Houtbay 13 February 2024

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Yesterday February 12 we drove to Cape Town via the beautiful route over the R62. It goes through an incredibly rugged and lonely landscape around Robertson and Worcester crossed into the N1, the main road Cape Town-Johannesburg. Until Robertson it was quiet but then it soon became busier and after Paarl the temperature finally went down from 39 to 25 degrees.

We dropped mother-in-law Annie and niece Lynn at Lilly and Julian’s and drove on to Houtbaai ourselves. We are now in an incredibly luxurious home in a gated community with a beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean. Loadshedding is solved here with batteries and solar panels, the TV and internet work exemplary and there is a swimming pool. Groceries at Woolworths are of a high standard and not even cheap. As if you end up in another world…..

Today, Tuesday, we do little. The TV now works with some back and forth apping with the administrator of the house. I can also play movies on the TV via my Macbook and Lisa has brought some cloths to the dry cleaning. The house is so big that Lisa was busy for 5 minutes to find the stairs to the garage. She was also convinced that we were very far from Camps Bay but I was able to convince her this morning, with a short (15 min) drive that it was really not far away. We are together for the first time this holiday and that is quite relaxed and can be a while so I try to stop Lisa from picking up her mother from her sister Lilly. Fortunately, I am the only one with a driver’s license here.

I tried the pool and it was quite cold so it took fifteen minutes before I was completely wet. Lisa comes with excuses about a swimsuit that she has forgotten and therefore does not participate.

Last week’s shoulder injury means that I can’t actually swim because I can’t lift my left arm. In the water I can do some exercises to help the healing. I do ‘flies’ in the water with little force. The painful monk cap muscle is so lightly loaded and I’m just going to do that twice a day.

This afternoon I read a nice article on the internet about the former president of Mongolia. For those who don’t know, Mongolia is a large country in Asia located between China and Russia. The country has a rich history where Dzhengis Khan plays a major role. This ex- president was quite amused by the interview that Russian President Putin had given. In this interview, Putin justified his invasion of Ukraine by pointing to the history where Russia and Ukraine sometimes formed 1 country (often not).

In the 12th century, Dzjengis Khan occupied and governed just about everything between Japan and Poland but, this ex- president of Mongolia wrote, that was no reason to do that again now. Nice sneer towards that idiot in Russia with his criminal court. The best description of Russia I ever read was that it is a modern bureaucracy governed by a medieval court. Kings and knights have all the power and own castles and serfs.