South Africa: Mokopane, Cape Town and a major wrinkle in the overland trip plan

While we were living in the USA it was difficult to visit South Africa.  The common vacation allotments are 15 working days of vacation but on the whole people take that time off in short stretches with the longest being 2 weeks.  Mostly I would take a week in Summer, a week over Christmas and then use the other 5 days to extend long weekends or tack them on to one or the other of the longer breaks.

No one explicitly prohibited taking three weeks consecutively but the work culture resists doing that.  

We ended up visiting South Africa only a few times at most once every 4 years and I did use my full three week vacation on those visits.

Now that we are retired we have a less restrictive schedule which allowed us to visit last year for a month and when an opportunity came up for an overland trip to Namibia this year we jumped at it.  We had already planned a trip to visit Matt in Albuquerque so this was going to be the longest travel experience outside the 18 months that we spent traveling in 2022 visiting potential places to retire.

So here we are back in South Africa preparing for the trip.

Our first stop was in the Limpopo region to visit my sister and brothers for a few days in the tiny towns of Mokopane and Modimolle.  

Mokopane has suffered significant deterioration in its infrastructure over the past few decades, in particular the roads which are mostly full of potholes.  A couple of the main roads have been tarred recently but all of the secondary streets are in poor shape.   The roads see heavy traffic from the nearby platinum mine and there are officials who are apparently siphoning off municipal money intended for the road upkeep because not much is spent on that in the town.  Someone pointed out the luxurious homes of city officials without comment as an example of corruption.

There is a neglected children's park at the end of the street where we stayed and it is a pretty good symbol of the state of things.  The swings are missing their seats and the rocking horse is rusted and unusable. 

Dilapidated mini park

There is not much to do in Mokopane but my sister's grandchildren are active riding bikes and playing sport.  We decided to try to find a place to hike in the hills on the outskirts of the town and my sister contacted someone living just below the foothills to ask if we could park our car at his house and walk from there.

The hike started along an established path but we quickly veered off to head towards the closest hill and ended up having to navigate through thorn trees and "wag 'n bietjie" (wait a bit) bushes that have thorns that hook into your clothing - hence their name.

On the way we stopped to examine an old homestead with rather strong walls that have withstood the disintegration of the roof, windows and doors.

Abandoned house decorated with my grand nephews

 Further up I persuaded my grand-nephews to strike the three "No evil" poses.

Speak no evil, see no evil, hear no evil

My nephew pointed out a thorn that Anne photographed.  It is called a devil's thorn in English but he called it a "skaapsteker" which translates to sheep stabber because it lies on the ground and penetrates the feet of sheep (or poorly shod humans) with a painful thorn.

devil's thorn

The day before we were due to fly out to Cape Town we visited our oldest brother who lives in Modimolle (about a 90min drive from Mokopane).  

The Bouwer siblings and Gary's wife, Krista

The town was named Nylstroom by the Dutch Voortrekkers who settled there after traveling North West to escape British rule.

The Voortrekkers mistook the prominent hill in the landscape for a pyramid and thought that the river nearby was the Nile river (hence Nylstroom - literally Nile stream).  The hill was a prominent feature for the indigenous Tswana and was named Modimolle which has become the town's name after universal franchise in South Africa (1992).

The Voortrekkers in this region suffered terribly during the 2nd Boer war.  The English commander in chief, Lord Kitchener, implemented a brutal scorched earth policy to crush the Boer guerrilla army by burning down farmland and creating the first British concentration camps.  A large number of civilians both white and black were interred in poor conditions.  It is little wonder that even today there is a strong anti-English sentiment in the Afrikaans population in that region of South Africa.

We visited a graveyard of people who had died in the concentration camp at Nylstrom between 1989 and 1901.  544 people died in the camp and there are 525 graves in the cemetery, all covered in loose black rock embedded into concrete.

Anne walking along the front row of the graves of the concentration camp victims

The victims were mostly women and children and the saddest are the graves of the tiny children who lived for only a few short months in the cruel conditions.

One of these, for a little boy who lived 10 months has a cracked and weathered tombstone recently decorated with flowers that show a strong desire to keep the memory of this tragedy alive in the community.

Grave of 10 month old Sarel van Emmenis

After this sombre visit Anne and I drove through to Johannesburg to see where my younger brother was moving into a new home in a retirement village.  We helped unload some of his things and sat in the cold winter evening air chatting with him over a picnic brought by friends who also came to see him settle in.  We've known them since we were very young in Kimberley.  

