On Wednesday morning, we accompanied C to her workplace, the Hillcrest AIDS Trust Centre. S and I wandered around the various buildings and did a lot of bead shopping in their craft store. Beautiful, handmade beaded necklaces were for sale, as were beaded animals and “Little Travellers”. We stopped at the Woodrose Coffee Shop at the nearby Heritage market for a bite of breakfast before heading to the airport.You have to have a certain level of patience to avoid going crazy in South Africa. Case in point: we arrived an hour before our flight to an airport that was very dark. It was unclear whether this was due to load shedding or last night's storm. The former is a program whereby the electricity is shut off for a period of 2 or 3 hours to mitigate the demand. This happens in other places (e.g. California) but here, the power is cut to stoplights, gas stations and hospitals as well. That wasn't even the best part. We got handwritten boarding passes and were sitting at the designated gate and I had my eye on the overhead monitor the whole time. Suddenly, the display said “Flight departed”! We heard no boarding call announcement nor did the screen show a different gate. It turns out that they changed our gate and the plane had left without us. At the sales desk, they even tried to tell S that we were on the plane! Fortunately for us (but unfortunately for other passengers who had been waiting 5 hours that morning), we were booked on a delayed Kulala flight headed for Cape Town.
After picking up another rental car, we arrived at the Daddy Long Legs Boutique Hotel (very much like the Gladstone in Toronto) only to find that they did not have us reserved there. Some mixup had occurred with their online reservation system and we had a room at the self-catered apartments just down the street. Our apartment was gorgeous: wooden floors, exposed brick wall, a kitchenette, comfortable bedroom and great location.We debated taking a taxi to dinner (we got mixed opinions on the safety of walking at night in the neighbourhood) but decided to walk to the Africa Cafe on Shortmarket Street. The first thing we noticed were the chandeliers made from old bottles and other found objects. Staff were dressed in African garb and were very warm and welcoming. Each dining room is decorated differently; ours had cutouts of animals in the ceiling that were backlit. We began the evening with a traditional handwashing ceremony (our server poured water from a jug over our hands). The restaurant uses beautiful ceramic jugs, teapots, cups and plates that are available for sale as well. Our menu was even printed on our water jug! I would love to show you all the interesting plates we had but my camera ran out of batteries, boo. Here is what we had:
- Ethiopian Sik Sik Wat - lamb cooked in a berbere paprika sauce (I loved this sauce)
- Portia's Sticky Chicken Wings - Chicken wings grilled in a honey and herb marinade
- Mozambican Peri Peri Prawns - Queen prawns in a chilli and lemon sauce
- East Africa Mchicha Wa Nazi Pies - Crisp pastry filled with spinach, peanut and coconut cream
- Soweto Chakalaka - Spicy mixed vegetable stir fry
- Cassava Bread - Baked tapioca flat bread with cheese
- Basmati rice
- Savoury rice and lentil salad
- Moroccan Herb Salad - With cucumber, tomato and fresh mint
- Zanzibar Bean Stew - Bean, vegetable and coconut stew with green chillis
- Spiced Lentil Dip - Earthy blend of brown lentils and cumin (this came with the cassava bread and S loved it)
- Moroccan Chic Pea and Phyllo Parcels - Chic peas, tomato and garlic in a phyllo shell
- Malawi Mbatata Cheese and Sim Sim Balls - Sweet potato and cheese balls rolled in sesame seeds (they reminded me of sesame balls at dim sum)
- Spicy Chicken Salad - Strips of chicken fillet in a peanut and chilli dressing
- Xhosa imifino patties - Spinach and mealie meal patties
- Zosh's Lemon and Almond Tart (gluten free) (a nice end to the meal)
- Kenyan coffee, rooibos tea, mint tea
Complete set of South Africa pictures in my Flickr set.
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