CHRISTMAS, SOUTH OF THE WINTER SOLSTICE

SOUTH AFRICA I

It was at best an inauspicious start. To be sure, I was by now quite accustomed to life in a powerless environment. The onset of the short rains had at least temporarily improved the situation in Tanzania, but a few “dark” hours just after sunrise and again after sunset were still to be expected. But to have the electricity fail in Nairobi, and to discover further that its prestigious Jomo Kenyatta International Airport has no backup generator, at least in passenger service areas, was both surprising and annoying. Still, there is a certain charm in wandering from passenger agent to passenger agent asking, “Has the flight to Johannesburg been assigned a gate yet?”

When the original tour package proposal came to Peter from Johannesburg, I was surprised to see that only 75 minutes separated my Johannesburg arrival and departure times; my US travel agent and I seldom gamble on that tight a connection for domestic travel. My skepticism on getting to Cape Town the first night of the South African adventure was strengthened by the flickering lights at Kenyatta, and when we were still in the terminal 30 minutes after scheduled departure time, I mentally postponed Cape Town a day. We took off from the powerless terminal not much more than an hour late and actually did arrive in Johannesburg a few minutes before departure time of the Cape Town flight. Eight or nine of us in the same predicament were bustled off the plane before any other passengers, taken by van directly to Immigration, where we entered the Republic in record time, only to be abandoned, leaderless and puzzled, in front of an empty baggage carousel while the Cape Town flight left without us. Of course the airline provided us with accommodations for the night but with no explanation of what had happened. But then, it is necessary occasionally to stay in a Holiday Inn, I suppose, if only to maintain contact with a quality standard from which to measure excellence.

Monday morning's flight to Cape Town was on time, and the mix of business people and vacationers that filled the plane to near capacity seemed to enjoy its decent, if not great, service. The terrain we overflew was generally flat and uninteresting until we neared the Cape, where it became surprisingly mountainous; it was a thrill, of course, to see Table Mountain for the first time. I subsequently learned that at this time of year one queued for about five hours to go up and again to come back down. I subsequently subsequently learned that this was an overestimate by a factor of at least two, and I subsequently subsequently subsequently learned that one could almost always go up immediately as part of a travel agent's tour. My rental car was still at the airport, and after a few minutes of mental calisthenics on driving to the left and navigating roundabouts clockwise, I set out. The roads and signing here are as good as anywhere I've driven in this world, although quite often I regretted my ignorance of Afrikaans; English, although well spoken when used, is decidedly the second language. I happily picked the correct freeway through the heart of Cape Town and easily managed the transition to the freeway to Paarl, where I arrived in good spirits after about an hour's driving from the airport. But then it got harder.

Roggeland Country Inn, my home for the coming six days, lies somewhere east of a line connecting Paarl and Wellington, according to a tiny photocopied map that was in a bundle of material left at the Johannesburg airport for me by the local travel agent; some arrangements do work out. After exploring two or three road links between these two towns and discovering nothing, I spied two policemen who were interviewing two couples in their pulled-over cars. Not one of the six had a clue to the Inn's location, but a radio call to the main office elicited the information that Roggeland was not a town but rather a place where one could stay–I had rather suspected that already–and a suggested simple route to get me there. Well, the first dead end on my route was not at a cemetery–no pun intended–as promised, and I should just have quit then and looked for more help. But I drove on; enjoying the scenery until I suddenly realized that the left-rear tyre–as it's spelled here–was flat.

It was about then that I began to wonder if I had made the wrong plans for the holidays. But to remain lost, homeless, and without transport anywhere, let alone in Africa, seemed foolish, so I replaced the tyre, which had almost totally disintegrated–possibly from being misspelled?–and soon came across a set of signs that I had missed before that made the trip to Roggeland trivial. My hostess arranged to have the tyre replaced while I enjoyed a very refreshing and restorative pot of tea. “Do you wish Earl Grey, or will the usual Ceylon be adequate?” I chose the latter, and it was much more than promised.

Meanwhile, back at Avis, it had been decided that my car's problem was not a breakdown, so they could not bring a new tyre to me, but instead I would have to drive the car to them, in Stellenbosch. Finding that famous old wine town was no problem, but the sign to the airport, on which route the car-rental office was said to be found, and which was to be sought after passing two robots–don't pronounce the “t”–proved much more elusive. A robot, so far as I could tell at this point, is a set of traffic signals; whether or not a pedestrian crosswalk is necessary as well, I still do not know. It required a stop at a petrol station to request additional directions, and even then I remained lost until I suddenly spied the shape of an airplane painted on the tarmac of the right-turn lane.