It does look like he has found a good place to settle.

Anne and I spent a night at the Johannesburg airport before taking the early flight to Cape Town where we were due to  stay with the couple who are going on our Namibia trip with us.  They are also long time friends.  I lived with them for 2 years in a house in Observatory in the early 1980's while I was studying at the University of Cape Town.

Cape Town is an amazing place.  We have reconnected with people and have visited Newlands forest for walks with the dogs.  It is winter now and Cape Town has a rainy winter.  Houses in South Africa are for the most part like houses in Portugal.  They were built for the hot weather and have very little to offer for the cold so on many winter days it is warmer outside than in.   With all the rain you are more or less obliged to air your house out regularly to avoid damp problems.  So sitting inside with doors or windows open takes some warm layers of clothing!

The winter temperatures are similar to those that we have in Portugal.  It rarely reaches freezing point at night and often during the day gets up to a fairly comfortable 20ºC (68ºF) or around 13ºC (55ºF) when it is raining.

We went to a Philharmonic concert in the Cape Town City Hall on our second night thanks to a spare ticket that someone offered our friends.  

A story I often tell about Anne is how I found out what a rebel she was in high school.  She went to a celebrated school in Cape Town called Rustenburg Girl's High and she really didn't enjoy being there.  Very often and for some reason with impunity, she would walk into the school grounds and straight through to the opposite end gate and over to the commuter rail station at the back of the school grounds.  From there she would catch a train into the city and go into the Philharmonic Theatre to watch them rehearsing.  What amazes me is that in South Africa school children wear uniforms so she was quite obviously unaccompanied in the city without being found out.

Our concerns about the safety of parking in the city were eased because of the car guards in the Parade parking lot at the City Hall.  These guards are all accompanied by large threatening looking dogs.  This car guard was willing to let me take a photo of him with the City Hall in the background.

Car guard in the parade parking lot outside City Hall

Crime is a feature of South African cities and this is a pretty good indicator of strategies that are being used to reduce it.  A few days later on a walk we came across a large stretch of discarded industrial electrical insulation and our friend pointed out this was left after someone had stripped the copper wire from it.  Copper is valuable and towns have begun to replace electrical installations with aluminum or copper clad steel wire.   These alternative metals conduct electricity less effectively than copper does but have proved to be a good alternative.  They have no resale value and therefore break the reward loop that leads to extensive copper wire theft.

Discarded insulation after copper wire theft

We visited Dalebrook, one of the quaint towns in False bay which is on the Indian Ocean side of the city.  It has a tidal pool where Anne learned to swim as a young tyke. The railway line in the foreground of the photograph below is the commuter rail to Cape Town from Simonstown and you can access the pool via a subway walkway from the main road.

Anne waving over the railway line from the sea side of Dalebrook pool

Next we visited Sea Point which is on the Atlantic Ocean side of the City.  The promenade along the coast line has an area with a lovely sculpture of Nelson Mandela with the ocean as a backdrop.

Sculpture of Nelson Mandela with a misty Sea Point beach in the background

They have an Olympic sized swimming public pool right next to the ocean there.

The Sea Point public pool

On Sunday evening, after lunching with another old friend of Anne's who now lives in Zimbabwe, we went to Noordhoek to see the Simon van Gend Band at a cafe in a quaint little farm village.  

On the way there we saw a sign warning about an endangered toad that crosses the road in the nature reserve (Silvermine). 

Caution Western Leopard Toads

The music was great and the presence of an accomplished trumpeter really added to the sound.  We went with the friends who were hosting us and again met Anne's friend from Zimbabwe and her partner.

The Simon van Gend band

Newlands forest stretches along the Eastern foothills of Table Mountain and Devils Peak and our host  gets to choose among a number of beautiful destinations where she will take her dogs each day.  The dogs of course love them all, but Newlands forest is the place where they get to chase squirrels.

We took a walk starting at the Rhodes monument on the foothill of Devil's Peak.  The view had lovely scenes over the Cape Flats towards the mountains to the East of Cape Town.  In the picture you can see the Rhodes Memorial in the foreground and to its right the University of Cape Town.  

