3/3 thru 3/4

It rained today. We have had very little rain on this trip. The weather has been sunny for the most part. We had to scrap the arts festival that was being held downtown and instead, went to the Two Oceans Aquarium. It had some of the best fish exhibits we have ever seen. They chose to put just a few types of fish in each aquarium. This made the viewing better and easier. We had lunch at a pizza chain called St. Elmo's-wood fired, thin crust pizza that is excellent-only $9.50 for a large pizza. Traffic lights in SA are called "robots." When asking for directions, someone will tell you to turn left at the first "robot." We went to a classical music concert at the Baxter Theatre.

On Sunday, we went to Greenpoint flea market-lots of trinkets. Went to St. Andrews Presbyterian Church in our neighborhood. It was a poor congregation with few attendees and a visiting divinity student who was writing his dissertation on the Dutch Reformed Church's support of apartheid. He preached on the big theme of South Africa, which is reconciliation. In the sermon, he mentioned a South Afrikaners song that has become popular with the right wingers. The song is called "De La Ray." At that point, the two other white men in the congregation stood up and left. After church, one of the white men explained that he was tired of being put down because of his Afrikaner heritage. In our opinion, the use of "Del La Ray" is just like "Dixie" in the South-USA has been taken over by white forces with which we would not like to be associated. The Afrikaans hate losing their song and flag and we in the South hate losing our song and heritage to the racist factions.

We had a long lunch (4 hours) at the Cape Courtland Restaurant at Hout Bay. It was in an old Dutch building with a beautiful courtyard, where we ate outdoors. It was a "braai," where food is cooked over coals under a large hut-like structure. We would probably call it a "barbecue." There were 4 courses-shrimp and mussels and bread, grilled swordfish, tuna, sardines and salad, lamb, chicken, sausage, butternut squash with raisins, maize cooked like grits and called pap, and dessert, which was a sugar infused donut stick with vanilla pudding dip. We also had a bottle of red SA wine from a nearby winery called Spiers. We enjoyed talking with two Canadian couples during our long lunch. In the evening we went to a modern dance called "Slaves" at the amphitheatre at the Spiers winery near Stellenbosch. The dance was very expressive and physical and the African music was enthralling. Of course, Doug prefers classical dance (ballet) and music, but this program was not like anything we would see in NY or the USA.