My experience in driving on the left has been restricted to three trips: Devon and Cornwall, New Zealand and Australia, and now South Africa. In all three instances I have learned that the curb is actually one foot closer to the car than it appears. In France and Germany and Italy and Switzerland, where I've driven on the right, the curb is always exactly where it belongs. I don't understand it; it’s as if some symmetry principle is violated in these otherwise God-fearing, English-speaking countries. I know that I bumped the front wheel once, well maybe twice, gently of course, against the curb while parking, but not the rear one, surely. The Avis people didn't replace the tyre; they just gave me another car. I thought the first vehicle still had some life remaining, but it was their choice.

While traveling in the vicinity of Mt. Kenya a few days before I came south, Peter and I commented several times on how difficult it would be to tell where in the world we were if we couldn't see or hear the local people. The Cape lands share this characteristic, although they don't look at all like Kenya, of course. The valleys are filled with vineyards and fruit trees, and they are bordered by mountains rising from one to two thousand meters above them. The strata comprising these mountains are obvious, nearly horizontal, and fringed in green where they extend beyond their upper neighbors. With the ubiquitous whitewash of the neat Cape Dutch buildings, the overall impression is quite Mediterranean in aspect, I think; I've only actually dipped my toes into that sea’s waters once, in Provence. When one hears the unmistakable Afrikaans language or sees the indigenous African peoples, however, one is correctly located in no time.

My home for the six days and nights spanning the period from the winter solstice through Boxing Day was Roggeland, a country house situated just outside the town of Paarl. Evidently the first European to own the land was Pieter Beck–or Beuk–who acquired it in 1692. The name most closely associated with it, however, is that of Francois du Toit, one of two Hugenot refugee brothers from Lille who arrived in Cape Province in 1686. He and his wife Susanna, their four sons and five daughters, were the first of five generations of du Toit's to own the property. The land was originally known as Dal Josaphat, a name now applied to the entire valley, and was first registered as Roggeland–Ryelands–in 1818.

It is difficult to say what is most appealing about the Inn: the gracious informality of the setting, the attentive but unobtrusive service from the staff, the lightness and freshness of the country cuisine, or the carefully collected cellar of easily drinkable local wines. But no matter, owner Mildie Malan, chatelaine Topsi Venter, Beulah, Linda, Danielle, and the rest of the staff gave me one of the most relaxed and enjoyable weeks of my life. Only the horde of tiny flying creatures that filled the early evening sky–and any patch of exposed skin including that under wide-cuffed trousers–reminded one of the imperfections of human life. And by the third day of driving I was able to park the car without bouncing the left-front wheel off the curb.

The original du Toit cottage, parts of which date from 1695, still survives and is now known as ouma's huisie (grandma's cottage); it is situated adjacent to the walled garden, the source of many flowers, herbs, vegetables, and fruits. I suppose that six months of a decidedly austere lifestyle in Arusha may have enhanced my pleasure here, but I did find the daily late-afternoon bubble bath, with a small bottle of unfermented, unsweetened, sparkling white wine juice, in the company of a single fresh rose bud, an extremely pleasurable ritual.

The Inn accommodates at most sixteen guests, and until Christmas we were often many fewer than that; one night when two expected couples failed to appear, we were only three. About 7:30 typically, we gathered on the lawn–God it was good to see twilight again–for some white wine, and when dinner was ready, we were called inside and seated at our own tables; quite often one of the couples would ask me to join them, which I usually did. A typical meal began with a starter, which was followed by a soup and then a salad, after which came the main course and then dessert and coffee. Cheese was always available, as were port, cognac, various liqueurs, and spirits. And of course South African wine was poured freely. I mean that literally; nothing extra was charged for drinks, washing of clothes, or the occasional unrequested washing of one's car. A marvelous place.

The previous week spent in some of Kenya's finest hotels, tented camps, and game lodges had convinced me that there is life beyond the Peace Corps, but this was like being in that afterlife. It required real effort and serious concentration to enjoy it fully. So I retired early and very full, slept late, and spent quite a bit of time lounging about the grounds. I did make two visits to nearby Paarl both to look around and to acquire information and books on South African birds and wines, and I stopped at a couple of nearby wineries to test their cheeses as well as their wines.

On the third day I ventured to neighboring Franschhoek to visit Pierre Jourdan, the premier producer of sparkling wine in the country, and enjoyed an enthusiastic tour of the cellars and a somewhat loosely organized discussion of winemaking procedures there, all rather breathlessly conducted by the veuve herself. The tasting was accented by the masterful decapitation of a bottle of brut with a single saber stroke, a procedure that should become a standard part of future New Year's Eve celebrations. The wines are produced pretty much by the methods originally used in Champagne, but the French have forced the South Africans to replace “methode Champenoise” on their labels with “methode Cap classique” in exchange for continuing to import their crayfish. I say, “Damn the French, and ship the crayfish to Seattle!”