The brownish smog is a feature of winter here where a temperature inversion traps the woodsmoke under warmer air.  A south-westerly wind called the Cape Doctor clears the air but it is more prominent in summer so winters can get smoggy.

View from above Rhodes Memorial

There are indigenous trees called Silver Trees that have leaves with fibers on them that reflect the sunlight.  They can grow in dense copses which look like they are snow-tipped.  We came across a couple of them on our walk.

Our host is very active in a team that come up to the mountain to cut down alien invaders and she has seen a resurgence of these and other indigenous plants over the years that they have been actively working to restrict the invaders.

Silver trees on the foothills of Devil's Peak

The Rhodes Memorial was built to honor Cecil Rhodes.  A visitor to the monument told us that it was modeled somewhat after a Greek temple and has 49 steps (one for each year that Rhodes was alive).  The monument has been subject to criticism in recent decades because of his role as an Imperialist.  Critics say that it glorifies white supremacy and imperialism and there have been calls to dismantle it.  Others argue that rather than erasing history, such monuments should be preserved as educational tools to highlight and confront the realities of colonialism.

View from Rhodes Memorial

In recent years there have been a number of protests that have resulted in damage and defacement of the monument, including beheading the statue of Rhodes (not in the photo above).  The head was restored to the bust.  The nose of the figure on the horse in the far end of the memorial was also removed at one point.

Kitted out for surgery

We were due to see off our friends on the Friday morning and I helped out with shuttling their pickup with the camping equipment to get a few things done.  I noticed on the Thursday afternoon that my vision had a bit of an impairment - like a shadow in the bottom right periphery while I was driving.  I thought it might be a big floater but later that night when I got into bed there were flashes of light along the edges of the area so in the morning I did some googling only to find that this was considered an emergency and should be seen to right away.

So we had the experience of the entire suite of emergency services and responses in Cape Town starting with a car trip to a hospital emergency room in the morning, followed by a consult with an opthalmologist later that morning and then on to a clinic in the northern suburbs for a surgical consult and finally surgery in the clinic that evening.

It was a whirlwind experience.  At first I was told that it may be a benign condition where fluid gets behind the retina but then rights itself but after a specialist consultation was told it was an actual tear in the retina.

The scans and reports were a little disconcerting because all of the indications were that it was a tear in the top right quadrant of my eye but the distortion to the vision was in the bottom right.  The surgeon was very helpful and showed me images of the eye and reminded me that the image is inverted by the lens on to the retina and then corrected by the brain.  

Image of the retinal detatchment

 

 He also told me that I couldn't travel for the next 5-14 days.  We were due to fly to Windhoek two days later so this was a major problem because it meant we would miss at least the first part of our trip there - a guided trip along the length of the Skeleton Coast that we have all been planning for 10 months. 

The reason for the no travel ban is that the surgeon puts a gas bubble into the eye after repairing the retina and this can expand catastrophically with elevation gain.  The option of driving up to Windhoek a few days later (from sea level to 1600m/5250ft) was raised but the surgeon was doubtful that the gas bubble would recede enough to even allow that.

While I was waiting for surgery another patient, a young farmer from the winelands nearby came in to say hello.  He was jokingly described by the nurse as a hospital resident because he had been at the hospital for seven weeks already with some uncertainty over when he would be released.

He had come into the hospital for surgery to remove a brain tumor which turned out to be benign.  The wound had become infected by a "superbug" which ended up causing swelling in his brain that resulted in near death and the loss of his ability to speak.

He is thankfully on the road to recovery now and spoke quite cheerfully about his prospects but I couldn't help wondering about my upcoming surgery and the presence of "superbugs" in the hospital. 

He is Afrikaans-speaking but had been fluent in English before this infection but he said that he was not going to try to speak English until his native language speech was restored.  He understands perfectly what is said to him and has all the words in his mind but the signals to his tongue and mouth are still not working properly so he has to speak carefully and slowly.

I, on the other hand, used to be functional in Afrikaans but since I have started learning Portuguese I keep on getting Portuguese words intruding which means my Afrikaans speech is careful and the wrong words sometimes come out - prompting him at one point to cheerfully tell me that he had just realized that his Afrikaans was as bad as mine was. 

We met his wife who is pregnant with a baby due in August.  She speaks Afrikaans with a lovely "brei" common in an area in the Eastern part of the Western Cape - the "brei" is a back of the throat rolling of the r's in words.  It sounds very much like the sound in words starting with an "r" in Portuguese.

