With that small weather window over Thanksgiving slammed firmly shut, we found ourselves strolling the grocery store for the 150th time in the last three weeks. The shine still had not worn off as Andrew lovingly caressed his colorful supply of tender and firm peaches, necturines, apricots, blueberries that pop in your mouth, raspberries, strawberries that were tiny red jewels and intense with flavor.
“I know we want to, but we shouldn't spend our entire time in South Africa in the grocery store," I said to Andrew.
“But, look at this butchery section!”
"Kwa Zulu Natal awaits, my friend. We must go.”
Kwa Zulu Natal is South Africa's Eastern-Most Territory. It was traditionally inhabited by the Zulu Kingdom and even today, the majority of its population is the Zulu people. However, like most of South Africa, its history is influenced by the Portuguese, Dutch, and British. While “Kwa Zulu" means "the place of the Zulu," “Natal" comes as the Portuguese word for Christmas given to the area in 1497 when Portuguese explorer Vasco Da Gama first set sight on it that Christmas Day.
But what to see? A problem we consistently encounter here is the fact that South Africa is filled with interesting things to do, places to see, and people to meet. Mark and Susan on Erie Spirit recommended a Grand Canyon they drove North to see. Matt and Amy on S/V Florence went to Kruger National Park to see Safari Animals and get chased by an angry elephant, and other sailors we know recommended a coastal tour of all the old shipwrecks. How do we choose?
"Listen to this!” Andrew said one day while I was busy digging the electronic ditch of legal briefing and discovery requests. My fingers pause over the keyboard in anticipation of something that must be great. “The Nottingham Hotel is reputed to be haunted! Guests and staff have reported that a psirit of a woman roams the hotel (especially room 10 and its grounds. She moves flower arrangements, tidies away clothes, and straightens bedding."
Oh here we go.
“...Legend has it she is Charlotte, a lady of loose morals or a chambermaid (depending on the soruce of the tale) who apparently threw herself to her death over the balcony outside her room after being jilted."
Andrew loves Haunted Hotels.
“...or was she pushed?!" He finished, fancying himself the narrator to a murder mystery program. He puffs an imaginary cigar and straightens the lapel of his murder mystery suit jacket.
And so it was that we arranged for fellow cat-people to love upon and feed Katherin Hepburn in our absence. We provisioned a rental car with everything but the kitchen sink (sailors are terrible at packing light given we carry our whole house with us everywhere we go), and set off into South African Adventures.
"What a beautiful day for a roadtrip!" we said as the smooth strip of tollroad payment stretched out before us, white puff-clouds in the distance and our windows rolled down. The air is perfumed with sea salt blown in from that wild coast, and the stands of pine and eucalyptus trees that stretch for tens of miles at a time, growing for industrial paper millling and other tree-farm destinies. “We should get off the main road and take the scenic route." Andrew suggests, nudging the navigation system toward remote villages, farmland
...potholes to swallow elephants...
...and! unmarked speed bumps wide enough to launch you into oblivion off their backside.
“It would be one thing if the roads were just completely dirt and you had to go slow,” Andrew complained immediately after launching us across a speedbump that came seemingly out of nowhere on a back road cutting through nothing but sugarcane. I unburied myself from the contents of our vehicle that had lofted itself from the back seat and landed in a jumbled heap anywhere gravity and momentum conspired to lay them.
“Do you want me to drive?"
“No," Andrew gritted his teeth and pressed forward.
Usually, I am the helmsman and he is the navigator. This is true both aboard Sonrisa and in rental cars. But sometimes, I want to take the photographer's seat and that makes driving less advisable. I return to my post with the camera lense poking out the window. The scenery is beautiful. Rolling hills stretch into the sunlight, land covered in patches by Zulu Huts. Zulu Huts are acutally more of a series of buildings gathered on a square of land. They usually comprised of a few round buildlings surrounding one or two rectancgular or square buildings all built of wood structure, smoothed mud, grass tatched roofs, and then painted in bright colors. The courtyards are inevitably swept clean of all debris and the red, hard clay of the African continent serves as the flooring. These homes are incredibly picturesque, especially with brightly colored laundry drying on lines in the sun.
