Day 8 - Pheest of Phishes
11. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C
08:00
Once again, awake earlier than I’d like. I also woke up a fair bit during the night. Unsure if due to the very loud but shit music at the beach party. At one point I was woken up by some bastardised remix of Michael Jackson. Not cool. I grab a pot of coffee from the guys downstairs, and repair to my hammock for a read, and maybe a doze.
13:00
It’s another stunning day in Mirissa, and I head for a walk down the beach. The water’s a little calmer than yesterday, but the breeze is still doing great things. I stop to say hi to Robin and Philippe, and wave hi to Leon as I pass Surf Bar. It’s not *quite* beer o’clock yet, so resist the urge to settle down in the shade for a sharpener. I’m heading for the sensationally named No 1 Dewmini Roti Shop, a 15 min walk at the other end of town. It’s pretty tough going in the, heat, and the restaurant is unlicensed, so I know ahead of time I’m not getting a reward beer on arrival. I find the roti shop down a little track. It’s bang on midday, and it’s already getting full. I grab one of the last tables, and ask for their biggest/coldest bottle of water. Roti in this form is unleavened bread, very similar to a paratha, or a chapatti, which is rolled into a square, stuffed with various fillings, then fried on a plancha or grill-plate until hot and crispy - very traditionally Sri Lankan. Mine is stuffed with prawns, vegetables and a local cheese, and served with a dhal, some pickled red chillies and a spicy ‘gravy.’ It’s banging. With the gravy and minced chillies, it’s properly hot too. By the end, my nose is streaming, in a very good way. There’s nothing particularly complex about it - but it’s just brilliant snack/brunch type food, and a snip at £2. I’m done by 12:30, and wander down to the beach to let my food settle, and to have the reward beer that I’m thoroughly overdue.
17:00
I’m coming towards the end of my time in Mirissa, and find myself reflecting on my time here. I think the best gauge of enjoyment of a travel destination is whether you’d return - and I absolutely would. I’d certainly be more mindful of soundproofing (!) but if you stay in a party town, you really ought to expect to some late night music, no? There’s a great selection of restaurants and bars, and the beach is just something else - one of my very favourites. There’s a very laid back vibe, and I’ve found it very easy to do next-to-nothing while I’ve been here, and that’s my kinda place. Most of all, I’m excited to bring Vicks here, as I think she’d love it.
As I’m typing this, there’s something of a kerfuffle. It transpires one of the sons of the family that run Sajana has been out on the lash this afternoon. Fair play, given it’s only about 16:30. His elder brother walks him up the slope to the house and throws him (not kidding…) to the ground in disgust. I’m sort of worried that he’s laid out flat on his back, and could choke on his vomit. Happily, when the time comes, he’s capable of rolling over to spew from a sideways position. The eldest brother gets home, picks up a rubber hosepipe, and starts beating him where he lays. It’s pretty uncomfortable to watch actually, but I’m very conscious it’s none of my fucking business.
So - last evening in Mirissa, and wondering what to do with myself. Kinda hoping there’s no beach party tonight so that:
a) I’m not tempted, and
b) I can have a good night’s sleep.
19:00
I’ve come down to Oh La La for Happy Hour, and to say goodbye to my friends. Srinath plies me with gins and tonic, and gives me an Arrack to try. I’ve seen this on menus, but avoided, placing it firmly in the ‘feni’ category of disgusting moonshine type alcohols. How wrong am I. The drink Srinath gives me straddles a line somewhere between golden rum and brandy - some fruit and vanilla flavours, and a smooth finish. Delicious straight, with perhaps just a piece of ice in it.
23:00
I take a wander down the beach looking for a restaurant called W&D that Robin has recommended as the best place (other than his etc etc) for fresh fish. Initially, I walk straight past it, but finally manage to locate it between a couple of others that I’ve visited for beers while I’ve been here. I’m greeted by Roshan (who later tells me to call him Roshi), who excitedly shows me the market stall style fish display. There’s some fish here I recognise, and some I definitely don’t. It all looks and smells beautifully fresh. Roshi tells me it’s all come from today’s catch. I mean, he would say that, but my eyes and nose tell a similar story. I pick out a giant prawn, and a small bass, order some drinks and sit down to wait. We’re right down at the shoreline, and the sensation of sand between the toes during dinner is a fabulous one. There’s a strip of restaurants all doing broadly similar things along this part of the beach. It’s a highly competitive environment, and none of them would survive for long if they were doing a decent job of it.
I sit back contentedly, and people watch. Near me, there’s confusion as an American lady doesn’t understand how to get into her lobster. I suspect she’s been used to being served shelled shellfish. She’s given an impromptu lesson into how to crack the shell, gently break the claws. Roshi is bounding up and down the beach, excitedly trying to lure diners into his restaurant. He has a mixed success rate.
My food arrives, and it is stellar. The prawn is, I think, the best I’ve ever eaten. When they’re done this well, and are this size, I think they’re better than lobster. The bass is also great. It’s a little different to the European seabass we’re used to eating at home, but I’m not sure what specific species it is. It’s slightly firmer fleshed than European seabags, and has a richer flavour. Mine’s been lightly spiced, and is served with a garlic chilli butter. Ball-bustingly good, and I say so to Roshi when he clears my plate. He asks if I’d mind leaving a Google review, which I agree to. I quickly knock out a review while he’s busy with other customers. When he gets a notification about the newly posted review, he rushes over to shake my hand, and to offer me drinks on the house. Is this what it’s like to be an influencer?
Walking back to my guesthouse, I’m conscious there is a downside to sitting at the water’s edge. I have been mullered by mossies. I can feel itchy bites all over my feet and legs. I’m an idiot. I’ve got an unopened can of Jungle Juice in my room. I’ve not felt the need to use it thus far, and just didn’t occur to me that being on the beach after dark would risk the mauling I’ve had.
Back at my room, there’s a faint sound of some loud music. I think there’s a smaller, more circumspect party at the far end of the beach. It’s certainly not loud enough to stop me from quickly falling into a deeeeeeep sleep.Les mer
Day 7 - Lazy day the beach
10. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ 🌙 27 °C
02:00
Well that was fun. The England/Ireland game finishes in a frenzy. The second half is a tight affair on the scoreboard, but anything but on the pitch. Several times, I think England have blown their chance to secure a statement win, but each time they surprise me with their resilience. England teams of the past 5 years have tended to crumble in the most high pressure moments, but this lot seem to be gelling into something of a team. By no means the finished article yet, but I feel positive about the team’s direction for the first time in ages. Ireland are up by two points with only a few minutes to play. England take a shot at goal from the halfway line, which misses. I have the sinking feeling that that’s our chance gone. With seconds to go, England come steaming back from the halfway line, putting pressure on the Irish defence by their try line. The ref signals a penalty advantage to England. The clock is in the red zone - next stoppage is the end of the game. With the penalty advantage in his pocket, Marcus Smith takes a drop at goal, and….. SCORES! England win by a point, and the bar erupts (quietly) into celebration. Crikey - what a game, and what a finish.
It’s gone midnight, but I’m in a celebratory mood, so head down to the beach party. The music I could hear earlier sounded great. The music I can hear now, anything but. It’s a horrible style of EDM shite, all electro pop remixes. I immediately associate it with shitty Vegas club nights, and I suspect that’s the sound the DJ is going for. I bump into Maria. She was quiet and circumspect this morning on our boat trip. She’s now a hot, sweaty mess, and very clearly 3 sheets. We chat for a while, and I stay for a beer, but can’t stomach the music any longer. Back at my room, I’m quickly cooling down. There’s an audible change in the music style, and back to the much better house sounds I was hearing earlier. I’m very briefly tempted to get dressed again and head back to the party, but it’s getting on for 02:00, and I’m very comfy and cool in here, and I don’t really want to put my sweaty t-shirt back on, and….
11:40
I wake at 08:00, earlier than I’d have liked. Despite best efforts, I can’t get back to sleep, and head outside to my balcony to read in my hammock for a while. The weather seems to have turned a little. The sky is a clear and cloudless blue, there’s a slightly fresh southerly breeze, and the humidity feels like it’s dropped off. There’s still a lovely tropical warmth, but in a much more manageable package. Around 10:00, I start to feel a little dozy, so head back to bed and manage an hour’s top up kip. I don’t have much/any of a plan today. I’m looking forward to a day on and around the beach, and will just see where the day takes me.
15:00
Walking down the beach, it’s evident how much the weather pattern has shifted. There’s a fairly strong wind coming in off the sea, and the surf is noticeably bigger - maybe as big as 5-6 foot, and looks clean. The tide is also much higher. Mirissa’s not the widest beach, and many of the bars up and down the beach encroach a little too close to the water’s edge. I enjoy the wet feet sensation of walking through the lukewarm beach surf. I’m headed nowhere in particular - will stop for a beer and some food wherever the mood takes me.
I wish to correct, or rather to clarify my earlier statements about language. Firstly, whilst English is by a distance the most commonly spoken language here, it’s not by Brits. As is so often the case (and particularly in Commonwealth nations), English is a lingua franca - spoken to some degree by most tourists, and by locals. Amazingly, I’ve actually only come across a handful of folks from the UK, generally while I’ve been in Sri Lanka, and specifically here in Mirissa. I’m none too disappointed by this.
I’ve also clocked myself using a slightly different accent to my usual one when speaking with people out here. I don’t *think* it’s an attempt to confuse my nationality, as I’m very happy to say exactly where I’m from. I think I do it wherever I am to be honest - there’s plenty of my ‘natural’ accent in there, but I seem to somehow internationalise my intonation with hints of Australasia, a touch of North America and just a little bit of southern Africa. It’s particular words - I’ve caught myself saying ‘no’ with a Aussie drawl, ‘yeah’ (or more accurately ‘yar’ with more than a suggestion of the Western Cape, and I’ve been lifting the inflection at the end of sentences so they sound like a question, as only a native of Melbourne should?
I’ve stopped for a beer and some lunch at Lava, one of the beach bars that’s been recommended to me. Honestly though, these places are much of a muchness, with very similar menus, prices and quality. I decide it’s time to branch out, so I try a fish Ambul Thiyal, a Tamil dish that’s a kind of dry curry. It’s very tasty, but could have done with a little more heat for me. It’s served with a brilliant beetroot raita - grated fresh beetroot with yoghurt, green chilli and minced red onion. Deffo one to try at home (when Vicks is out, as she and the beetroot do not see eye to eye).
I’ve been asked a few times how hot I’d like my food. Erring on the side of caution, I’ve tended to say ‘medium’ in the hope it won’t blow my tits off. On the whole though, I’ve not had anything that’s been too hot for me. I suspect the places I’m eating cater primarily to Western palates, and therefore moderate the amount of chilli they’re using. I’m loathe ask them to spike the temperature up though, as I suspect that will come back to bite me in the ass - literally and figuratively. I think and hope that later in my trip I’ll have more opportunity to eat at local restaurants catering to locals, so should be able to measure myself up against what Sri Lankans would actually tolerate. I may live to regret this.
After lunch, I wander back down the beach to catch up with Leon, who tells me there’s another but smaller beach party tonight, if I want to come down. I mention the shocking DJ around 01:00 last night, and he rolls his eyes. Apparently it’s someone new they’d been using, and won’t be hiring again. He claims the music is usually like the DJs preceding and following. I’m a little torn. I’d promised myself a chilled evening and an early (ish) night, but this might change things…
I have my first swim in the Indian Ocean. As I mentioned back on day 1, travelling solo does have its challenges. Until now I’ve not felt happy leaving my bag and belongings at any of the beach bars for any length of time while I swim, but I feel confident (enough) that Leon will do as he says, and keep an eye on my bag for me. The surf is very powerful. There’s actually a bit of a rip tide pushing swimmers towards some rocks about 20m out from the beach. In surf this strong, that can be a recipe for disaster. A couple of times I see swimmers jump up into a breaking wave, rather than dive underneath it, and they get tossed around like flotsam. Accomplished sea-swimmers, they are not.
Back on the beach, I curl up on a sun-bed to dry. Leon sits for a chat, and we share a bifta. Thankfully it’s not insanely strong, and just gives me a very chilled buzz. It also makes me a little sleepy. I head back to my room for a nap, but not before bumping into Robin, who tells me that he’d appreciate some rugby solidarity when France take on Wales at 20:30 this evening. I laugh, and tell him that will be no problem, but he’s buying the beers…
18:00
Wow. I can actually sit out on my terrace in the relative heat of the day without bucketing out sweat. This is a more than pleasant change. Really wish I’d managed to pick up some gin and tonics, as one would slip down a treat right now. The humidity is down to mid 50s, which I think makes all the difference. I should really shower and head out, but I’m not entirely convinced I can be arsed. I appear to have located the off switch.
23:00
JUST about manage to get myself up and out, and glad I did. I have dinner at a place in downtown Mirissa called Mila. Rave reviews etc etc, and a slightly more interesting menu than a lot of the beach bars. I opt for a crab curry. I’m not sure why, but I wasn’t quite expecting another crab dissection job. I think in my head, they’d done the hard graft for me, by picking the crab from its shell. Oh no - that’s may job. The crab has been cooked in a beautiful curry sauce with the fragrance of cardamom and the bite of tamarind. It’s delicious. I stupidly put on a clean t-shirt before heading out, and spend most of an hour trying to extract the juicy crab meat from its shell, while avoiding pouring turmeric laden curry down my front. I manage (just) to avoid the yellow peril.
It’s past 20:00, and I’m mindful of my promise to Robin. Back at Oh La La, the game is just kicking off. Robin is impressed and appreciative that I’m bedecked in blue. It’s a partisan crowd. wholly supporting France, with the exception of one guy sat in front of me, bravely cheering on Wales. He looks a little disconcerted as the noise levels rise. It’s a good game for 50 minutes - very finely balanced. In the last 30, France show their quality, and pull away to finish 20+ points ahead.
Vicks and I have a arranged to chat this evening, so I head back to my room. Despite the air feeling cooler and less humid, it’s still a joy to sink into the frigid air at the guesthouse. It’s amazing to hear Vicks’ voice. She’s had a pretty full-on weekend, bless her - hosting a birthday party at ours last night, and a family catch-up for Mother’s Day today. Our boys have gone down a treat with all visitors, shameless little flirts that they are.
