bit of a night out. Well, at least that was the plan until Chantelle was waylaid with some terrible stomach aches which forced us to ditch the evening’s plans and instead stay indoors, fix up a couple of sarmies and watch Transformers on the laptop.
Sunday morning we somehow managed to miss our planned sunrise rendezvous on the beach and ended up lazing about for most of the morning (as per usual!). Again we went for a long stroll along the beach, playing with all sorts of shellfish, crabs and other sea-life that Chantelle surprisingly enough has no problem in picking up and messing about with. Why is this such a surprise? – well just wait until you see her reaction to the common garden cricket! :)
The day passed by quickly enough, and it wasn’t too long before we found ourselves all packed up and on the way to drop off the keys at the caretaker’s house. We decided to make up for last night’s missed supper opportunity and instead celebrate our nine month anniversary by having a delicious lunch at the Europa café in Hermanus. And as an after meal treat, we decided to stroll over to the nearby ice-cream shop and get some gelato scoops to enjoy on the grass overlooking the sea. So we duly ordered four scoops of ice-cream and much to our horror were presented with a bill for R64, making it by far the most expensive ice-cream I have ever (and will ever) eat! It tops out even the ridiculously priced Hagen Daas!
Thank goodness the ice-cream was damn nice though and the view over the ocean was pretty scenic, enough for us to squeeze the last little drip out what has been one wonderfully relaxing weekend away and make for a nice and peaceful drive to home sweet homezzzz…