Appropriately enough, after sipping a glass or two of sparkling wine, I began my lunch at Chamonix, a recently opened restaurant on a hillside above town, with a cold salad of crayfish. It seemed much more on the scale of a lobster than the rather modest-sized creatures we have so rapturously devoured at home in Augusts past and reminded me of the langostina, I think they were called, that I had enjoyed nine years before in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The presentation was very stylish, with the larger lobster slices at top and bottom and the smaller pieces at either side; small mounds of broccoli, mushroom slices, haricot verts, and beetroot occupied the intervening octants of the plate. I tasted a leading 1991 chardonnay and found it big enough to engage the palates of my California colleagues. The main course of sliced duck was properly done but quite fatty, and the accompanying bacon chunks contributed a bit of grease as well; the slope on which my outdoor picnic table rested, however, led to the collection of a very tasty residual pool at the bottom of my plate in which to bathe the potatoes. The 1984 cabernet sauvignon, which the owner thought might be the best of their older wines, was too dry and senile to be exciting. I gave both wines a final chance with cheese and fruit, but my opinions were not changed.

I returned home to find Topsi in a very chatty mood and Beulah very stylishly dressed after finishing an artful decoration of the dining and sitting areas for Christmas, which was now only two days away. The latter had avoided following our northern traditions by deliberately using only locally available plants and materials. The result was very pleasing and appropriate, and I was grateful to be reminded of the season only two days in advance. Three of the Inn guests were dining out that night, and a couple from Frankfurt was late returning from their drive, so we didn't dine until 8:45; this was hardly a problem for me. The starter was a dish of parboiled leeks with a sweet-and-sour mayonnaise, and the soup was beetroot with whole mustard seeds. The salad was atypically heavy: thuringer and cold boiled potatoes on a bed of something like raw spinach, all lightly dressed. The main course of filet was tender, but a bit overdone for my taste; large green beans, carrots, and turnips accompanied it. The dessert was a superb strawberry soufflé, and then Topsi came around with a special bottling of a gorgeous muscatel. And I noted, despite all this, that it was the least of the first three dinners there. That's praising with faint damnation.

That I find no entry in my notes for Christmas Eve is not surprising. The previous day had been more than full, and I think that viewed from the temporal perspective of a lifetime, I can truly say that for me Christmas Eve is the most poignant day of the year. I can remember arising late, breakfasting, and then doing considerable reading and a little writing. When Beulah inquired if I wished anything to drink, I asked that a bottle of Pierre Jourdan brut that I acquired the previous day be chilled; it and a slice of a sinfully good fresh apple tart, not to mention the cream that accompanied it, more than carried me through to naptime and then another ritual bath. The guest roster had changed quite a bit that day; I think at dinner there were six couples and me. That night Topsi put my table at the head of the room, in the center, with the others in two lines on either side. It was a marvelous perspective, like sitting at the head of the table, but with seven separate tables. I laughed aloud in appreciation when seated and declined an invitation to join another table, the only time I can remember doing that, despite its having come from an outstanding couple who had just that afternoon come up from Cape Town. It was a night to think my own thoughts from my own unique vantage points.

I awoke very suddenly about 8:00 on Christmas morning. The mosquito net had fallen down about my head, but otherwise everything seemed normal. It was a hot, absolutely clear day. I was still a bit sluggish after a quick shower, but lots of strong coffee and two perfectly poached eggs revived me. There was no need to plan any activities on this festive day, since Topsi had invited some 35 nonresident guests to join the nine residents for a special dinner starting about 1:00. When I came out from my room a little after that time, most of the diners had arrived and were enjoying a punch of sparkling wine, fruit juice, and something stronger. Fortunately, I did not have too much time to spend before we were invited into the dining room Beulah had decorated so tastefully only two days before. If I ever need another granddaughter, it's to her I shall turn first.

We residents were seated first, seven of us at one table, carefully positioned in the coolest part of the room. The couple from Frankfurt was seated with friends of theirs who lived in the area. At my table were the couple from Cape Town, who were married here in April, each for the second time; a couple originally from Wales, who have lived in South Africa for 23 years; and a charming pair from Glasgow, he a native whose youth was spent in England, and she Swedish born. Despite their address, they seem and talk very much like the English, and if I ever have the opportunity, I shall certainly accept their invitation to visit them at home.