Andrew slams on his breaks and swears as we almost launch over a speed bump hidden around a blind curve. “I need you to help spot potholes and speedbumps.” He says, and I put my camera away. I haven't gotten the photographs I want, but I suppose helping to prevent catastrophe is probably a more worthy objective anyway. I despise the job of navigation. If I have to navigate, I may as well take the helm.
We stop at a botanical garden with a treetop canopy walk. Mostly, it's a good excuse to stretch our legs. We meet a well regarded tree and a chameleon.
Down the road and around a few more curves, the area opens to a tree lined town with beautiful bricks homes, and a sign advertising antiques and neighborhood markets. It's time for a breakfast so we park the rental car on a patch of grass and enter a gate to find coffee shops, sourdough bread, and fluffy savory muffins for our choosing.
I meet a friendly puppy, and locals start to get curious about who we might be and why we might be here. These are the kinds of towns where everyone knows everyone else. With Omicron just flaring up, tourists are a rare birds these We days. "Are you new in town?" a man and a woman also enjoying the cafe ask. This opens a conversation and they join us at our table for breakfast. He has been in South Africa for several generations, first he owned a farm and then they transitioned the farm to a bed and breakfast. Their business plan was successful and they acquired more and more property, until Covid hit it was a joy to host people from near and far. “So many things have changed in the last few years," we all muse.
We thank them for the company and then drive onward, this time I take the helm. I feel like Princess on Mario Cart, swerving and dodging potholes while trying to keep the wheels of my car from launching off into a pit of lava or over the side of a cliff. It's with relief we finally pull into the parking lot of the Nottingham Hotel, passing a sign craftily written by a lawyer managing risks inherent with housing an angry haunt:
The hotel grounds are beautiful with roses growing in the front yard and a building steeped with historic charm. Mirrors are propped in the foyers and at the end of halls - I think I read once this is an important notion in Feng Shui to control the location of resident ghosts. Andrew is disappointed to learn our room ins NOT haunted #10, but he is satisfied with the personal patio surrounded by roses and the white chandelier over our bed that looks just right for a ghost to swing from. “This will do.”
Super Haunty-Hallway
The Nottingham is famous not just for its ghost, but for its pub. Beloved by locals for it's hundred year history, there are as many stories about locals' after-pub shinanigans while riding horses as there are about the ghost-lady who likes to tidy things up. Unlike the ghost, though, (whom we never did see), the locals are still there to backup the likelihood of these stories with present-day examples. Andrew orders a pint while I enjoy a cider made from the local peaches. We order pub-food for dinner and enjoy a Guinness pie and slowly braised lamb shoulder with potato mash.
Pretty soon, the song of our people catches Andrew's ear just to his left. He leans over and whispers to me, "that man doesn't seem to have an accent, does he?” I listen for a moment.
“No....”
“You must be American!" Andrew says to a blonde man minding his own business and ordering a beer from the bar.
“I am, I'm from Ohio."
There are some pleasantries that proceed now, the usual ones you might expect, until the gentlemen introduce themselves to each other more officially. "My name is Andrew, “our new friend says reaching out to shake Andrew's hand.
"What do you know, my name is Andrew!” We've apparently been at the pub just long enough that this is the most magical thing to have happened all week.
“No kidding! Well, I'm Andrew Graham."
“No way!" my Andrew responds, “I am Andrew Graham! Well, Andrew Graham Godfrey."
“No way!" Now, the two Andrew Grahams pull out their respective drivers licenses for proof of their Andrew Grahamness and a friendship is solidified. Andrew Graham from Ohio has just moved to Cape Town with his family, and he was delivering his eldest son to the Midlands to attend a school that has educated British Lords and Ladies for centuries. “Look us up when you arrive in Cape Town, we have a great little apartment overlooking the ocean. We'll cook you dinner," the other Andrew Graham says to my Andrew Graham.
“Be careful, we've been known to make good on offers like that," I say. But Andrew Graham assures Andrew Graham he'd like nothing more. And, so its a date for sometime in January.
"What are the chances?" Andrew says about once every quarter hour from that point forward until tucking himself in for a sleep he hopes is interrupted by a haunting.
There she is! ….oh no, wait. That’s just me in a hallway mirror.