I can hear tonight’s beach party in full swing. There’s no such temptation to head out to it this evening. It’s a kind of blend of garage and breaks, and not a good one. As I try to sleep, I can hear/feel the bass pretty clearly…Les mer
Day 6 - Whales and Dolphins (no whales)
9. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ 🌙 26 °C
05:30
I’m actually awake at 04:30, well before my alarm. I don’t feel like I’ve had enough sleep, but will deal with that later. I can still hear the beach party going in the distance. Tempo’s definitely picked up in the 6 or so hours since I last heard it. I decide I’m definitely going to stay in Mirissa a couple of extra days, and make it to one of these parties before I head further East. Vicks is still awake in the UK. I always find it a strange combination of weird and cool when our days are so out of kilter that I can wish her a goodnight after I’ve woken up for the following day…
12:30
Couple of things.
1) There’s another beach party tonight, which I’m gonna go to. This will mean missing the England vs Ireland rugby game, but there’s nowhere on the beach showing it, and the cell/WiFi services I’ve found aren’t up to the job of streaming it. I suspect some back home will believe that I’m intentionally missing the game because England are going to get eaten alive by Ireland. And they’d be (to an extent) right.
2) I think I’m back on for leaving Mirissa on Tuesday. On my whale watching trip (lies - more of that to follow), I meet Maria, a Finnish lady who’s just come from Tangalle. She loved it, can’t recommend it highly enough etc etc, so back to my original plan to head over there on Tuesday.
So - whale watching. Great fun, but should be rechristened dolphin watching. We saw a TON of dolphins, and plenty of them up close to the boat. Some Spinners, some Bottlenose, and a few Risso. All very cool and very cute. Watching them swim underneath the boat and out to the front is something that will stay with me for a very long time. No luck with whales though. Chatting to Dinesh, the guy running the boat, the whales are getting tougher to spot, for a couple of reasons:
1) Pollution - the whales are finding it more difficult to feed with the amount of plastic that’s getting into the water. As we motor out from the harbour, it’s sickening to see how much single use plastic is littering near the shoreline. As we get further out there’s yet more. The whales typically use baleen plates to feed, and can’t filter out the plastic. As a result, they’re feeding further from shore than historically.
2) Unregulated boats - some boat companies will offer to let you dive with the whales. This is illegal in Sri Lanka, but not well regulated. Dinesh’s company have a far more ethical approach to whale watching that is as non-invasive as possible. The number of unregulated boats is growing though, and is scaring the whales away.
Just to really ram home how much humans are fuckwits, on the way back to shore, we sea a dead Jeff, floating aimlessly at sea, the victim of yet more plastic - this time, wrapped around his throat rendering him unable to swallow his food. It’s a sickening sight.
Back on dry land / terra firma etc etc, I say goodbye to my crewmates, and head further round Mirissa Harbour. There’s a little restaurant here that gets incredible reviews, and I wanna check it out.
15:00
Lunch was banging. Nautica are renowned for their yellow prawn curry - a staple of this part of Sri Lanka. I order it, and it arrives rice and curry style, with some steamed rice, an amazing dahl, and a coconut sambal, to which I am now wise. The curry is outstanding - lots of plump, juicy prawns in a mild, but still pokey coconut milk based sauce. Chilli powder for heat I think, as it’s a grower/not a shower. Little bit of sourness, I think from lime juice rather than tamarind. Just brilliant. The dahl tastes better than water, lentils and a few spices have any right to taste. The place I’m eating is basically a small house’s garden area. The restaurant ‘kitchen’ is a little lean-to attached to the back of the house. It’s the best food I’ve had while I’ve been here. All in (including a couple of beers, obvs) it sets me back a tenner.
The sun is beating. During the 15 minute walk back to my room, I sweat from places from which I didn’t know it was possible to sweat. The lovely folks at Sajana Hill have been into my room while I’ve been out and turned up the A/C, as it’s so hot today, and they were worried I’d need cooling down when I got back. They’re great - incredibly non-invasive, but available ASAP should you need anything.
I’m torn between nap and beer. I elect to go with the latter.
17:30
I want to head out to find out more deets about tonight’s beach party, and also to try a couple of last minute ideas to see if I can possibly catch the rugby. I start at my favourite French bistro. The owner (who has a little of the Sebastian Chabal about him) admits to being a rugby fan. When I ask him how to watch rugby locally, he points at the TV hanging in the restaurant. Now, I know the restaurant closes around 22:00, and I know England’s game doesn’t start until 22:15, so I forlornly ask if there’s anywhere else that might be showing it. My good friend Seb (I’ll get his real name later) says he’ll stay and watch it with me, as long as I buy the drinks.
SOLD.
Heading a little further down the beach, I end up at Mirissa Surf Bar. There are loads of surf bars, hangouts etc along the beach, but this is the one I’m after. They are the hosts of tonight’s beach party. I settle down with a cider, and wait for my opening, while I watch the surfers out in the ocean.
Moments later, I have a new best friend, Leon who is one of the service team at Surf Bar, and who wants to know if I’m coming to the rave, and again - whether I want any smoke. I tell him I’m busy till around midnight but I’ll swing by after. He reckons the party will go on till 06:00/07:00 or thereabouts. Happily, I have no plans tomorrow… I womble back to my room, conscious I should probably have a disco nap.
23:15
Well this is all going better than expected. It’s half-time in the rugby, and England are only down by 4. My pre-game prediction was that Ireland would win by 20, so for England to still be within 1 score is a good result. Seb, whose name is actually Robin, has invited a few of the service team to stay behind for drinks, and they’re all England fans for the night. It’s a little surreal to be watching the game, while I can hear the beach party gathering momentum just 100m up the beach.
I thought the least I could do was have dinner here before the game. I had an amazing tuna tartare to start, melding the traditional European flavours of tuna, onion, olive oil - but elevated with Asian notes of coriander, finger lime and chilli. It probably shares most DNA with a South American ceviche. I’m not really bothered about provenance, it is DELICIOUS. To follow, I have an Asian beef dish, which seems to straddle parts of Thailand, Japan and Korea. I’ve never really been a fan of the concept of ‘fusion’ food, but I’m pretty sure that’s what this is, and it’s amazing.
Ooh. Game’s about to restart. Back later x xLes mer
Day 5 - Beach bars
8. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ ⛅ 27 °C
08:30
My sleep follows the same pattern - in a deeeeeep sleep by 23:30, only to take up clear as a bell around 02:00. I’m then awake until c. 04:00, when I fall back into a deep sleep for another few hours. I suspect it’s a hint of jet-lag. With the time difference, 04:00 locally is roughly when I’d be going to bed in the UK. I think my body might be thinking that my 23:00 bed time here is just a later afternoon nap, but 04:00 locally is a much more ‘normal’ time for me to be sleeping. With a footloose and fancy free day ahead of me, I’m sure I can build in some afternoon nap time to catch up a little.
As I fell asleep last night, there was some banging house music playing somewhere nearby. I’ve seen a couple of reviews of my guesthouse complain about this, as though it’s the guesthouse owners’ fault. I sleep with headphones in anyway, so it didn’t bother me. I do plan to head out tonight to find its source though. Mirissa’s not known as a big party town - for that you’d tend to head further down the coast to Unawatuna - but there are a couple of bars that have DJs spinning most nights.
13:30
I’ve made it all of 200m up the beach. I stopped near my guesthouse for breakfast, at a place called A++. I don’t know whether that’s the grade they’re giving themselves, or a search engine optimisation type thing. Their avocado toast with a poached egg is delicious - amped up a little with some subtle spicing. It’s gone 12:00 by the time I finish, and I reason that walking in the midday sun is for mad dogs, so treat myself to a glass of wine. Their drinks list includes 3 white wines - all of which are Sauvignon Blanc - outstanding variety there, lads. I send a pic of the wine list to Vicki, and can imagine the wrinkly nose as she reads it. The beach feels quite busy today. Less so at this end of it, near where I’m staying, but further down the beach there are tons of folks sunbathing, paddling, swimming. Most of the beach bars are doing some decent business, but nowhere near full. It feels like a fairly good balance.
I’ve been struck by the average age of people who are here. Had I to guess, I’d put it at around 43. There are a few people that are sub 30, and quite a few who I think are 50+. I find myself wondering whether Asia generally, and the sub-continent specifically are no longer the traveller’s destination of choice. They’re certainly not the massively bargain bucket locations they once were. I also find myself listening in to to conversations, less to eavesdrop, and more to work out where people are from. I hear English spoken more than anything else, but quickly followed by French, which surprises me. I get some German, a little Russian, and some other Slavic intonation - I want to say Baltic? Maybe Estonian. It’s a proper melting pot. My plan (if you can call it that) is to run a mini bar-crawl up the beach, in search of something better to drink than Lion Lager. I’m sitting at a bar midway up the beach, drinking an inevitable Lion, and starting to think this may be a thankless task…
15:30
I’ve made it to the far end of Mirissa Beach, and am perhaps 5 Lions deep. My quest ends in failure. OR - it’s been highly successful, depending on your perspective. I’ve rinsed a good selection of Mirissa’ beach bars, and can at least now say with a decent amount of certainty that it’s Lion or bust.
Mirissa reminds me so much of Palolem when I first stayed there in 2007. It’s got the same intangible atmosphere that just makes you want to put roots down and stay. The beach bars have much the same feel to them - just great places to pause for a while, and get out of the sun. It even looks similar. I’m rapidly considering sacking off my next stop, and just staying here a few extra days. This inclination is helped when I meet Suresh, who owns Lava - a beach bar near the middle of the beach. Moments after meeting, he tells me there’s a beach party later, if I want to go, and offers me smoke if I want some. I’ve got to be up at 05:30 for my whale watching trip, but tell him I’ll check in with him later, and head along for a while.
17:40
It briefly looked like a storm was coming in. Given the heat and humidity, this could only be a good thing. It transpires that it’s just some cloud, to really amp up the already insanely high humidity. I walk back along the road, to check out what’s what, and stop briefly to grab some room supplies - water, tea, snacks etc. There’s a bottle shop over the road from the grocery store, and I briefly consider grabbing some wine or beers for my room, but the store is highly closed.
Almost back at my guesthouse, I stop in at my favourite French place for a glass of wine, which rapidly becomes three. In my defence, they’re not very big. I sit and watch the surfers for an hour. The swell is getting up. It’s maybe 4-5 foot, and pretty clean. There’s one guy out in the water who’s seriously good. Fast, and with a dynamite cutback. I chat to the service team at the restaurant. I feel like I’m going to get to know them quite well…
It’s glorious to get back to my room and cool down. Would be helped by a G+T, but thems the breaks. Toughest decision I face today is where to go for dinner. There was a great looking place on the main Mirissa road, but I really don’t know if I can be arsed to walk all of 10 minutes to get back to it.
21:30
I read my book for a while, and my eyes start to tire, so I have a deluxe little 45 minute nap around 18:30. I’m a bit dazed and confused when I wake up, but snap out of it quickly enough. My alarm clock in the morning is the wrong side of 06:00, so I decide to stay local for dinner, and give the beach party a miss. I head back to see my new French friends, so much did I enjoy my meal last night. I’m pretty sure the ‘glass’ of wine they’re serving me is gradually getting bigger. I have some amazing chicken kebabs as a starter, and a traditional Sri Lankan yellow vegetable curry to follow. The curry is delicious - mildly spiced, with turmeric and some cumin, some fresh ginger and garlic, and I think a little tamarind. It’s run through with lots of mustard seed and I think also some nigella seeds. It reminds me very much of the food I ate in Kerala.
I find myself having a ‘isn’t this great’ moment while I’m out, which is immediately followed by what I initially think is a pang of loneliness - which would be my first on this trip. I quickly realise this is not that - I just wish Vicki was here with me, enjoying this journey as much as I am, as I think she would/will love it here. Almost immediately, I’m bitten by a mosquito, and I reason that there are things on which she’d be less keen.
Back at my room I can hear the beach party in the distance. I have a fleeting thought about going anyway, and fuck the consequences, but it’s comfy here, and very cool, and my alarm is going off in less than 8 hours, and there’s another one early next week, and….
22:30
I pick up my phone to wish Vicks a goodnight, and learn that the car is playing silly buggers in my absence, The battery in the key fob has run out, and she’s stuck at a Shell garage near our house with no way of opening or starting the car. These keyless entry systems are all very well and good until… We to and fro for twenty minutes, there’s some energetic Googling of options, a suggestion of a spare back at the house. Happily, all ends well. It transpires it IS possible to start the car with a flat fob battery. You’ve just got to know the precise order of doing things, which anonymous part of the car to hold the key against, and when to say the magic words. Satisfied that I’ve been a help, if not necessarily helpful, I roll over, and go to sleep.Les mer
Day 4 - The Coastal Line
7. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C
10:30
I have a strange night’s sleep. I’m fast asleep by 23:00, but wake up just before 01:00, and am awake for a good 2-3 hours. It’s extraordinarily dull. I drift off again around 04:00, and sleep happily through to my alarm at 08:00. Weird.
I’m finding it tricky to make card payments here. I’m not staying in big chain hotels, but rather small, independent and often family run guesthouses. Many only accept cash. I’m conscious that the cash I’ve brought from the UK means I’m paying at a premium - the exchange rate was poor - so I need to top up from a cash machine locally to get a better rate. Seems counterintuitive, but it is what it is. Walking around the Fort area around 09:00, it’s beginning to heat up. There’s a pleasant breeze when I leave the hotel, which by the time I head back, has turned into a warm and sticky breeze. I’ve got my cash, and stocked up on supplies for my train journey this afternoon. Opinions vary as to whether there’s any water or snacks to buy on board. It’s a pretty short 4 hour hop, but always pays to be prepared.
The train’s not till 14:00 or thereabouts. I really do mean thereabouts. My ticket says 14:40. Google Maps reckons it’s 14:20, Sri Lanka Rail’s website thinks somewhere in-between, at 14:32. I think the belt and braces approach is to make sure I’m there for 14:20, right?
