"Home" Sweet "Home"

10^th June - 14^th July – Days 253-287 – Stories from Strand, South Africa

Where to start? Strand was to become the closest thing to a home that we'd had during the entire trip. We rattled our way to Strand train station on a ride which seemingly took an age. The apparent length of the trip was further extended by the lack of toilets on the Cape MetroRail and, with a slightly pained expression on my face, we wandered out into the bright sunshine and were picked up by Elma in her Mercedes sports car. A good start. The roof was on so we didn't really have a complete Thelma and Louise (and Louis) experience as we cruised up Beach Road to our new home but it was good enough. We moved into our apartment, admired the view over the ocean out of the huge front window from our unfolding sofas, contemplated watching TV or a DVD with our lovely DVD player, wondered whether we should take a bath or a shower first (given that we had both a bathtub and a shower), or whether to unpack our bags and put all the clean clothes into the closets and the dirty ones into the washing machine. The only downer was the kitchen sink which reminded me that washing up followed eating, but in general all was good. We flopped out for a while.

The World Cup hadn't started yet so M took care of the entertainment in our fully equipped kitchen

Strand is the quintessential two-horse town – it has more than one pub, several restaurants, and a Beach Road you can stroll down as the sun sets, assuming that there isn't a gale blowing, which there quite often is. There are a couple of petrol stations and a train station but, all in all, it's not the kind of place a tourist will come and sit for five weeks unless it's summer and said tourist can sit on the beach. We'd have to content ourselves with the World Cup, and the presence of a TV in our new temporary home meant that we could fulfil our aim of watching all of the games without seeing them in a bar and spending loads of money on beer.

The Strand, the Strand, it's a hell of a town

The view from the window. Greetings from sunny SA

The opening ceremony began at 2pm and at 1.30pm we emerged from the cybercafe where we'd gone to check our mails and realised that we didn't have our beer. Time was ticking and we made a rushed decision to go into the first bar we saw. This was The Seafarer. “Hello, my name's Carl – what can I get ya? Hansa Marzen Gold is on special at the moment...”. It was the beginning of a long and beautiful yet fractious relationship.

What'll it be squire?