I had to stay overnight because of a followup consult early the following morning to see how the surgery had gone.  When the surgeon  reported that it looked good we talked a little more about driving to Namibia.  It all came down to how much the gas bubble would dissipate by the follow-up consult - on the next Thursday - 6 days after the operation.

In the meantime I started doing research into a route that would give us the most gradual ascent over 4 days in the hope that it would be possible to make it to Namibia for the 2nd half of our planned trip.

A friend from Grahamstown who makes frequent trips to Namibia offered some suggestions for scenic stops on the route between Cape Town and Windhoek.  So assuming we are able to go, we have options to see some beautiful parts of Southern Namibia that we would otherwise have missed.

Green stars for first section, blue lines for second section

The map above has the original trip plan.  The guided portion is shown by all the stops marked with green stars - it is a 1000km stretch of desert coast ending more inland with a larger group of people.  The blue line is the extended trip that we planned to do with just our Cape Town friends.

We have what seems to be really good travel insurance from a company called Safesure who promise to pay 100% of emergency expenses and also downstream effects like flight cancellations etc.  We bought a product that covers a year of multiple trips for English speaking people living in Spain and Portugal.

I should also say that friends in America and Europe may be interested in what this medical adventure has cost.  We were seen as private patients without medical coverage and the ballpark for the consultations, surgery and hospital fees is hovering at around R120000 which is just under $8000 US.  We are going to try to get that reimbursed for the parts of the trip that we had to cancel as well.

 

New Mexico

Matt and his partner Audrey live and work in Albuquerque. Matt is a medical provider (nurse practitioner) in a small community clinic and Audrey works in obstetrics at the University of the New Mexico hospital and at a nearby clinic.

The original motivation for our trip to the USA was to visit them in their new city. 

Matt has lived in multiple cities since he was in his final year of university and we hadn't visited him while he was living in any of them. 

He spent a semester in Senegal, a year in South Korea and two and a half years in Vietnam before going to Guatemala and Mexico for two and half years. He did come to join us in Mexico when we visited Nick there in 2022 but by then he was back at university studying nursing science. 

His did a residency in Seattle in 2025 which would have been a cool place to visit but we had just moved to Portugal and a trip back to the USA wasn't feasible that time.

So we made our first trip to visit him on his home turf.

We flew from Boston via Houston to Albuquerque on a Thursday night and were unexpectedly surprised by the effects of the 5300 feet (1,619m) altitude which left Anne breathless on the way from the airport gate to collect our luggage.

We had a trip the following day further north to a place called Jimenez hot springs on the day after we arrived.  We met John who I worked with and have been on many hikes and his wife, Angelika.  Matt and Audrey were working that day so Anne and I made my way in the little white Subaru that Matt had bought from me.

Jimenez hot springs

The water was as hot as a hot bath and we spent an hour hanging out and catching up in there.  I have to say that this is probably a better destination in the middle of winter but it was interesting because we started to feel a bit odd after a while.  Later we wondered if the altitude was also having an effect because it is another 1000ft higher than Albuquerque at 6100 (1900m).   We capped the visit off with some delicious pizza and locally brewed beer before driving back to Matt and Audrey's little adobe home.

Adobe house with Matt's VW beetle

Matt has bought a 1966 VW beetle which still has the original paintwork - it is a little worse for wear but runs great and plenty of people stopped and shouted encouragement to him either claiming that this was their first car, giving him the thumbs up or asking him if he wanted to sell it!

For the weekend Matt had booked us into an Earthship AirBnb in Taos.  We drove up on Saturday morning, crossing the Rio Grande river at a bridge that we had previously visited (in 2015) when Anne and I took a trip to Santa Fe and Taos.  The last time we were here we saw a few telephones at intervals on the bridge inviting people to make a call if they were feeling desperate.  This time there are signs prohibiting stopping on the bridge which might have resulted from what prompted them to put up the telephones originally.

We stopped at an overlook parking lot turnoff across the bridge with a small collection of vendors selling curios and a view of the gorge and the bridge.  The gorge is about 800ft deep here (240m).

Bridge over the Rio Grande in Toas

The Earthship houses were designed in the 1970s by Michael Reynolds who was looking for a way to build houses that used natural and recycled materials, were off-grid and used sustainable energy.  I was fascinated to see the Earthships when we arrived.  There are a number of them all built more more or less together in an area northwest of Taos.