13:15
YES. This is more like it. I’m packed in time for check-out at 12:00, eking out the last possible moments of the frosty A/C in my room. I head out to grab a quick lunch before heading to the station, and stumble across (literally - there was a massive step outside, upon which I very nearly came a cropper) a brilliant little restaurant, where I tuck into a rice + curry plate, which sets me back all of £1.50. Rice + curry feels to me to share a great deal of DNA with the Indian Thali - a buffet for one, featuring a series of different curries and chutneys alongside a bowl of rice, or some roti. I opt for the veggie version, and receive a bowl of excellent dhal, some spiced green beans, and what I think are some curried baby aubergines. There’s also what looks like some dried coconut mixed with some chilli as a sambal. I wash it down with a couple of pints of Lion - each of which is comfortably more expensive than my food. On the Tim scale of heat, I’d put it at 2 meatballs. Quickly, I can feel the pin-pricks of sweat forming on my forehead. It’s a pleasant sensation.
There’s some consternation when my dishes are collected that the coconut sambal type thing is all gone. Apparently, this is a chilli seasoning spice used to allow diners to adjust the heat level of their food. I did think it was a touch on the warm side…
14:52
Ok, so for future reference, trust the ticket. My train to Matara pulls in at 14:37, and we pull out of the station a shade after 14:40. There’s some confusion (all mine) about where my seat is. To be fair, there’s nothing on my ticket suggesting where I’ll find it. I board a carriage, and all but accuse a Sri Lankan woman of sitting in my seat. She very kindly and patiently explains I’m in the wrong carriage.
My seat is blissfully cool. The temperature today is hovering around d 32-33C, but with the humidity, feels more like 37-38C, and I stupidly decided to walk the relatively short distance from my hotel down to the station. Probably saved myself all of £1 in tuk-tuk costs. I’ve chosen an air-conditioned seat for this train journey. It, of course, means that the windows won’t open, and photo opportunities will be limited. I’m ok with that today though. I’ve got a second class ticket for the train ride from Ella down to Kandy, which is reputed to be one of the most beautiful train lines in the world, and which will allow me to hang out of the window to my heart’s content. I settle back for the c. 4 hour train journey, watching the Indian Ocean lap up to the shore as we meander past…
16:15
There were a couple of small rucksacks on the seat next to me when I found mine, and no one’s been back to collect them. I’m a little confused. At one point, the AC appears to have failed. I quickly realise it’s because we’re at a stop, and the doors at both ends of the carriage are open, allowing hot air in. I’m trying to work out if we’re running to time, but it’s a little challenging. There doesn’t seem to be an official timetable anywhere, so I’m kinda working off guesswork. I don’t think we’re tragically late - maybe ten mins behind schedule - but I could be a ways off. I know the couple of stations before mine, so promise myself I’ll be super vigilant, and realise when we’re getting near. #holdtightforfeedback
18:30
Getting off the train was fun. I managed to keep my vigilance promise, and was all set to plop myself onto the platform at Polwathumodara. As I approach the train door, the guard advises that I need to climb down. With a heavy pack on my back… The platform is too short, and only the front 4 carriages get to use the platform. Confident this will be the greatest of my challenges at the station, I climb down, making a half decent fist of it, then walk up a small path to get back to the station itself. Once there, I’m flummoxed. There’s no obvious way to get out. Literally none. There’s a small station building that opens up onto the platform, but there’s no door on the other side. I look up the platform to the South, and there’s a *hint* of a level crossing about 200m away. Looking back to the North, there’s a suggestion of a road maybe 400m away. A small child approaches, and asks something I do not understand. He points up the platform to where his mother (I assume?) is standing. I follow him as he runs in that direction. She asks where I’m heading to. I suggest anywhere would be a good start, and am quickly directed through their garden, which backs directly onto the tracks. She asks if I’d like to stop for a chai. I graciously decline. I’m far too fucking hot to make niceties over nice tea.
I consider making it to the main highway a raging success, and set about ordering a cab. Uber is prevalent out here, as is a local app called PickMe - v similar in concept, and perhaps unsurprisingly, design. After some false dawns, a car is on its way to me, and I’ve just a couple of minutes to wait. What turns up is a shoebox. I mean, it’s a car - in that it’s got steering, an engine and four wheels - but there the similarities diverge. It’s a Tata Nano, that Indian conglomerate's attempt at recreating the Beetle, Hitler’s beloved peoples’ car. For the avoidance of doubt, I’m in no way suggesting the board of directors of Tata have any of his other leanings. I barely fit on the back seat with my backpack. It sounds like it has a two stroke lawnmower engine under the bonnet. We reach 20mph at one point - by accident one assumes. Still, he gets me close (ish) to my guesthouse, and I cover the last 200m on foot. My room looks great, but is sweltering. It’s air-conditioned, but the AC hasn’t been running this afternoon. I quickly dump my bags, and head straight out.
21:30
I’ve fallen in love with Mirissa, and I’ve only ventured about 20m from my guesthouse. The sun’s already set as I head down towards the beach, but I can still see some surfers picking up a half decent left-to-right break no more than 40m from the beach. I stop in at the first bar/restaurant I find, so urgent is my need for a G+T. I’m delighted to find that they run a happy hour until 19:00, and a G+T is included in their offer. It is a life-affirming sensation. I decide to stay for some dinner. It’s called Oh La La (shit name), and is owned/run by a French family. The menu is a fusion of French and local ingredients / techniques. I opt for some spiced calamari with a coriander ‘persillade’ and some spiced pilaf rice. It’s delicious. Amazingly, they have a half decent glass of Chardonnay that won’t break the bank. I’ve been getting a little bored of Lion lager, so an alternative is very welcome. After a less than stellar sleep last night, and a long, hot day of travel, I’m tuckered, so head back to my room, where I find a beautifully cool temperature to nestle down in to. I’ve not got much (anything) planned tomorrow, so will set a late alarm, and see where the day takes me…Les mer
D3 - Mooching, market, Ministry of Crab
6. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 27 °C
Wednesday 6th March - Mooching, market, Ministry of Crab
09:30
Wow. That was some sleep. Including my afternoon nap yesterday, I’ve had around 14 hours, which I take as a sign that I was knackered and needed it. I woke up around 02:00, and was awake for a little while - but happily managed to doze off again before my brain started ticking over. I don’t really have a much of a plan today. I’m on a walking tour this afternoon, but have a morning of mooching ahead of then. I find I’m not in a hurry though. Not hungry, so don’t need to head out for breakfast. Could do with a coffee though. Back soon.
18:00
The temperature is 32C, and humidity is in the late 70s. I am one hot motherfucker. This afternoon’s walking tour has been fascinating - a great insight into some of the history, architecture and culture of Colombo. There’s a lot of colonial architecture still standing, some of it in much better nick than others. Also worth remembering that ‘colonial’ for Sri Lankans starting in the 16th century with the Portuguese colonising, following by the Dutch, who were booted out by the British in the mid 1800s. What’s staggering is that each consecutive colonising nation basically tore down everything the preceding invader had done, and started again. There’s very little evidence of the Dutch influence, even less of the Portuguese. The Brits turned up, decided they could do it better, and started over.
We stop for a cup of tea (and a cool down) at the Grand Oriental Hotel. This old dame of the orient dates back some 170 years, and is frankly showing her age. That said, the tea is lovely, and the views from the rooftop bar are pretty cool. From there, we head down to Pettah Market, the bustling hub of commerce in the city. It’s manic in the best possible way. We spot a great bit of road rage occurring in front of us, when a truck driver nearly runs a tuk-tuk off the road. The two drivers exit their vehicles, and are really going for it - proper slanging match. No violence ensues, but I suspect at least one of them has been called a sisterfucker. We walk past the Apple store - same logo and everything, except this one sells… *checks notes* women’s underwear. Meandering through the Pettah food market, I’m struck by a couple of things:
a) The produce here is much smaller than in the UK. There are pumpkins the size of tennis balls, onions the size of ping pong balls, and daikon the size of small carrots
b) The baggies in which pre-ground spices are sold are almost exactly the same as those that drug mules seem to swallow before boarding their flight.
There’s a very striking mosque in the market, built in the early 20th century. Our guide, Navindra, tells us that the stonemason who built it came to see it for the first time after it was completed, but was run down and killed two streets away. After a few hours, Navindra leaves us near Fort Station, and I make the sticky walk back towards my hotel.
21:30
I have an urgent and cold shower, and head out for a beer. I find a cool little place near the Dutch Hospital, which has a Sri Lanka cricket game playing on the TV. The bar is quite raucous. I chat to one of the bartenders for a while. He’s visited the UK, and spent a couple of days in Brighton while he was there, so we have lots to talk about. I could quite easily put down roots here, but must go, as I have a dinner reservation at Ministry of Crab. Shit name, great restaurant. They specialise in…. Really? Crabs come in many different sizes, as do the giant freshwater prawns they have available. The food is mindbogglingly good. Mine is cooked with black pepper, chilli and garlic. It’s the best crab I’ve ever eaten. The garlic rice served with it is highly addictive. I treat myself to a glass of wine (well, a couple actually) to wash it down. It’s a brilliant meal. Not cheap, but good shellfish never is.
Tomorrow is moving day, and I find myself reflecting on a couple of days in Colombo. I’m not desperately sad to be leaving for the South coast. I think that’s partly the oppressive weather conditions, but also that I’m just not the biggest fan of big subcontinental cities. I’m excited to visit the smaller towns and rural outposts around Sri Lanka, that I suspect will give me a much better insight into the character and culture of this beautiful island. I’m back in Colombo for an overnight stop before flying home, so will be interesting to see what my take is on second viewing…Les mer
Day 2 - Peter Falk in a Dirty Mac
5. mars 2024, Sri Lanka ⋅ ☁️ 28 °C
02:40
That was CLOSE. Well, sort of.
We’re just over an hour late landing, meaning I’ve less than an hour to deplane, get through security and get to my next flight. It’s departing from gate B22. The plane I’m on sails past the B gates, and ends up as far away at the A gates as possible. This just adds to my task. Sydney lady has given up the ghost, but I’m going to do my damnedest to make it. I hustle to the transfer desk, silently and not so silently swearing at slow moving people who get in my way. The queue at the security check is blissfully small. There’s still the usual rigmarole of removing liquids, taking out laptops etc etc. And there’s the usual category of passenger for whom this seems an utterly alien task. Having cleared security, I make for the transit station. The gate I need is SO far away that I need to take a train to get there. There’s another guy trying for the Colombo flight who’s just been on the Gatwick inbound flight with me. We keep pace with each other, we glare at the same people that slow us down - it’s good to have a comrade in these circumstances. Off the train, into a lift, the doors of which never seem to want to close. Out of the lift, find a sign for B22 - we’ve got about 5 minutes until the gate closes. There are slow people EVERYWHERE, but despite their best efforts, we both make it to the gate in time. Just in time, but in time nonetheless. We’re immediately boarded, find our respective seats, aaaaaaaaaand - sit there like lemons for 25 minutes while the plane waits for some passengers transferring from delayed inbound flights from Europe. I am a hot sweaty mess, and more than a little irked that my mad dash across the airport appears to have been unnecessary.
07:30
4 hours passes incredibly quickly. I manage to sleep for about 1.5 of them, and am only woken when the plane starts its descent into Colombo. I suspect the brief kip I’ve had will be enough to get me through the airport and to my hotel ok, but that my afternoon is going to be full of naps.
11:15
Arriving into a sub-continental airport, you’re really never sure what to expect. I’ve had good experiences (Goa), average experiences (Mumbai, Goa), and terrible experiences (Delhi, Goa). Colombo pleasantly surprises me. It’s a relatively modern building, well air-conditioned, and actually pretty well organised. There’s a slight hiccup at immigration when it transpires that I have yet to complete an immigration form that no one has told me about, but we smooth over that fairly quickly. 20 minutes after landing, I’m waiting at the carousel for my bag, and a further 15 minutes after that, I’m in the back of a very heavily air-conditioned cab on the way tot the city centre. My driver is a jaunty chap called Pradeep. He’s keen to practice his English, so I’m subjected to a rapid-fire interrogation - have I been to Sri Lanka before, where am I going while I’m here, how old am I, what I do for a living (that one’s interesting, to say the least)…
Pradeep’s driving is - let’s not beat around the bush here, - atrocious. He’s not alone though - everyone driving on the roads seems to have a death-wish of sorts. I think my only comparable experience was my first cab trip from Mumbai airport into the city way back in 2007. On the Expressway, the concept of lanes is just really a guideline. Cars, bikes, trucks - all weave in and out of traffic to try and get where they’re going that tiny little bit faster. Pradeep’s Prius also makes a slightly worrying vibration as it reaches 100 kph. There’s also a faint smell of burning. A couple of times, he veers quite dramatically towards the central barrier. As we hit the outskirts of Colombo, the traffic slows. I think this is a good thing, as it means less chance of us smashing into another vehicle. What a tool. The additional vehicles merely mean the chance of incident has sky-rocketed, as there are more vehicles to hit. We approach a traffic light. There are 3 marked lanes for traffic. I count at least 8 cars abreast lined up at the front of the queue. All this near-death stuff shouldn’t detract from the thoroughly enjoyable, visual introduction to Sri Lanka. We race past rice paddies, many cricket pitches, several wattas (watta is the Sinhalese word for garden, and used idiosyncratically to describe the slums around Colombo, which - whilst nothing on the sheer size and scale of the Mumbai slums, are still notable. As we near the city centre, I’m fighting to stay awake. My eyes are hazy and heavy.
My home for the next two nights is C1 Colombo Fort - a hybrid hotel/hostel that’s very well reviewed, and very cheap. They don’t have a room available for me at 10:00, and suggest I sit in the air-conditioned reception area to wait. I try reading, but nearly fall asleep. I try writing this journal, and nearly fall asleep. I try watching some TV on my iPad, and nearly fall asleep. Finally, I decide to try falling asleep, and nearly fall asleep. Something in the reptilian part of my brain won’t let me drift off in an unfamiliar place with my bags scattered around me. As self-defence mechanisms go, it’s not a bad one.
17:30
Three hours later, my room is finally ready. It’s basic, but clean and functional. Critically, it:
a) is cold, and
b) has a bed in it. Two actually.