Now, according to my notes, which I was able to draw up the next morning, we started with oyster-shell mushrooms and watercress with a dressing of poppy seeds and oil and continued with a cold melon soup; these were accompanied by a chardonnay. The green in the salad course was very similar to our red oak leaf lettuce, and it was dressed with something based on whipped cream with a little seasoning and tartness added; it had been served earlier in the week, and nobody could convincingly identify its constituents then either. The salad course and the following large serving of cold trout, both fresh and smoked, were accompanied by a sauvignon blanc. All of the above were served to us in expectation that we would then have sufficient strength to walk to the nearby buffet table and carry back a representative sample of its culinary wealth.

The buffet table featured five large joints of meat, to put it in English terminology: a traditional pickled pork, which was the sensation on my plate; smoked pork, like gammon ham, served with pickled peaches; brisket of beef, served with an onion quiche; beef, served with a plum sauce; and lamb, served on a bed of white cabbage. The accompaniments I remember are small potatoes, beetroot with a sweet-and-sour sauce, and fresh green beans. In due course we were served three desserts: mango ice cream with hot chocolate sauce, a cake featuring plums, walnuts, and cognac; and a soufflé whose nature I couldn't recall. It was now 5:30, four and one-half hours after we started, and time to go outside again for coffee and liqueurs. Anticipating what would happen, I chose to substitute a short nap instead. When I returned less than an hour later, quite a few of the guests were still finishing coffee and other drinks or just relaxing on the lawn. And sure enough, toward dusk, less than an hour later, the mandatory bottles of “crisp sauvignon blanc”–which as often as not turned out to be chenin blanc or a blend of white wines–appeared, and so help me, it wasn't much after dark when an outside table received a cloth and a bountiful spread of meats and breads, and of course more wine. Our pleasure was enhanced by the light from burning torches but hastened by an unusually fierce onslaught of midges from the grass. It was a hot night indeed.

Boxing Day dawned sufficiently hot that a wine-tasting tour arranged by a local expert was canceled in deference to the well-being of the participants. So instead I set off by car to the north, first following the old highway that was the main route from Cape Town to Johannesburg until Italian prisoners of war built a new one in the 1940s. It is narrow, very winding, and well-maintained; it has not been widened. The views were spectacular as I climbed out of the valley, but on top it was the dry barrenness of the rocks that grabbed my awareness. I thought of high passes in the Rockies, but of course they are wet with melted snow and lush with varied, albeit short-lived, vegetation. Here all is dry and hot.

And yet, after no more than 20 km of driving, the valley suddenly became broad and fertile, the rich, dark green of the vineyards and orchards contrasting sharply with the brown and gray of the mountains. The latter also, when viewed in the proper light, displayed ledges of green, and here and there a patch of shrubs and bushes. I stopped briefly in the towns of Tulbagh, Wolseley, and Ceres, the last name certainly evocative of the bountiful provender of the region, before driving north and east to the town of Touwsrivier, where I obtained fuel and access to the N1, the highway built to replace that constructed by the Italians. Between the last two towns, a distance of about 80 km, there seemed little but broad, rock-filled valleys entrapped by the ubiquitous mountains. An occasional modest homestead with a few sheep was the only sign of human occupation; passing cars were rare enough to make me wonder yet again if my casual approach to map reading had led me astray. I had been told by Topsi to look for a town with the evocative name Hottentotskloof; it showed on my map, and I must have driven right by it, but I certainly saw nothing.

Between Tulbagh and Ceres, I had thoroughly enjoyed crossing Michell Pass. The road was extremely good, and the mountain scenery spectacular. But as I turned down the superb N1 and sped for home, I found the sights increasingly stunning. In the vicinity of a small valley enclosing towns like Garden, De Dorrns, and Hexrivier, I was so impressed that after passing by the valley, I turned around and drove through it so that I could drive past it on the freeway once more. On each side, this cultivated valley–the trellising implied the grapes were for eating, not for wine–was paralleled by several sharp ridges, each pair confining another narrow, uncultivated valley. And occasionally through a gap in one ridge, I could see a beautiful meadow hanging on the side of the next ridge. It is beautiful, if austere, country.

A stop at the wine town of Worcester didn't reveal any food worth dulling my appetite for the final meal at Roggeland, at least on this visit, so I moved on. The road was now ascending to the pass overlooking the valley in which Paarl is situated, and I was too busy looking to do much driving other than to stay out of other cars' paths. Fortunately, traffic was very light at this midpoint of a three-day holiday. The final descent through the 11-km tunnel was so exciting that I continued past Paarl to Stellenbosch to see that lovely town again and to be reminded that its valley too is magnificently set against a mountain backdrop. But as Topsi put it during our pre-dinner chat, “You'll see Franschhoek again on your way south tomorrow, and it's still the best.” As always, of course, she was right, but that's another story.

I came down here to visit Cape Town and didn't get there, and on any return visit it will still be my second choice. But after all of this, how can I ever resume the life of a PCV in Arusha?

W. Vance Johnson

30 Jan 93