AirBnb Earthship

The homes were intended to be buildable by someone with no specialized construction skills.  The back of the houses use earth-packed car tires with a mound of earth covering them on the south side.  The volume of earth provides heat shielding in the summer and maintains heat in the winter.  There are windows in the front facing north.  In our case there were also a few portable "swamp coolers" in the Earthship which kept it very cool.

Sitting room of the Earthship

Swamp coolers are an interesting design.  The concept dates back thousands of years but they are only really effective in very dry climates.  They rely on the fact that condensation cools wet material and were used in ancient times in doorways or windows where wet cloths were hung on dry, hot day to cool the air flowing in from the outside.

They began being mass produced around 1903 in the USA and got their nickname from the materials that were used in the early designs.   In areas where the climate was not dry enough  the air blown over the wet material could get a really musty odor reminiscent of a swamp when the air humidity was too high for effective use.  Matt and Audrey have one on the roof of their house that is essentially a big fan blowing through a filter that is continuously moistened by a reservoir of water.  It is very effective, cooling the house to around 20ºF  lower than the outside.  I've read that they are also used in Portugal where they are called climatizadores evaporativo.  They are effective in particular in the Alentejo region where it does get very hot and dry.

After we settled into the Earthship AirBnb I was keen to see what the night sky would be like in the outskirts of Taos and was not disappointed. 

Stars and the Earthship

I took a few test photos while I was setting up my camera to capture some star trails and in the one above, Matt volunteered to remove one of the solar lights stuck into the ground in the foreground because it was interfering with the shot.  The exposure was long enough that it captured the light illuminating the path Matt took with the light to the front door.

The star trails photo below is a composite of over 1600 images taken over a period of nearly two hours and then combined with software that our astronomer friend Marc showed me in South Africa last year.  The software is more commonly used to combine images with a telescope that tracks the earth's movement to give extremely clear images of galaxies when combined.   Multiple images of the same scene without tracking the stars yields light trails caused by the the earth's rotation and is very dramatic.  I always love the effect of the North Star which is a single point of light around which the remaining star's light rotates.

There are some straight lines which I think are a satellite and some airplane trails recorded during the multiple exposures, each of which were a few seconds apart.

Startrails using StarStax software

In the morning we walked from our Earthship towards some structures that had a Mad Max feel to them

Structures among the Earthships

Three dogs came to greet us, barking at us with wagging tails.  I wasn't about to trust them so we retreated even though a friendly neighbor drove past and stopped to tell us they would not hurt us.  He also said that these unusual structures were made by the same person who designed the Earthships and that he still visited Albuquerque occasionally.

There is a meditation pyramid with an interesting interior placed near these structures.

Matt cautiously approaching the Meditation pyramid

The walls inside have regularly spaced bottles embedded in them which also provide illumination near the top where the bottles are open to the sky.  It reminded me of some of the rooms in the famous Owl House in the Eastern Cape of South Africa.

Glass bottles inlaid in the walls inside the pyramid

On our way back from Taos we stopped for lunch at an amazing restaurant called the Tesuque Village Market.  It featured some great mural art

Tesuque Village Market mural

and the interior was very attractive

Interior of the market

The restaurant has a novel way of reducing the graffiti on the walls of their toilet.

Someone couldn't resist writing "ok" on the sign

The town also has a landscape feature that looks like a camel called "Camel rock".  It is visible from the highway and I was able to photograph it as we drove past.

Camel rock

The following Tuesday was Matt's day off.  Audrey also took a vacation day because Anne had booked us into a 90 min horse ride on the Ghost Ranch that was where Georgia O'Keefe spent most of her time between 1940 and 1980.

The ranch is situated in an incredible valley landscape which emerges suddenly as you crest a rise driving from the south.  The change from an environment predominantly tan and dark brown (like camel rock) into a vista with red, tan and khaki tones in a valley below is quite dramatic.

The scene feels like one from the many Westerns that I watched as a pre-teen at the local drive-in in Kimberley.  My dad was a big fan of westerns and would take the family to see them.  He had a huge collection of soft-cover westerns which is how I was introduced to voluntary reading during the summer vacations as a teenager after my brother described reading a western to being like watching a movie.