The guy who brought my bags up has barely left the room before I’m face down on the bed, deep in the land of zizz. I’ve nominally set an alarm for around 16:00, but decide to push this back an hour, and make the most of an unplanned afternoon. I wake up feeling pretty well refreshed. Still a bit jaded around the edges, but capable of leaving the hotel, and having an explore this evening. Quick freshen up I think, then off we go.
19:30
I’m not planning to stray *too* far from my hotel this evening. I’m staying in the Fort area of Colombo, which seems to have lots of options for food and some beers, and I just don’t have any sense of the city’s geography yet. It’s dark by the time I head out, so I figure discretion is probably the better part of valour this evening. There’s a weirdness about walking around a busy city for the first time at night - a slight tension. I don’t know which are the good neighbourhoods, and which are the ones to avoid. I definitely do NOT understand road crossing etiquette yet. There are no pedestrian crossings as such, so I just follow along with other pedestrians, in the hope that none of them are suicidal.
I head off in the vague direction of some places that sound cool, and end up in a very smart tea shop. Now look, I could tell you that tea is of almost religious importance in Sri Lanka, that I want to be respectful to this centuries old tradition. The truth is, as I was walking past, I thought it was a bar I was aiming for, and once I’d entered the tea shop, it felt rude not to order something. I peruse the menu like some kind of connoisseur, but the truth is I barely know my Ceylon Sapphire from my PG Tips. I opt for a Ceylon Souchong, on the basis that it’s got a fun name, and end up with a very cool pot of tea, and a little timer to tell me for how long the tea needs to brew. The flavour is amazing - vaguely fruity and hint of smokiness. Still, tea’s not really what I came out for…
22:00
Wandering around the neighbourhood, it transpires that I’m largely surrounded by big, international hotels, the eating and drinking establishments of which are typically very shiny, and (by Sri Lankan standards) very expensive. I stop at a bar for a beer, which costs me the best part of £5. There are two beers on tap, both of which are pretty standard lagers - Carlsberg, and a local brew called Lion. I plump for the latter, and it’s - well, ok I guess. It’s cold and refreshing, which is fun, but there’s very little in the way of flavour. Wine is both rare and expensive around here, so I may end up drinking large quantities of gin as my default setting.
The bar has a distinctly international feel to it, by which I don’t mean that it’s terribly chic, and with the mystique of the jet-set, but rather that you could drop it into most global cities I’ve visited and it wouldn’t look out of place. What am I trying to say - there’s nothing ‘Sri Lankan’ about it - it’s catering to the type of traveller that has neither the inclination nor perhaps the time to dip more than a toe into Sri Lankan culture during their stay. I’m giving myself a pass for this visit, as I’ve only been in town a few hours. There are several TVs showing cricket in the bar, to add to the several TVs showing cricket in the airport arrivals lounge, and I’m reminded that Sri Lanka is as cricket mad as nearby India. The two barmen are enrapt by what’s showing. I turn to look, to see if it’s some International match that Sri Lanka are playing in today, but no - they’re hooked into a replay of a game from 2008, featuring two sides - neither of which are Sri Lanka. I’d love to see a cricket match while I’m here. Sri Lanka are currently on tour, so it’d be a domestic game, but some of the stadia used are those used for International cricket that I’ve seen on TV before, and it’d be a wonderful experience to spend a few hours at one of them.
My dinner nearby , whilst excellent costs more then £20 - certainly more than I’d budgeted/bargained for. Still - it’s incredibly tasty. Some beautiful, plump battered prawns with a pineapple sambal to start. Seafood is, unsurprisingly, a huge part if this island’s cuisine. These sambals are also a staple of Sri Lankan dishes - midway between a relish, a sauce and a salad, spiked with chilli. It’s pleasantly hot, and the prawns are sensational. To follow I have a mutton curry with some plain steamed rice. It’s beautiful. Flecked with fresh curry leaves, definitely some coriander seed and cinnamon in there, and with meltingly tender, er, meat. In India, mutton tends to refer to goat, rather than the very specific definition in the UK of a sheep that is more than 2 years old. I suspect Sri Lanka is aligned to the former. Irrespective, it’s delicious.
I briefly consider another beer, but I’m flagging. Despite an extensive afternoon sleep, I’m still working off 5 or so hours of sleep, so head back to the hotel. It’s still hot, and very humid. My room is a delicious cocoon of cool. I read for maybe 5 minutes before falling quickly into a deep sleep.Les mer
Day 1 - Solo Sojourn
4. mars 2024, England ⋅ ☁️ 9 °C
09:30
I know, I know - it’s only been a couple of weeks. A very different form of travel this time. A distinctly lower budget, planning closer to free form jazz than the tightly wound trips I’m more used to organising, but most notably - because this journey I’ll undertake alone. It’s not for everyone, but it’s a method of travel I adore. Some folks will tell you that solo sojourns allow you to be more selfish, to do what you want, when you want and without compromise. I suppose that’s true, but I would never describe Vicki and my travels together as compromise laden burdens. Perhaps we’re fortunate that we largely want to see the same things, experience the same experiences. There are exceptions - later this year for instance, I’ll head into the Amazon for a couple of days, whilst Vicks and Tam (my cousin) stay in the relative luxury of a Manaus hotel…
No - what excites me most about travelling on my own is that I know it changes my mentality, my social and emotional openness. Without my wonderful wife by my side, I seek social interaction in a wholly different way. On the train up to Gatwick, I find myself recalling with great fondness the 52 hour train I took from Ernakulam in Kerala all the way up to Agra, some 3,000 kms to the North. I'd worried I’d be bored, but found instead that the journey flew by. Whether it was hanging out the side of the train watching the world go by, playing cribbage against a wily old Indian chap called Baljit, setting up the one and only running of the ‘Where the fuck are we? Sweepstake’ - I spent a delightful couple of days meeting new people, and learning about their lives, and their country. Sri Lanka is not remotely on the scale of India. Despite this, I’ve a couple of 6-7 hour train rides to look forward to.
I’ve wanted to Visit Sri Lanka for many years. Vicki and I have just never quite got around to it. All my friends who have visited have adored it. I mean - what’s not to like? Beautiful scenery, tropical weather, stunning beaches, incredible sea-life including (hopefully) the mesmerisingly huge blue whale, food that wows with each mouthful, an intriguing and at times indescribably sad history. I CAN. NOT. WAIT.
Small matter of an 18 hour journey first though…
11:15
Another artefact of travelling solo is that, fairly unsurprisingly, I have more time to write. Some of that will be dedicated to a slightly different style of travel journal - more observation than factually driven, and featuring more opinion, more reaction. Much will also be given over to working on a couple of books, but that’s for a different day. As a result of this writing time windfall, you can expect more frequent but shorter updates, capturing 'a la minute' what I’m seeing, hearing, experiencing. I love keeping a daily retrospective travel journal when I’m on the road with others, but there’s something special (for me as a writer, at any rate….) about documenting in the here and now.
Gatwick North terminal is just about the quietest I’ve ever seen it. Turns out Monday morning in the last throes of the UK winter is a great time to travel. North terminal is where easyJet’s 100+ flights per day depart from, and during the Summer, the terminal is buzzing with folks headed off on their Summer holidays. This time of year, less so - weekends can still be pretty hectic, but this morning there’s barely a trickle of passengers. My bag is dropped within seconds of entering the terminal, and the security check is even quicker. A first for me - a new security queue is opened for me as I walk up - no queue, no fuss. Less than 30 minutes after my train arrived into Gatwick, I’m ordering some breakfast, and an obligatory airport pint. I start chatting to a Northern Irish lady sat next to me, who seems a little confused by the whole experience. She’s headed home to Belfast after a weekend visiting her daughter in London. We discuss for perhaps several too minutes too many whether she can still order from the breakfast menu at 10:45. She seems a little put out when I suggest she speaks with one of the people who, you know - work there. Wandering up to the other end of the terminal, I find that there have been quite a few updates since I last travelled through here - most notably the addition of a Brewdog bar. These are dangerous times. Still, my flight’s not for another couple of hours…
12:36
Here’s what they (I) don’t tell you about travelling solo. When you’re 3 pints in, and your bladder waves hello, you’re stuck with a stark choice. Do you
a) pack all your stuff up, head to the bathroom, and hope your table (or another one) is still available when you get back, or
b) leg it to the bathroom, leaving all your stuff on the table, hurriedly finishing your pee before rushing back to make sure some light-fingered little scrote hasn’t walked off with your gear.
At an airport, it’s always the former - unattended bags and all that. When you’re in country, and at a quietish bar? A more difficult choice. Many people are of the “could you keep an eye on my bag/stuff please?” brigade, relying on the good will and trustworthiness of their fellow patrons. Resist this urge. If someone asks me to keep an eye on their stuff, I like to hide it from them, so that when they get back, they have a momentary panic, before I hand back their belongings. Of course, not everyone is a mischievous prick like me, but you can’t really tell by eye-balling someone, can you?
23:40 - somewhere over the Arabian peninsula…
Flight’s been fine. I ADORE the A380. Just the best plane I’ve ever flown on. I’m in Economy, but there’s so much space. I have an extra legroom seat, so can stretch out to to my heart’s content. It helps that the flight is barely half full. Apparently this is a rarity for the A380 flights leaving Gatwick. The cabin crew are overjoyed at their workload being halved.
I meet my row colleagues as we board. Very weird coincidence - we were on a flight to New York with them about 4 months ago. Not 'with them' but sat a couple of seats nearby. We briefly had a chat with them while we were in the bar area of the Upper Class section of our flight. They are better than me at asking for things, and coerce one of the cabin crew to fetch us a G+T very shortly after take-off. I’m far more parsimonious with plane-based drinking than I used to be, but will happily admit to being very content to throw a couple of gins, and a few glasses of vin rouge. I try and sleep for a while, but it’s not happening. I just don’t think I’m tired enough. I suspect the relatively short (4 hour) hop to Colombo from Dubai will be a sleep free zone, so I’ll likely arrive at my hotel in several states of disrepair.
We’re just a few hundred clicks North of Dubai when the Captain informs us that there is congestion at DXB Airport, and we are likely to be around 1 hour late landing. I have a 2 hour transfer window for my next flight, and I know from experience that even 90 minutes can be cutting it fine if DXB is busy. The airport’s huge, and takes time to get around it. There’s also a security check to complete. Still - it could be worse. I could be the lady sat behind me who’s basically just been told that her connecting flight to Sydney is going to take off approximately 2 minutes before we land. These kind of delays are always frustrating, but also inevitable. I’ve spent countless hours in the hold pattern over Heathrow over the years. I think it feels worse because you’re so close to your destination. I call for more gin, and keep my fingers crossed we won’t be delayed any further.Les mer
Day 6 - Home. Meh. Some reflections...
18. februar 2024, England ⋅ ⛅ 14 °C
Good sleeps are had. We're both pretty well rested after our combined plane / car / bed sleeps. We've both been blown-away during our Arctic trip. A few reflections...
1) The Arctic Circle (generally) and Tromso/Lyngen (specifically) are places of superlatives - the coldest, the furthest north, the most beautiful. Cannot recommend highly enough that you go and check it out for yourselves. Just a wonderful place inhabited by wonderful people.
2) If you do go, you really do need proper winter weather gear to keep you warm. The first couple of days of our stay at Lyngen had an incredible wind-chill, and without some serious ski gear, even a minute outside was painfully cold. For our activities, we were provided with heavy-duty winter clothing, but even just for getting around our resort, well padded ski trousers, and a down-insulated jacket were a must.
3) There exists a disagreement as to whether we 'saw' the Northern Lights. I'm in Team YES, my beloved in Team SCEPTICAL. It's important to know that even those of us in team YES acknowledge that ours was a limited sighting. The dancing white lights of the Aurora were clearly visible to the naked eye, but the green hue only visible to a camera lens. There's a version of our experience out there where the green is much more intense, the movement of the lights jauntier. Do I consider it a bucket list item ticked? Yeah, kind of. I would deffo go Aurora hunting again though...
4) Norway is wicked expensive. The country has a tax to GDP rate of around 45% (compared to the UK's 35%, and closer to 20% in the USA). At face value that seems high - until you realise that Norway has outstanding public services. Everything just works as it's meant to. Not that we needed to use it, but the public health system is modern, efficient and well funded. Compare and contrast... On that basis, I don't begrudge paying £10 for a bog standard pint of lager, but do be aware before you travel that your £s won't stretch far!
That's all for now folks. Join me in a little under two weeks for a womble around the tropical island of Sri Lanka...Les mer
Day 5 - Westbound and down
17. februar 2024, Norge ⋅ ❄️ -6 °C
Neither of us has slept particularly well. The bed in our apartment is just way too soft and wallowy. I get wake up at 05:30, and haven’t dozed off again by 06:30, so I get up. Lying on the sofa, I can feel my eyes are still tired. Curling up, I’m quickly asleep, and manage another 90 minutes. As we’re packing up to head home, it starts to snow again, and is really coming down. I think we had about 8cm of snow last night, and similar is forecast today, with a much heavier dump (snigger) due tomorrow and into Monday. We’ve not really seen much of Tromso by day. It’s a properly pretty little city - lots of interesting architecture, some very cool street art around the place, and loads of funky eateries and drinkeries, if you’ve had the foresight to remortgage your house before heading here.
We drop our bags into our colleagues’ apartment, and head out for some lunch. We find a wonderful little bistro. There’s a momentary deja vu when the server mentions they may not have any tables available, but luck is on our side, and they seat us quickly. I have a reindeer stew, which is a massive bowl of hug, and Vicks has an outstanding burger. Having tried our utmost to spend more than £60 on dinner in South Africa, we now find it’s all but impossible to spend less on lunch in Norway.
We meet up with the gang, and head to the Troll Museum. They play a large part in Norse mythology, and the museum explains how, where and when this happens. Vicki is distraught to discover that the museum is quite critical of trolls, rather than an opportunity to big them up. I’m particularly taken by the section of the museum that describes Ibsen’s poem Peer Gynt, which was then put to music by Edvard Grieg. A couple of pieces of music from the Peer Gynt suite will be instantly familiar to you. The Hall of the Mountain King is one of my favourite classical pieces - massively evocative of my childhood, for some reason upon which I’m unable to put my finger. Jiggy and I play a traditional Norse game that’s broadly similar to Connect 4, which he instantly labels Connect Thor.