During the horse ride we learned that the movie "City Slickers" with Billy Crystal was filmed on this farm and we ended up re-watching it a few nights later to relive the scenery.

Breathtaking vista at the Ghost Ranch

The horses were docile and easy to ride, although I was warned that of all the horses, mine was the one that objected to all other other horses being nearby.  

In fact, we all watched while we were waiting to mount the horses as one of the wranglers went into the nearby paddock and unsuccessfully tried to rouse my horse (who was lying prone and napping).  A second person went over to help and I was thinking "I hope this isn't the horse I'll be riding", but it was.  

Anne freely admits that having daytime nap instantly leads to a bad temper and I expected the horse to have the same reaction.

At a stop on the 90 min trail in the ranch

So my horse spend most of the ride with his ears back.  

The wrangler riding behind me said it was because he was not the last one in the train and that her horse behind me was what was bothering him.  I had to hold him back a bit when we went through a couple of arroyos because he would pick up speed on the way up the other side and get too close to the horse in front of him, resulting in somewhat aggressive behavior.  

In the photo above the wrangler who took it said she'd position the mesa in the gap between me and the other horses so that I could use it as the excuse for the big gap, but the truth is that that was as close as my horse was willing to stand to the others without trying to give one of them a nip.

Anne and Matt ahead of us in an arroyo

Other than that, the ride was uneventful and a really enjoyable experience.

Anne and St Francis

Taos is around 7000ft (2000m) above sea level and after the trip when we returned home we were commenting on how these altitude differences affected Anne's breathing but the combination of driving, the two hour time difference and the altitude had also affected me.

In my case it was a bit of mental fog which caused some hilarity when I boldly asked Matt after we arrived back from Taos if the early star in the sky was Juniper.  "You mean Jupiter, right?" he said.   I was a little dumbfounded at the easy slip of the tongue and Anne pulled me aside and asked me if I was alright.  It wasn't till later on when I googled the effects of altitude changes that I realized that it is fairly common for a little mental confusion to creep in at altitudes like this and we were reassured that I wasn't suddenly showing signs of age-induced mental decline! 

The following day Anne and I were left to our own devices because both Matt and Audrey had to work.  They told us that we could take a free train ride to Santa Fe and so we joined number of other old people (60 and above get a free ride) heading for a day trip.

Anne's favorite Saint is St Francis and we visited a statue in front of the big cathedral above the Santa Fe plaza.

We visited the Aubuquerque museum and I took a little side trip to the most dangerous museum - a museum of rattlesnakes and various strange collectibles including an exhibit of Steve Irwin's TV show and a number of collectibles associated with it.

A friend from New England messaged me on to say that he and his wife would be in Albuquerque at the same time as us.  I asked him if he had two guitars because he has a legendary list of songs that he can sing (at last guess I'll bet it is close to 500).  We spent an afternoon catching up on our adventures (he has just retired) and playing songs.

On the Saturday Matt took us for a couple of walks to see some petroglyphs in the hills.  These are markings in the rocks made by the Pueblo people up to 800 years ago.

Petroglyphs

Later that evening we walked up to three small remnants of a volcanic eruption in the Rio Grande Rift.  A desolate looking walk which leads to a beautiful location for the sunset.

Walking to a sunset view - photo by Anne

One the way we came across a pair of coyotes who stopped to study us and then with an air of indifference loped across the path in front of us.  My phone had died but Anne was able to capture them.

We met with some birders on the Sunday.  It is amazing how many hummingbirds we saw in this very dry landscape. 

Hummingbird 

There were quite a few hovering and settling briefly in the trees along the path that we walked.  The nature center is in a reserve that runs along the Rio Grande in Albuquerque and we were treated so views of several bird species including a pair of young Great Horned Owls.

Great Horned Owl chicks

A few of Matt and Audrey's friends and neighbors came over for drinks and food in the evening.  It was great to meet them and find out more about their lives.

On our last day and we went with Matt to an archery range where he is trying out a new hobby.  Anne and I took turns shooting with a lightweight compound bow.

Anne and Matt at the archery range

The afternoon ended with a surprising downpour - a fairly rare event at this time of the year followed by a dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant that was open.  The day was Memorial day so quite a few shops and restaurants were closed.
 