We have a little wander around the harbour, and end up in a locals’ pub. There’s some (questionable) live music - a guy doing country style covers of contemporary songs. I’d love to say the drinks are cheap, but they’re not. We have a couple of rounds, and it’s suddenly time for Vicks and me to grab our bags and head to the airport. Liz and Ant bravely offer to accompany us back to their apartment. We have a swift sharpener, wait a little longer for an Uber than is utterly necessary, and we’re at Tromso Airport in decent time for our flight.
Check-in and security are a breeze. Within minutes, we’re rooted in a sports bar in the departure lounge, tucking into a brilliant but wallet-bustlingly expensive bottle of Chardonnay. Our gate is announced, and we hold firm. It’s not a big airport, so it won’t take us long to reach our gate. Our flight is then called for boarding, and we dutifully head down to the departure gate - where we stand waiting for close to an hour. They’ve called us to the departure gate before the incoming flight has even landed - the wank-puffins.
The flight is fairly chaotic. We’ve not had much to eat today, and there’s no food on the flight, save a couple of small boxes of Pringles. Our drinks choices are also unavailable. We throw a quick couple of G+Ts down the hatch, and both manage to sleep through a decent chunk of the flight. Landing into Luton is actually pretty breezy. The airport’s fairly empty at midnight, so few queues with which to contend. We meet our driver, Andy, who tells us that due to the recent car park fire at Luton Airport, we’ve a c. 10 minute walk in the wind and rain back to the car. It’s a pretty miserable experience. Climbing into Andy’s Range Rover, we recline our seats, and manage to sleep most of the way home. Our little ginger warriors are somewhat interested to see us, and we both quickly collapse into bed.Les mer
Day 4 - Highway to the Ranger Zone
16. februar 2024, Norge ⋅ ❄️ -7 °C
The Aurora alert never goes off - hopefully as a result of there being no notable Aurora to spot, rather than user error in setting up the alerts. I’m off snowmobiling this morning, but Vicks is having a bit of a lie-in, and staying behind to mooch ahead of our departure. Breakfasted, Jiggs, Tris, Liz and I head up into the mountains, where we’re met by our skidoo rangers. We ride up higher into the mountains, reaching a plateau that feels like the top of the world. The views are simply staggering. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. It’s properly other-worldly… We jump back on the skidoos, and ride down to a frozen lake, our base for the next couple of hours. We head off for a quick snowshoeing hike, then head down onto the lake itself. Thorbjorn is leading our expedition today, and tells us that the lake has over 1m thickness of ice on top of it. For some reason, I’m still a little suspicious that it’ll crack and drown me. Berger (another of the rangers) has drilled some holes in the ice for us to fish through. We’re a little sceptical whether there are actually any fish under the ice, but play along. Whole some fish, others go for a snowmobile ride around the lake.Driving a skidoo is like no other vehicle. Elements of motorbikes, shades of jet skis, but ultimately a unique experience. They’re properly powerful - a supercharged 600cc engine. Opening the throttle has a real kick to it. SO much fun…. We repair back to the wooden tipi, and sit around a campfire having an early lunch of salmon chowder - delicious. It’s time to head back down the mountain. We’ve had an amazing time on the mountain, but we need to meet our bus back to Tromso.
Vicki has done sterling work while I’ve been out having fun. There’s a Witbier waiting for me on arrival, which feels very much deserved. Although it’s felt slightly warmer today, (strictly speaking less bastard cold would be more accurate) my feet are properly cold. My toes are pretty numb, even after we’re back at Lyngen North in the warmth of the bar. I change quickly, grab another beer to steady the nerves, and ask Marianne to settle up my bill. It’s not quite as bad as I’d feared. Hurrah! We’re onto the Arctic Route bus bound for Tromso by 14:10. Three hours of sensational views await. I settle in to gaze out of the window.
We arrive into Tromso at nearly 18:00, and start the walk to our AirBnB for the night. It’s an idiosyncrasy of travelling to new places that aspects of a destination can surprise you on arrival. I did not know, for example, that the 10 minute walk to our apartment involved climbing a small mountain. I make a mental note to include topography in my assessment of accommodation’s suitability in future. At one point, there is a particularly steep climb through a park. Where there would have been stairs in summer time, there are small footholds in the snow. Traversing these whilst carrying luggage is particularly challenging. We finally make it to the building we’re looking for, and are flummoxed by our host’s instructions. Some confusion about what the phrase ‘under the porch’ means. We find an apartment that is indeed ‘under the porch’ and walk through the open door. We’re a little confused to find other people already in what we believe to be our apartment. After a brief conflab with the person that it transpires is the host of this apartment, he points us in the right direction for ours. There are definite pros to using AirBnB, but there are downsides…
Refreshed, we embark out in search of a supermarket, and our colleagues’ apartment. The former proves straightforward, the latter less so. We ultimately discover that they have had similar issues finding the entrance to their apartment, and have ALSO wandered into the wrong apartment. It makes us feel a little better. We have a quick couple of drinks before heading out for dinner. Liz has booked us into what we discover is a pretty fancy place nearby, and she and Tris are treating us as a thank you for joining them on this birthday odyssey. The food looks and sounds amazing. I have a lightly pickled herring dish to start, whilst Vicks has a smoked duck breast terrine. Both are outstanding. Most of the table orders a beef cheek main course, which is sublime. Beautifully cooked, hugely tasty, very satisfying. All is washed down with some some Cremant de Loire, and a couple of bottles of the decent Cotes Du Rhone. It’s 23:30 by the time we’re finished, and I’m flagging. Vicks and I head back to our apartment, and find the uphill battle a somewhat easier proposition this time. It started snowing during dinner, and has grown steadily heavier. We’re expecting 10-15cm overnight. Back at the apartment, I’m quickly curling up for a deep, deep sleep. We don’t need be out of our apartment till midday, and my 10:00 alarm seems a beautifully late one.Les mer
Day 3 - Birthday boy!
15. februar 2024, Norge ⋅ 🌙 -6 °C
We sleep pretty well. The whipping wind is clearly audible outside, but it’s actually quite soothing, cocooned in our warm little igloo. I wake up a few times through the night, and look through the glass ceiling of our igloo, hoping to see lights - but no dice. We’re up in good time, as need to leave for our dog sledding expedition at 09:00. We grab a quick breakfast, wish Triston the very happiest of birthdays, and then pile into Lyngen North’s Tesla for the 40 minute ride North. None of us think to take off our coats before embarking, and we’re all pretty warm, pretty quickly. I can’t figure out how the drivers up here are son good at driving on ice. I had a a quick look at the tyres on the Tesla before getting in. They looked like pretty standard Winter tyres, where I’d half been expecting to see snow chains. Whatever it is, I’ve gone from being a little anxious on the bus up to Lyngen yesterday, to feeling completely at ease with Ola bombing around the back roads heading up to the Storslett valley.
We’re met by Tom, who runs the dog-sledding business. We change into some hardcore winter clothing - Tom says we’ll probably be warm enough in our ski gear, the huskies have a habit of shitting and pissing on their drivers, so advises to wear the snowsuit. Suitably garbed, we’re given the briefest of driving lessons, before heading for our sleds. Vicks thinks she’s likely to make a better passenger than driver, so I’m first up. The dogs are howling, so excited are they to get under way. We get Vicks safely ensconced in the sled, and set off. There are 5 sleds running in convoy with Tom at the front. The shock of the dogs setting off for the first time is really something. They’re only running at about 15-16 km/h, but it feels…. Maybe not faster, but more alive. Steering has a bit of a knack to it. The dogs will essentially follow the sled in front, and they learn the tracks around the valley really well so they know where they are, and where they’re going. If they can cut a corner though, they will, and we have a couple of wobbly moments when they tear off around a corner, and the sled starts leaning to one side pretty heavily. It’s a hugely exhilarating experience - it’s still bitterly cold, but the wind has dropped from yesterday, meaning we can take in the sights and sounds of the forest floor. During our first run, one of the dogs - how can I put this delicately - has to use the back-door bathroom. Rather than stop, he does it in mid-run, demonstrating a strange sort of crab-like running technique, without missing a step. It’s a slightly bizarre, but hugely impressive feat of physical prowess.
After 30 or so minutes, we pull up at a small cabin in the forest. There’s a campfire burning, and we sit around the fire having a coffee and chatting to our host, Tom - as well as a couple of other guests that are visiting from Qatar (but who originated in Thailand and Missouri). The scenery is stunning - incredibly peaceful. Some of the dogs are having a rest, others are playing. They seem really contented, and Tom clearly dotes on them all. He tells us of the races he runs in. A pack of 10 dogs over something like 1,200 kms is his record. It takes around 2 weeks to complete. We’re invited into the hut itself for some elevenses - a delicious fish soup that the chef at Lyngen North has knocked up for us. Recharged, we set off again for our second run. Vicks has decided that she’s going to remain in the sled, so I’m driving again. Liz decides she’s going to have a go, so Tris is in their sled. We set off on what looks like a fairly innocuous open field path. Vicki remarks that this is where we nearly stacked it on our first run. As sure as thunder follows lightning, the moment she says it, our pack tears off to the left, and dumps the sled on its arse. Vicki manages to turn her unscheduled exit into something of a commando roll. My ejection from the back of the sled is closer to a lobster roll. Tom had warned us that the dogs won’t stop if we fall out, and ya know what? He’s right. They hare off into the distance after the other sleds. Happily, Tom has spotted our misfortune, and quickly manages to slow our pack down while we trot to catch up. After this, things are a little more stable. We spend an amazing 20 minutes running through the forest. The air is crisp and clean in a way I’ve just not experienced before. In the car on the way back to Lyngen, the majority of our party grab some Zzzs.
Back at Lyngen, it’s beer o’clock, and we toast Tris’ success in making it to half a century. A light lunch later, and we’re all feeling a little jaded. I have a quick nap, wake up feeling tired, so have another one. It is the best possible use of my afternoon. By 18:00, we’re back up at the bar. We have a brilliant dinner, with the highlight being a main course of oven-roasted cod with a spinach risotto. Sublime. Ant’s feeling pretty knackered, so heads to bed from the dinner table. The 5 of us remaining have some drinks, play some games, laugh quite a lot. It’s a fabulous way to spend the evening, and we hope that it’s been a good way for Tris to celebrate his birthday. By 22:30, the bar is closed, and we’re ready for bed. There is promise of some half decent Aurora tonight. I’ve downloaded an Aurora alert app, and set it to wake me up for any particularly good sightings. I managed a couple of quick pics earlier this evening, but there is promise of more and better…Les mer
Day 2 - Fjord Fiesta
14. februar 2024, Norge ⋅ 🌙 -14 °C
I’m awake a little before our 07:30 alarm, and have slept pretty well. Vicks struggles to wake up, but with some gentle encouragement (turning the main light on, poking in the ribs etc etc), she prevails. We grab a quick breakfast, and head out to meet our bus that will take us up to Lyngen. It is COLD. We’re both wearing massive winter coats, but the wind chill is such that they don’t necessarily feel all that warm. I nearly fall over on some ice on a couple of occasions.
The drive is sensational. The views of the fjords out of the window are just breathtaking. The waters are being whipped by a strong northerly wind, and we’re driving through a blizzard. The water in many of the fjords is completely frozen. It’s warm on the coach, but looking at the scenery is making me shiver. The drive is around 3h30m. Vicks spends much of it snoozing, to take her nightly sleep total to a very positive 11h30m. As we approach Lyngen North, we can hear the wind getting stronger. There are 50mph gales forecast this afternoon, and wind-chill temperatures of -23C.
The wonderful Marianne welcomes us on arrival. She and I have been in touch a fair bit by email ahead of our trip, so it’s lovely to put a face to the name. The views from the dining room are stunning. We have some lunch - a hearty but very elegant potato and leek soup with lamb sausage for me, and an amazing looking BLT for Vicks. We are introduced to the drinks menu. Just shy of £10 for a beer or a wine. Ant and Jigs disappear out into the howling gale for a smoke. We wonder if we’ll see them again. While we eat, Triston explains to us that the reason we’re here is that he was using his VR set-up to play on Microsoft’s Flight Simulator, and he flew over this part of Norway and thought it looked cool. As a way of picking holiday destinations, it’s a new one to me…
It’s only 60m to our igloo, but the walk involves several instances of us falling over. There is a lot of ice underneath the snow. Further down the hill, the snow is deep enough for me to start sinking into it. This is comfortably the furthest North either of us have ever been, and the conditions are like nothing else we’ve ever experienced. I’m an idiot, and don neither my hat nor my gloves for the walk. This is a regrettable error. After just a few minutes outside, my fingers are so numb that I can barely put the key into the keyhole. Needn’t have bothered trying - the lock is so frozen that the key won’t turn at all. Happily, there’s an app for the resort that allows us to lock and unlock the door, manage the room temperature etc etc. The view from our igloo is breathtaking - we’re only metres from the shoreline, and the Lyngen Alps are just over the side of the fjord. We have a drink in the room, and I then can’t resist going outside. The sun is starting to set to the South West of us, and the wind is still whipping in off the water. After perhaps 90 seconds, I realise it was a mistake not wearing a mask of some kind to cover my lower face - the wind is whipping snow off the ground so quickly, that when it hits my face it feels like a million tiny pieces of glass. Jiggy is bravely sitting down at the water’s edge. I take a few pictures. My legs start to freeze. Sated, I head back into the warmth of our igloo.
We head back up to the main building around 17:00 to grab a pre-dinner drink. The short (60m) walk is challenging. We don’t stack it, but come close. Walking into the wind is a real mission. Our colleagues join us. Our dinner is fabulous. Some of the best mussels I can remember eating, a great bit of rib-eye with some local vegetables, and a top notch brownie. YUM. After dinner, we repair to the lounge, and we’re joined by Marianne, who claims she never socialises with guests, but that we’re just more fun than most of her usual clientele. Whether this is true, or she's massaging our egos, we're not sure. It’s really fun to hang out with her for a couple of hours though. Her English is sensational, and she keeps up with the ebb and flow of our conversational incredibly well.
The Aurora light goes off a couple of times. For the avoidance of doubt - the resort change the outdoor lighting from white to green when their Aurora sensor goes off. The first time it happens, we sprint outside, and see - nothing. The second time, we trot outside, and see - nothing. Marianne explains that the Aurora can be tricky to see by the naked eye. When they’re showing modestly, the colours aren’t that obvious. Interestingly, what your eye sees as white, your camera should show as green. It’s apparently quite easy to mistake the Aurora for white cloud. When the lights change for a third time, we amble outside, and can faintly pick up some dancing light in the sky. We’re not talking a massive light show. It’s subtle, but noticeable. I only have my iPhone with me, so change a couple of settings to make sure I’m on a long exposure, and click click click - more out of hope than expectation. The resulting pics are decent, if not mind-blowing. The wind is still blowing hard, and it remains incredibly cold.
Back in the warmth of the bar, we (well, some of us…) start in on the Aquavit. Aquavit is made in much the same way as vodka, but is flavoured with herbs and spices. My favourite is their Christmas Aquavit, which has cinnamon and caraway in it. We play several rounds of Giant Beaver (Google it) which has us cackling with laughter. The bar closes in decent time. The clock hits 22:15, and we grab another round for the road. Marianne wishes us a good night, we wrap ourselves up for the short but frigid walk back to our igloo, and hit the hay.Les mer
Day 1 - Team Assembly
13. februar 2024, Norge ⋅ ☁️ -7 °C
Our departure is at the other end of the day. A night time flight to Johannesburg was civilised, a 04:45 alarm clock for Norway, less so. On the plus side, we’re in the pub before 07:00. Vicks and I have some breakfast and a couple of wines/ciders, and wait for our colleagues to arrive. Ant’s train was cancelled, so he’s in a bit of a rush to get to Gatwick, but he, Jiggs, Tris and Liz all make it to the pub a little after 08:00. Our flight is a little delayed as a result, it transpires, of very low temperatures in Oslo overnight, requiring substantial amounts of de-icing before its departure to Gatwick. Boarding is a little hectic. It’s been a while since I flew on a low-cost carrier flight, and I’d forgotten about the political games passengers play over space in the overhead lockers.
The flight to Oslo is largely uneventful. Couple of wines to grease the skids, and Vicki manages a little nap. Landing into a snowy Oslo airport is a cool experience. As we start to descend, we can see the peaks of snowy mountains poking through the clouds. We realise we’re pretty damn low to the ground, and still can’t see any evidence of an actual city nearby. It’s only as we’re literally about to touch wheels down that we can see much in the way of Oslo itself. We’re transferring to another flight to Tromso, about 1,000 miles to the North, and well inside the Arctic Circle. We approach a security check, and I’m told that the bottle of duty-free Bourbon I’m carrying is going to be confiscated because the dozy retail assistant at Gatwick neglected to put my receipt inside the bag before sealing it. FUMING. Happily, there’s a duty-free store at Oslo Airport, so I grab another bottle of exactly the same Bourbon. Alcohol in Norway is taxed incredibly heavily - as it is across most of Scandinavia. Prices at our destination resort in Lyngen are likely to be financially crippling - hence some Bourbon for the room, to do some pre-loading.
As we approach Tromso, we can see the frosty looking fjords around the city. We can see the Lyngen Alps to the North East of the town. Both look beyond cold. We check into our hotel. Our room is small, but happily, we’re not planning to spend much time in it. We head out for a beer, and to meet up with the team - who are staying in a hotel round the corner from us. We have a smallish glass of Prosecco - which sets us back £13 per glass. We find our colleagues, and head to a well reviewed pizza joint. Full. We head to an Indian place. Full. We head to a grill-house. Full. It’s Tuesday night in the Arctic Circle, and everywhere appears to be booked. There is a substantial risk of Vicki getting hangry, and I’m not far behind her. The team continue on in search of somewhere to eat, but Vicks and I bail to Burger King, and have the most critically urgent Whopper of our lives. Wandering back towards our hotel, we both nearly have ass-over-tits moments. There’s snow everywhere, but some randomly placed bits of ice that are lethal. Vicki decides it’s time for some sleep. She only slept about 4 hours last night, bless her. I leave her to it, and grab a beer in the hotel’s bar. By the time I’m back upstairs around 22:00, Vicks is sparko.Les mer
Day 17 : Home. Meh. Reflections...
4. februar 2024, England ⋅ 🌬 9 °C
I manage about 5 hours, and then give Vicki back her seat so she can get some more shut-eye. She’s managed a few hours in the upright seat, but looks much more comfortable once reclined. We’re about 3 hours out from landing. I briefly wonder about having a drink, but realise I’m not too fussed. With about 90 minutes to go, the lights come up, and we’re served an almost inedible breakfast. As we land, we come down through thick, low lying cloud. The ground is wet from overnight rain, and the temperature is hovering around 10C. It feels quite nice actually…
A few reflections:
1) South Africa remains one of my very favourite places to travel. The food, people, wine, scenery are all brilliant, and for a Brit traveller, represent AMAZING value. We struggled to spend more than £60 for a high quality, slap-up dinner for 2 with a bucketload of wine.
2) Franschhoek / Stellenbosch in January = a hard no. Climate change is happening, and the likelihood of 40C+ weather there in the peak of Summer is growing quickly.
3) This was the safest I’ve felt on a trip around South Africa. It feels like change is continuing in this rapidly evolving society. You still don’t wanna act like a dick, but I felt less conscious walking around places than I have done previously.
4) Society may be evolving, but it continues to face serious challenges. The ANC government is not running the country well. Basic facilities are failing, investment in public services is monumentally low, and corruption in the government is rife. While there’s huge evidence of a burgeoning middle class of people of colour, there remains far too great an indigenous population living in abject poverty.
5) Load-shedding is a ball-ache, and we would definitely bear it in mind more when planning a revisit to South Africa - assuming it’s still in place (which it will be…)
6) Well made Biltong is the best snack on the planet.
Thanks all for reading. That’s all for now - until our trip to Lapland in 9 days time…Les mer
Day 16 : Northward bound...
3. februar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ 🌙 26 °C
We’re both woken at 04:00 by a booming electrical storm. Some of the loudest thunder we’ve ever heard, and at times, the lightning strike and thunderclap are all but simultaneous. There’s a brief but heavy downpour to of with it. It lasts for around an hour. The storm has clearly done something to the guesthouse’s power supply, as the A/C unit has shut down. Load-shedding, this is not. I get back to sleep, before waking to a rapidly warming room at 06:30. Vicki is awake just before 08:00, and we’re both miffed, but resigned. We’d planned a lazy morning getting ourselves packed and ready for our trip home. Instead, we’re in a room that rapidly reaches 26C inside, and feels warmer. It’s not pleasant. It also means we can’t charge electric devices for the journey home. Had we known etc etc… At 09:00, I decide enough is enough - and go for a drive. The car is a blissfully cool environs, and I can charge my phone and power bank from the 12V adapter.
I head up the Franschhoek pass, a narrow and winding road that heads South East from Franschhoek village. I’m surrounded by cyclists doing cycling type things as they ascend the steep incline. The views from the top are staggering. The entire Franschhoek valley is laid out before me. It’s also a couple of degrees cooler up here, with a stout breeze. Back at the guesthouse, Vicks is planning to take a cold shower. Then the water stops. Not the hot water. ALL the water. We cannot shower, cannot brush teeth, we cannot flush the toilet. We hold a quick strategy meeting, and decide to see if we can find a hotel near the airport that rents rooms by the hour. We’d always expected to have quite a bit of time at the airport, so spending a couple of hours nearby in the cool, able to shower etc etc feels like a good trade off. We’ve previously stayed at Hotel Verde, right next to Cape Town International, and they helpfully have a reasonably priced 3 hour option.
Somewhat relieved, we get packed up and into the car to head over to Stellenbosch. We stop at Jordan wine estate. We’ve previously eaten here, but not had a tasting of their wines. We spend a delightful hour with Leon, who guides us through the estate’s Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon offerings. Some real pearls in their range. By the time we leave a little after midday, the temperatures pushing into the mid 30s, and we need some shade. We continue down the road to Mulderbosch, where we’re having lunch. Their tasting room is inside, and air-conditioned. We get a slightly funny look when we asked if we can sit in there for both our tasting and for lunch. We have a quick tasting of their wines, and are then joined by Eon for lunch. Good pizza work, and I have a couple of beef brisket sliders that are awesome. Eon has very kindly brought me an outstanding bottle of Cabernet Franc to take home. It’s been great to catch up with him. Next time we’re out, we’ll plan a trip with him down the Garden Route for a week so we can spend some proper time together.
Onwards to our hotel, and the room isn’t quite the icy paradise we were hoping for / expecting. It’s an eco hotel, so they’re very mindful of wasting energy. As a result, the A/C is only turned on when you turn it on - not in anticipation of your arrival. I leave Vicki to shower while I take the car back. This proves to be a little trickier than planned, as I nearly forget to fill the car up before returning it. This initiates a significant detour from the airport, getting pretty lost in a dodgy looking warehouse district, and generally losing my cool with other drivers. Having handed the car back, I end up having to wait 30 minutes for the shuttle back to the hotel. I urgently need a Savanna. My shower at least is hugely refreshing. I get dressed and packed up, and manage to find the England/Italy rugby on the TV. I grab an indecently quick Savanna in the hotel bar, and soon enough we’re jumping on the hotel shuttle back to the airport.
The airport experience is a little weird. Things run smoothly where you don’t expect (getting a bag shrink-wrapped, security control) and slow where you do. There’s a 30 minute queue for passport control. Even the US doesn’t make you do that shit when you’re leaving. We find ourselves an airport bar and tuck into Savanna (me) and Chardonnay (Vicki). We’re both hoping to catch some significant Zzzzzs on the overnight flight, so we’re just greasing the skids. Arriving at our gate, we discover boarding is already well underway. We’re quickly into our seats, and accepting a glass of Prosecco to tide us over. The flight is a little delayed pushing back. Some cargo is missing, and apparently there’s no tow tractor for us. TIA (this is Africa…)
In the air, we’re soon fed and watered. We both want to try and get some decent sleep, so I go to recline my seat. Nothing doing. I spend a somewhat frustrating few minutes trying to figure out if the seat is broken, I’m an idiot, or a bit of both. A succession of cabin crew come and try to fix the seat, but it’s just not happening. The flight is full to bursting, but the cabin crew head off to Business and First to see if there’s another seat available for me. There is not. I’ll get some compensation, probably in the form of some air-miles to use on a future booking. We’re also gifted a decent bottle of Champers, and some First class amenity kits. Vicki selflessly offers up her seat. I recline it to the max, and am quickly dozing, as we power over the heart of Africa…Les mer
Day 15 : Holy shit, it's hot
2. februar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ 🌙 24 °C
We wake up and compete over who’s had more sleep. We’ve both topped out at 10+ hours. YUM. We’ve got a pretty early start in Franschhoek, so get a hustle on, and an Uber into town. The Franschhoek wine tram is great fun. It leaves at 09:30, and the first wine stop is about fifteen minutes later. Not to be outdone, the guys on the tram give us a snifter to get our day moving. Our first port of call is Rickety Bridge - a winery neither of us have visited before. It’s just before 10:00 when we request some sparkling wines, and some of their flagship estate wines. The sparkling wines are really good. The flagship wines are a little variable, but of a decent standard. The sun is already heating up, so we stay in the shade as long as we can. A tractor drives us back to the tram stop.
Our next stop is Grande Provence - again, new to both of us. We do a similar sparkling/flagship wine tasting - some crackers in here. We notice they sell both a semi-sweet and dessert wine based on Muscat, and ask if we can try those as well. Good grief - they’re good. Designed for very different purposes, we can quickly imagine ourselves enjoying a bucket load of each of them back home. By now, it’s all of 11:30. We’re both getting properly hungry, having foregone breakfast in the interest of expediency. Our next stop is Mont Rochelle, where we’ve booked a picnic. Arriving just after 12:00, we dive into the air-conditioned tasting room. We taste their flagship Chardonnay and Syrah, as well as their estate white and rosé wines. They ask if we want to eat our picnic outside - we quickly decline. It is just too fucking hot. The mercury is reading 38C, and we’re simply not built for it. We pick a bottle of their high-end Miko Syrah to accompany our lunch. We grab a table inside their heavily air-conditioned dining room, and unwrap our picnic. There is an avalanche of food, We fall upon it - perhaps a little too quickly. We are ravenous, and just perhaps a little drunk.
We briefly consider heading straight back to our guesthouse, before we remember that there’s load-shedding between 14:00 and 16:00, so we may as well stay out. Jumping back on the bus, we head to the next winery. As we drive down the road at 50mph, the wind whipping around the bus is honestly like someone is blowing a hairdryer on us. We spend 5 minutes discussing when we’ve ever felt this hot before. Melbourne on Christmas Day in 2016 was 42C, and we both felt like we were being cooked alive, albeit slowly. This is in the same ballpark. It is ball-bustlingly hot. Arriving at Klein Goederust, we are unenthused to find that we need to sit outside for our tasting. We are both beyond flagging. Happily, we spot an air-conditioned tasting room to one side of the main tasting area, and we occupy it with vigour. It is joyful. The wines are a disappointment - perhaps because we are sooooooo hot. All we can think about is getting back to our room, our A/C, the pool etc etc.
Dropped back at the tram terminal, we walk a few minutes down to Franschhoek Station Pub, in the hope that a Savannah / Spiced and coke might cool us down. They do not. Sweltering, we appeal for an Uber to take us back to our guesthouse, where the power has just recently kicked back in, and A/C is available to us. I decide the quickest route to coolness is a plunge in the pool, and I’m not disappointed. Air-drying in the shade, I read my book, amidst the stunning surrounds of the Franschhoek valley. It might be fucking hot, but it’s still fucking beautiful.
We head back into town to grab a bite. We aim for the Franschhoek beer company, only to find it closes at 17:00, and ultimately end up back at the Station pub. We saw someone setting up a sound system earlier, and wondered if we’d see a DJ this evening. No - karaoke. The quality is, let’s try to be kind here, mixed. Couple of drinks and a pizza later, and we’re back in our room, feeling like an early-ish night is in order. We’re both asleep by 22:30…Les mer
Day 14 : Stellen-BOSH
1. februar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ 🌙 21 °C
An early night predictably means an early waking. Load-shedding is in effect from 06:30 and 08:30, and the room is already warming up. Happily, we’re not heading out till 09:30, so have time for a shower after the A/C is back on.