New England

I'll admit that we were a little apprehensive about our trip to the US.  We had tried to shift our focus to more local and regional news but the stories of heavy handed police action and the overall anti-non-US-born tone coming from the USA had been difficult to ignore.

Our arrival at Boston airport reset the tone.  The customs official was friendly and welcomed us with a "I've heard that Portugal is a wonderful place to retire!  Welcome back!"

Driving from the airport, Anne kept on gasping at the amazing new greens of the plants waking up to spring and the vibrant colors of the blossoms and new leaves on trees lining the streets.

Spring in Boston - photo by Anne

As usual we stayed at the Swampscott house of the first American friend we'd met when we came over here in 2001. Mary has a sweet little dog, Trixie, who likes to watch TV and barks hilariously at any animal that appears on the screen.

Trixie on guard

We ended up being a bit frantic over the few days in New England, driving miles to meet close friends in suburbs far apart.  One friend pointed out that we should organize an event-based catch-up and invite people over rather than trying to cram in lunch and dinner dates.  Unfortunately we didn't get to see everyone that we wanted to see so we are going to aim for something less frenetic the next time we visit.

Leaving an established home is no joke.  Each of our visits back to South Africa and now to the USA reminds us of close friends we have left behind and of course raises questions about the wisdom of choosing to relocate in the first place.  We have resolved this question rationally but the heart may have a more nuanced story than the one we tell ourselves when the topic comes up.

photo by Anne

We have been recounting to our friends here how much we love living in Portugal.   The sense of community and friendships that are developing there are exceptional given how difficult it is to make connections as you get older.  I think the reason is that we are surrounded by people who took the leap themselves and are as open to socializing and making friends as we are.

Some of the friendships that we have in New England were formed in the months before we relocated to Portugal and we found ourselves wishing that we'd known them for longer!  One of the couples are parents of an outstanding ex-pupil of Anne's and they invited us to join them for a few days at their cottage on Martha's Vineyard.

I had been there once before for a work retreat where we got to see very little of the island so it was amazing to have another chance for a very informed tour of all of the towns and regions of the island. 

We walked on to the ferry in Wood's Hole and were picked up by Tom and Dottie at the ferry landing point in the Vineyard.

Ferry coming into Vineyard Haven

The weather was cool but perfect for driving around and learning about some of the historical high-lights (and lows) of the island's history.

A very quaint area in Oak's Bluff started as a Methodist campground which over the years evolved into little cottages built on the footprint of the original tent sites.  

Gingerbread house in the Methodist campsite - photo by Anne

We were taken on tours of the five towns of the island with highlights that included views of all but one of the lighthouses,

Gay Head light - photo by Anne

and the incredible clay cliffs of Aquinnah (formerly Gay Head) beach.  The red rock of the cliff turns out to be malleable red clay!

Rain fed etching of red on the beach from the clay cliff

The cliffs are beautiful.

Gay Head cliffs 

and our friend had us stand for a portrait with the cliffs, lighthouse and mainland of Cape Cod in our background.

photo by Tom

We visited the botanical gardens and drove past some really interesting trees with branches hanging almost to the ground and stretching out like a spider.

In the botanical gardens we came across these simple chairs that I'm going to try to replicate when we stop traveling.  The design is very simple and they are quite comfortable! 

Adirondack chair design

Portuguese e America club

We stopped for lunch at a restaurant called Mo's lunch in the buildings of the Portuguese American club and it was cool to see their emblem on the wall.  

The restaurant leases the space so there was no Portuguese spoken there but this is one of quite a few such clubs in the North East.

Another highlight was the sculpture garden (called the field gallery) which was founded in 1970 in West Tisbury.  The sculptures are playful and we walked around the garden in the evening sun.

Anne posed with one of the sculptures.

Anne and the leaning woman

We visited a beautiful gallery the next morning with an entire room devoted to the photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt who spent over 50 summers in the Vineyard from 1930 till his death on the island in 1995.  His iconic images included many celebrities and the famous kiss in Time's Square on V-J day.

Alfred Eisenstaedt gallery

The gallery is beautifully curated with displays and supporting books and includes beautiful contemporary art of residents and past residents of the island.

It was a lovely visit and Tom and Dottie gave us such a warm welcome and a very interesting tour with great historical anecdotes.    

In all, my only regret is not figuring out a way to see more people.  We'll have to plan the next visit better.

After New England we are on to New Mexico to see Matt and Audrey.