We’re spending a day with Eon - our good friend who drove us around the winelands on our last visit. He commented then that he’d wished he wasn’t driving, as it would’ve been much more fun to be tasting with us. 5 years later, here we are - and he’s planned a fabulous day of behind the scenes wine experiences for us. We start at the Anthonij Rupert estate, producers of a high-end range of wines on the outskirts of Franschhoek. The estate is stunning - lush green gardens, a Cape Dutch manor house, and a beautiful terrace where we’ll taste our wines. We start with a glass of a rosé MCC sparking wine to freshen our palates. MCC is Methode Cap Classique, and means the wine has been made in the traditional Champagne method - consisting of Pinot Noir and Chardonnay. For our tasting, we have 4 different sparklers, and 3 different reds. A couple of the sparkling wines are sensational - the reds, perhaps even better. They’re at an excellent range of price points as well. As a special treat, we’re poured a couple of extra red wines - their Cabernet Franc, and their flagship red blend. Both are eye-poppingly good. The red blend retails at £60 in South Africa, making it a seriously premium bottle. In the UK, you’ll pay North of £100.
The sun is starting to beat down. The temperature is predicted to hit 39C/40C later today. The van we’re being driven in is beautifully chilled. We take a drive over into the Stellenbosch valley. We arrive at Kanonkop, one of the oldest vineyards in South Africa. They are masters of the Pinotage grape, the incredibly South African hybrid of the Pinot Noir and Cinsault grapes created in the early 20th century. Bad Pinotage is BAD. Good Pinotage can be great. We’re hopeful of the latter during our tasting… We’re having a private tasting in the winery’s art gallery with the lovely Heidi. She’s a story-teller, and we spend a fantastic hour listening and learning, all the while tasting the estate’s greatest hits. There’s a rosé that retails for all of about £3.50, all the way through to an ultra premium Pinotage made from the very oldest Pinotage grapes on the farm. As vines get older, they produce less fruit, but that fruit is super concentrated, and can make wines that are stellar, as in this case. We have a vertical tasting of the estate Kanonkop Pinotage - from the 2014 and 2021 vintages, allowing us to see how the wine matures over time. It’s such a treat. As we go to leave the tasting room, I comment that I’ve tried their Paul Sauer blend, so we’re poured a couple of extra glasses of this, and their estate Cabernet Sauvignon. We feel very fortunate.
About 200m up the road is the Warwick estate, a producer whose wines have started to pop up more regularly in the UK in the past few years. As we park up, Eon recommends we pop on some sunscreen, as we’re heading off on a wine safari (!?). We acquiesce, and climb aboard a Land-Rover safari truck with Jaap, an old friend of Eon’s. He takes us on a tour of the estate, giving us a fascinating insight into the strategy and planning that goes into deciding what wines the estate will produce. We pull to a halt at the highest point of the estate, and stop for a glass of rosé sparkling wine. The views across the valley are stunning. Hazy, due to the countless wildfires in the region, but somehow all the more spell-binding as a result.
Back at the estate tasting room, Jaap takes us on a jaunt through Warwick’s premium wines. Their range includes a staggeringly good Chardonnay, and some brilliant red blends. We’re vaguely conscious that we’ve had a lot more wine than we normally would have by 13:00, without breakfast. Happily, Eon has arranged for us to have a picnic in the Warwick estate grounds. We pick a bottle of that Chardonnay to accompany our lunch, and dig in. The picnic is amazing - great sandwiches, a range of local pâtés, beautiful salads… It’s a wonderful way to spend time. We struggle to finish our picnic, so it’s packed up for us to take home for dinner later. The heat is crushing, so we elect to head back to our guesthouse and cool down. It’s been a real treat to hang out with Eon. He’s such fun, and so utterly knowledgeable about the winelands. We’ll hopefully see him for a quick beer on Saturday before we head home.
We’re back at our guesthouse around 17:00. We both decide a nap is in order, and end up sleeping for nearly 2 hours. We’re then awake for a little over 2 hours, before we decide that it’s bedtime. Honestly, we’ve had a very tough day…Les mer
Day 13 : The Franschhoek Valley
31. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ☁️ 20 °C
We’ve not really talked about load-shedding. The electricity grid in South Africa is not fit for purpose. It’s decades old, hasn’t been maintained effectively, and South Africa has a booming population. The electricity companies are run by mates of the folks in Government, and they cream off billions of rand each year, which should be spent on the power grid. As a result, the grid can’t cope with the everyday power demands of the South African population. Load shedding is a nationwide policy that sees the power cut off to businesses and homes alike, for around 4-6 hours each day. The timing varies by day and by region, and there’s a calendar maintained by the Government so you can plan around when load shedding is going to take place. A lot of businesses have back-up generators so there’s no interruption to power supplies during shedding. Mooi Bly does not.
Vicks and I fell asleep last night with fans blowing on us. There’s no A/C at Mooi Bly, but the floor-standing fans do a good enough job of cooling us. Load shedding starts at 02:00, and is due to run for a couple of hours. I wake up at 02:35, conscious that the fan is no longer blowing, and I am no longer cool. I toss and turn for a good 45 minutes, but struggle to fall back to sleep. Around 03:15, I get up and a have a cold shower. Properly cold. Squeal out loud cold. I towel off the worst of the moisture and back into bed. I feel cool for perhaps 5 minutes - certainly not long enough for me to drift off. All too quickly, I’m feeling hot again. I’m about to give up/get up, when the fan suddenly kicks back to life. Rejoice! A few minutes later, I’m comfortable enough to sleep, and drift off into a dreamless, deep sleep.
Waking again at 06:30, I’m struck by the peaceful silence around Mooi Bly. I can hear a chicken somewhere, and some insect calls, but that’s it. I sit on the verandah as the sun rises, and feel completely at peace. Vicks has not slept well, largely due to the heat / load shedding during the night. We check the details of our Franschhoek accommodation, and find that:
a) There is no air-conditioning, and
b) There is no back-up generator
Given the anticipated 40C temps over the next few days, we make a snap decision to book an alternative. The options are pretty thin on the ground at this late stage, but we find a guesthouse a couple of clicks outside of Franschhoek town centre which should meet our needs. What it doesn’t have is a braai. Having already bought supplies for an evening braai, and not wanting the food to go to waste, we have a breakfast braai - boerewors, and some sosaties. Cooking even at 10:00 is sweltering. Max temp today is expected to be 35C. We find a load-shedding schedule. The power is off between 10:00 and 12:00, and the temperature inside our cottage quickly begins to rise, at just the time we want to shower, pack etc. It’s uncomfortable at best. We get the car packed, and get ourselves into its air-conditioned cocoon of coolness as quickly as possible. I’m sad to leave Mooi Bly - it’s been wonderful to come back and see Liesbeth. We’ll be back for sure.
We’ve a 40 minute drive over to Franschhoek, and will see where the road takes us. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it takes us past about 20 wineries, one of which we decide to stop at - Plaisir De Merle. Turning off the road, we’re unsure if we’ve been here before. Arriving at the tasting room, we conclude we have not. We plan to taste 4 wines each, but our host decides that we shall taste about 8. We’re there for nearly 90 minutes. There are some absolute belters - a mature, oaked Chardonnay that we both love, a couple of reds that are just brilliant, and a rosé sparkling wine that I could happily drink all afternoon. Some of the pours are a little generous, so we decide not to stop again.
Arriving to our guesthouse around 15:00, we’re delighted to find the room frosty. The air-con is kicking out, and we congratulate ourselves on a choice well made. Around 16:00, I decide a nap is in order, and am quickly snoozing. Vicki wakes me around 17:00, and does not appear best pleased. The room feels warm. The power has been off since 16:00 - taking the air-conditioning with it. Load shedding strikes again. It transpires that our guesthouse has back-up generators for hot water, and for WiFi, but NOT for power to run the air-conditioning, or other appliances. We feel semi jipped. We head out to avoid the worst of the heat, and have drinks and some food at Tuk Tuk Brewery, a craft brewery in downtown Franschhoek. It’s noticeably cooler than earlier, and the wind is getting up. Checking the load-shedding schedule, we determine that we shouldn’t have too many problems from this point onwards. There’s a power outage due at 06:00 - 08:30 in the morning which we can manage. There’s then one in the afternoon when we’ll be out with Eon anyway, and then nothing till Friday morning.
Back at the room, the A/C purrs. We cool down quickly, and decide an early night is called for. Vicks is asleep just after 21:00. I manage to read by book until nearly 22:00 before my eyes get heavy, and I follow her into slumberland.
As a form of load-shedding protest, I appear to have taken no photos through the day. I'll rectify this tomorrow...Les mer
Day 12 : The temperature's rising...
30. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ 🌙 34 °C
We both sleep pretty well. Today is moving day - we’re heading up to Paarl in the Vineland’s, then on to Franschhoek tomorrow. It’s been great to spend 6 days in and around Cape Town - one of our very favourite cities, but we’re ready to move on. Neither of us is particularly hungry, so we skip breakfast, and get on the road in decent time. Traffic is a little clunky in places, but we still manage to get out towards Stellenbosch a little after 11:00.
Our first port of call is a winery called Joostenberg, who produce (amongst others) a sensational dessert wine from noble rot Chenin Blanc grapes, a process where fungus is sprayed over the grapes to encourage intentionally a form of rot that sweetens and intensifies the flavour of the juice. I’d not tried the wine since 2003 until we each had a glass with our dinner at The Pot Luck Club last Friday. We want to grab a bottle, and see what else the estate has to offer. We are foiled however - the tasting room is only open Friday to Sunday.
Undeterred, we move on to Glen Carlou, which IS open. We’ve had a couple of glasses of their estate Chardonnay during our trip, and want to see what’s up with the rest of their range. Between us, we try 10 different wines - some good, some great, and a couple that are spectacular. We’re stopping here for lunch, and grab a bottle of the awesome Estate Cabernet Sauvignon to go with our roasted pork belly (Vicks) and ostrich fillet (me). Both dishes are sensational. The views accompanying our lunch aren’t bad either…
From here, it’s a short drive to Vrede en Lust, a winery with which neither of us is familiar. The enigmatic Abbey looks after us brilliantly, and takes us through a tasting of some 12 wines - again, some are better than others, and there are some real gems in there. We buy a bottle of their flagship red, a Bordeaux style blend called Boet Erasmus. We’re braaiing tonight, and it’ll be a fab companion to whatever we end up cooking. The views, again, are stunning. We enjoy them from inside the lovely, air-conditioned tasting room. The temperature is pushing into the mid 30s, and it is HOT. Thursday and Friday this week promise heat of 40C and above, which is the kind of temperature at which we both melt.
We stop in Paarl at a fab butcher’s shop for some steak, kebabs and boerewors, and grab some simple salad ingredients from the supermarket. We arrive at Mooi Bly a little before 16:00. The estate is a little slice of peaceful heaven. Surrounded by mountains on three sides, the only noises audible are the dogs, geese, chickens and insects that occupy the lush, green surroundings. I was last here in 2005, and have been wanting to come back ever since. Our cottage is fab - everything we need, nothing we don’t. Liesbeth, the Belgian-born owner stops by to say hi, and we catch up over a glass of wine while Vicks has a well deserved afternoon nap.
By 19:00, it’s cooled enough to stand at the braai pit in the sunshine, tending to my fire. I’ve not lit a braai fire this organically in quite some time… I do a half decent job of it. Vicks has decided she’s not all that hungry, so I’m left with a chunky t-bone steak to myself. Again, I do a half decent job of it. It’s accompanied by a simple greek salad, and a glass of the Cabernet Sauvignon left over from our lunch at Glen Carlou. We eat outside, under the vines that cover the patio trellis, and amongst the beautiful surrounds of Mooi Bly, as the sun sets to the West of us. It's a sensational way to spend an evening.
Vicki is in bed shortly after 21:00, and I’m not a million miles behind her.Les mer
Day 11 : Cow, cabernet, clouds
29. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ☁️ 19 °C
We’re both a little groggy this morning. Last night was comfortably the latest and booziest night we’ve had while we’ve been here. We’ve nothing much planned today. After being pretty hectic for the past 5 days, we thought a slightly slower day before we head over to the winelands was deserved. We’ve a late lunch booking, and the formings of a plan to head up Table Mountain for sunset.
Lunch is at a steakhouse called Bo-vine, over in Camps Bay. It’s just over the road from the beach, and the views are stunning. The beef is great - rib-eye for me, and sirloin for Vicki. Incredibly simple food, but sourced well, accurately seasoned, and perfectly chargrilled. A bottle of Warwick Cabernet Sauvignon is a great accompaniment.
We walk down the beach back to Tiger’s Milk for a post-prandial. Vicki locates a Pina Colada, I bathe in Savanna. The clouds are gathering over Table Mountain. High winds are forecast later this evening, and our planned visit to the top of the mountain is looking increasingly unlikely. While we’re at Tiger’s Milk, we decide to sack it off, and head back to the hotel. Checking the Table Mountain website, we discover that the cableway service has been suspended.
Back at the Hyde Hotel, we head to the Skye Bar for a glass of Shiraz. It starts to rain. The cloud draping itself over Table Mountain is spectacular to watch. We decide to have a chilled evening, and have some dinner at the hotel. The clouds continue to amaze us. There’s a heavy shroud over Lion’s head now, but out to the coastline the cloud is lifting, and there are some amazing views of the sunset. We’re pretty tuckered, so end up having an early night, and cross fingers for a long and deep sleep…Les mer
Day 10 - A little more wine than planned
28. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C
We wake up with vim and vigour. We’ve planned a late breakfast/brunch, followed by an improving walk through Tokai Forest. We *might* stop at a Constantia wine farm on the way back to Sea Point. Showering, I discover yesterday’s sun-based queueing has left me with a hell of a t-shirt tan.
Arriving to our brunch booking, we discover that Blockhouse Kitchen is located ON a wine farm - Constantia Uitsig. We have a lovely feed, and decide that since we’re here already, we might as well have a wine tasting. Our host is a jaunty chap from Zimbabwe. He is generous with his pours. Some of the wines are stellar. We both love the Chardonnay Reserve, and the Estate Red is sensational. We’re going to try and be well behaved, and not buy tons of wine along our travels. It’s tempting to cast these good intentions to one side.
We quickly abandon plans of a walk, and take a lovely little drive to Buitenverwachting - brilliant name. Correctly pronounced, it’s ‘Bay-ten-vare-vack-ting’ We visited back in 2019, and had a sublime oaked Sauvignon Blanc. I’m very excited to try it again. We are, however, foiled. The estate is closed on a Sunday… Not to be deterred, we head onwards to Groot Constantia, where we have a tasting of the estate’s red wines. Again, we could buy several. We’re going to head up and over Constantia Nek to get back to our hotel, and accidentally stumble across an estate with which I’m unfamiliar - Beau Constantia. Reasoning that it would be rude not to, we stop in for a quick glass of wine, and some pretty good Dim Sum. The views across to Muizenberg are stunning. We sit back, and ease our way through a happy half-hour of watching the world go by.
The drive back along the coast is beautiful - even moreso heading North than it is when driving South towards Hout Baai. Camps Bay is packed - an actual traffic jam. Back at our apartment, we’re not 100% sure what to do with ourselves. We have some biltong, and I decide a nap is probably gonna work for me. An hour later, I wake up feeling refreshed, but a little less than fresh. A Savanna and some Drowoers later, I’m ready to go out.
We go to the Codfather - not our first time, but maybe our last. They do fish, really REALLY well. They seem to both of us to have become a little greedy since our last visit. The tables are packed SO tightly that we basically share a conversation with our next door table. Anyone gets up, and they have to run the gauntlet past our table, and invariably bump into us. The concept is brilliant - you choose your fish of choice from a beautiful, market style array. There is a host from which to choose. There is some confusion when I ask for a crayfish, and what turns up is clearly a lobster. The food is really well cooked, but there’s just a sense that we both have that the restaurant is now more about profit than enjoyment. I recently recommended it to some friends visiting Camps Bay - I’m not sure I would do so again.
We walk down the Camps Bay beachfront as the sun sets, and are struck by the beauty of the place. We stop in at Tiger’s Milk - half way between a pub and a bar. There’s a DJ banging out some pretty decent progressive house. We both comment that we’d love to see a DJ playing this kind of music in the UK, but it’s SO tough to find these days. What was going to be a quick post prandial turns into something quite a lot longer. We finally pour ourselves into an Uber just after 23:00, which based on our trip so far, is VERY late. Arriving back to our apartment, we crack open the bottle of Amarula sitting in the bottom of the fridge. We have nothing to wake up for tomorrow, so will deal with Monday when it arrives.Les mer
Day 9 - A sobering truth
27. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ☁️ 18 °C
I have another somewhat sketchy night’s sleep, waking at 06:00, when I don’t need to be up until 08:00. No such worries for my beloved. We agreed our 08:00 alarm call last night, and I’m enthused when she seems properly awake not long after. The hotel driver drops us over to the V&A Waterfront at 10:15 - up and out quite a lot earlier than either of us thought would be necessary on this trip. We’re heading over to Robben Island. I’m fully prepared to be part angered and part heart-broken by this place, based on what little knowledge about it I’ve accumulated.
We start badly. We’re corralled into an airless room to wait for our ferry. We’ve previously been told we must be there by 10:15 for an 11:00 departure. The reality is that the boat docks at 10:55, moments before our departure time. We board. It’s hot and stuffy. There is no bar. Mutiny festers. We are both hot and bothered. As the boat finally gets underway, some breeze finds us. The ferry owners have missed a massive trick - we’re in an enclosed deck, when windows and open air would have made the journey far more memorable, and massively more enjoyable experience. Some 90 minutes after we rocked up for our ferry, we finally land on Robben Island. We board a bus to tour the island, and our hugely enigmatic guide tells us about the various buildings that were a part of the apartheid management of the prison facility. My blood very quickly begins simmer, soon after it boils. Some of the stories she tells are both unbelievable, but utterly credible.
Most of what you’ll hear about modern South African history, and the overturning of apartheid is about Mandela - and let’s not fuck around, the guy’s a saint. BUT - there are so many other stories that should be told as well. The guy that shows us around the prison complex itself was imprisoned for seven years for sabotage - a pretty beige crime at the best of times. When he tells us his personal story, I’m torn between anger and sorrow. He was imprisoned on Robben Island at the age of 18. He admits to his crime - arson of an administrative office that charged unmanageable rents to people of colour, in houses they never wanted to live in at all. His parents defaulted, and were instantly evicted. They couldn’t find anywhere else to live. It’s unsurprising that this young man found cause to fight back. When he did, he and his friends targeted an administrative office, with a desire to stop the white managed office from executing its racist policies. They set the fire after hours, making sure no-one could be hurt. Two of the five were caught, and jailed for 7 years - for trying to make sure their country had an identity and a future. What beguiles me the most is Derek’s calm - he is not angry, and he is not bitter. He is assured that his country is becoming something better, albeit slowly. I adore listening to him speak. I could spend hours hearing stories of his experiences, no matter how dark and dangerous.
We’re shortly back at the dock waiting for our ferry back to the mainland. It’s a clusterfuck. We’ve spent a lot longer in the sun today than we’d planned or hoped. No one can tell us what time the boat is actually supposed to leave. We briefly consider swimming the 13km back to Cape Town. We finally board the boat. By the time we land back at the Cape Town Waterfront, we’ve been the go for 5 hours. Only 90 minutes of these have actually been hearing about and learning about Robben Island. Those 90 minutes are incredibly powerful, and hugely heartbreaking - but we both end up feeling that the day is both organisationally and informationally challenged.
We’re both parched and ravenous. We agree on the ferry back to Cape Town that our first drinks order will be sizeable - a beer each, and a glass of wine/Savanna for follow up. We find a very cool Belgian restaurant. The server looks a touch confused at our drinks order, but does the decent thing and brings it anyway. We eat fish - mussels and kingklip. We have a fabulous bottle of Chardonnay. We move seats several times to avoid the sun, as we’re starting to feel a touch crispy.
The V&A Waterfront is the shopping centre of Cape Town. I buy a 3rd ostrich egg to complete my collection. Vicki finds a couple of hats that really suit her. We demand 1/2 kilo of really good biltong. It’s pushing 19:00, and we’ve been out for most of the day, so we grab a cab back to our hotel. Not quite ready to call it a night, we hit the Sky Bar. The sommelier instantly asks if we want to do a wine tasting. We accidentally agree. In the background, there’s a guy doing very passable acoustic covers of Tom Petty, Dave Matthews Band, even Cher. We spend a great 1/2 hour chatting to Akonwe about his wines, watching an achingly beautiful sunset, and then decide it’s maybe time to call it a night. Back in our apartment, we throw on a movie (admittedly after spending 20 minutes trying to figure out lighting), and relax a touch….Les mer
Day 8 - Pt 2 : Pot Luck
26. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C
Dinner tonight is at one of our favourite Cape Town restaurants - The Pot Luck Club. We had dinner here when we were last in town, and it was sensational. We’ve been struggling to spend our daily spend budget so far. The £ to ZAR exchange rate is so favourable at the moment, and South Africa has always offered outstanding value to Brit travellers. That might all change tonight though.
It’s still warm when we head out, and we’re glad of the air-conditioning in our Uber. Arriving at The Pot Luck Club, it immediately feels familiar and welcoming. We kick off with some pre-prandials - an Inverroche Amber and tonic for me, and a kiwi and strawberry Daiquiri for Vicki. Yum.
It’s a sharing plate kinda place - and we’re encouraged to order between 6 and 8 dishes to share. We go for 7, figuring that average doesn’t always have to be average. What follows is a succession of show-stoppers. Some really imaginative cookery on display, but brilliantly executed. The Chef Patron is a guy called Luke Roberts - Brit by birth, traveller by nature. The geographically diverse nature of his life is evident in his food - hints of southern Europe here, a dollop of South East Asia there. There are a couple of fish dishes in particular that are as good as any we’ve eaten anywhere. Just sublime…
While we eat, the sun starts to track to the horizon. Behind us is Table Mountain, shrouded in mist and cloud. Over towards Lion’s Head though, the clouds are dispersing, and the sun’s rays are starting to push through. By the time we’re finishing our savoury dishes, there’s a spectacular sunset on display, and diners are queuing at the fire exit door to take pics. We don’t need, but very much want to share a dessert - a peanut butter bombe, with a banana mousse and a Frangelico sabayon. Neither Vicki nor I have a particularly sweet tooth, but this dish straddles the line between sweet and savoury perfectly. It’s big - big enough to share very happily. We wash it down with a glass each of the Joostenberg estate’s noble rot Chenin Blanc dessert wine - a wine I first tried way back in 2003. It’s a brilliant partner.
We’re not full to bursting, but we both know we’ve had a good feed. The bill is incredibly reasonable for the experience we’ve had. Whilst it’s pricey by South African standards, in London, it would cost several times as much. We’re forklifted into the back of an Uber, and head back to our hotel. We stop in at the rooftop bar for a glass of wine before we fall into bed...Les mer
Day 8 - Pt 1 : Penguins on the Peninsula
26. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ⛅ 19 °C
No idea why I’m not sleeping well, but I’m not. I wake up at 04:30, and just can’t get back to sleep. I get up for a couple of hours, do some vaguely useful stuff, and happily manage to fall back to sleep for another hour or so before our alarm goes off. I know it’s not anxiety or stress driven, so really have no explanation for it. I can always nap later if the need takes me.
We’re up and out in decent time today, heading over to the Cape peninsula. On the way South, we take the coast road - meandering through Sea Point, Camps Bay and down to Hout Baai. These are some of my favourite coastal roads - just stunning scenery… In Hout Baai, we take the road up and over Chapman’s Peak, a tight and twisty road over the mountains. The views are breathtaking, and we stop a couple of times to breathe them in. On the South side of the Peak, we take a wander down onto Noordhooek beach - just the most stunning expanse of pure white sand I’ve ever seen. It joins up with Kommetje to the South, and runs for around 4 miles. It’s all but deserted. The sun is beating down, and the march across the sandy beach is a little more body taxing than we’d signed up for. We cool down in the car a little, and head to a brilliant little brewery called Aegir, just up the road in Noordhoek. Their house beers are terrific, their food equally so. A burger for Vicks, and a proper New York style hot dog for me. They also make a hot sauce in-house. I pour a little on my purlicue and lick it. For 5 seconds, it tastes amazing! The flavour is then overtaken by intense heat. Beads of sweat appear on my forehead almost instantly. I hiccup. Turning the bottle, I read the ingredients. I am idiot. 100% idiot.
Recovered (me) and sated (both), we’re back in the car for the quick drive down to Simonstown, where we’ve an appointment with some African Penguins. We’ve visited these guys before, but they’re always great fun to hang out with for a while. We both adore the way they walk - which can best be described as ’10 pints in’. The juveniles are just shedding their soft fur, and readying to go in the water for the first time. Some are mid-moult, and look more than a little dishevelled.
We take the inland road back to our hotel, which takes us up and over the mountains, and down into the city bowl. Traffic’s building as we approach the Friday rush hour. Vicki passes the time by dozing quietly next to me. We’re back in our room by 16:00, and I’m ready for an ice cold Savanna.Les mer
Day 7 : Cape Town Capers
25. januar 2024, Sør-Afrika ⋅ ⛅ 17 °C
We both sleep much better. At 09:00, the sun is already warming our apartment. We take a look around the rooftop pool and bar during daylight, and take in the views. We grab an Uber into the city centre to the District Six museum. It’s a very simple museum, taking up a small corner building in the heart of what was District Six during segregation. The story it tells is anything but simple. It leaves me angry, sad, and dejected. For those unfamiliar, after the Western Cape had been colonised by white ‘explorers’, District Six became a bustling, multi-cultural neighbourhood following the ending of slavery in and around Cape Town in 1834. In 1966, the white, apartheid government decreed that the neighbourhood would be razed to the ground, and rebuilt as a whites only district. More than 60,000 inhabitants of District Six were forcibly removed from their homes, and relocated to the Cape Flats, outside the centre of Cape Town. It remains one of the most egregious acts of racist abuse under the apartheid regime. The everyday stories of everyday folks that lived through this horrific treatment are both heartwarming and heartbreaking.
We head over to Bree Street in search of food and wine, and find both at a great little seafood place called Seabreeze. We manage to find a shady table (in the shade, not dodgy - obvs), and cower from the stifling afternoon heat. It’s 32-33C today, and feels it. After a lazy lunch, we walk for 20 minutes to the Mount Nelson hotel - one of THE great hotels of the world. It’s set in plush gardens, standing in which you just wouldn’t know you were in a bustling, modern city. We’re both staggeringly hot after our walk, so hide out inside the Planet Bar where the air-conditioning does wonderful things. I have an Inverroche Amber - a local (ish) Cape gin, and Vicki spends some time paddling around in the deep end of her Chardonnay. It’s a very civilised place to spend some time. We grab an Uber to pick up our hire car for the next 10 days, make a quick pit stop at Pick N Pay for wine/Savanna/biltong supplies, and head back to Sea Point. The heat is still with us, so we head to the rooftop bar for a well deserved sharpener. I have a dip in the pool.
We freshen up, and head out for dinner further down Sea Point beach - The Greek Fisherman. It has a beautiful courtyard set back from the road, which even on a Thursday evening is packed. We have some calamari and Spanakopita (ordered correctly this time…) to start. Both are sensational. Vicki’s main of simply grilled Kingklip is aces. Kingklip is actually part of the eel family, and has a firm, white texture not dissimilar to hake or halibut, and a beautiful flavour. The roast lamb I have is beyond brilliant. It’s also the size of one of Jupiter’s moons, and I struggle to finish it without assistance from my coaching team. When it’s done properly, Greek food is one of my very favourite things to eat. The philosophy is to do simple things to very high quality ingredients, and the result can be magical.
A 20 minute walk back to our hotel serves primarily as a digestive aid. We briefly consider a nightcap at the rooftop bar, but defer to watching the second half of the movie we started last night. We bravely make it to the end this time, and celebrate by falling into bed for sleeps.Les mer
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