22 Dec Thursday Stellenbosch

We left our camp site in Hermanus for a lesiurely 1 1/2 hour drive to Stellenbosch, where we will call home until 31 Dec. Stellenbosch is the wine capital of ZA, but more about that later and you will hear other " wine tour " stories in the next several days. The first city we met on the way was Somerset West and it has a huge mall which I needed because my iPad had run out of Airtime. I guess I'm on the computer too often but what the heck!!
We found the Vodafone shop as there is at least 2 in every mall. They definitely have a corner on the Cell phone market , however, Cell "C" is their competion and it is the cell phone that we have. The young guy at Vodafone started to ask me technical questions about the SIM card and I was lost so I said, hold on a minute and produced a copy of my last purchase of airtime. He said that will do, punched some numbers into the computer, and ask me how much airtime I wanted so I told him 500 MB and paid him. So in about a minute I was on my way.
So now we are headed for Stellenbosch which we thought was an hour down the road but surprisingly enough, there are very few mileage signs on the highway, just city or town signs so we were not sure of the distance. In about 20 mins we were in Stellenbosch and drove right past our camp site but that was not our first mission anyhow. We were heading for the main Mall to pick up out tickets for Victoria Falls as the Cape Town office did not have them ready when we were there a week ago so they were going to fwd the info to the Stellenbosch office. We walked into the Flight Centre and I identified myself , assuming my name would ring a bell. Not a chance, the lady had no info about us and had never been contacted by the Cape town office and i thought " Here Goes trouble ". She said , do you have a name or a number I can call and I said, I have an email from Austin Edwards that says you have our tickets and itinerary. She said can i see the email , so i whipped out my iPad, pulled up the email and handed the iPad to her. She started to laugh and said " the magic of technology". She said to give her 20 mins to get all the deatails so we went to our favourite breakfast/lunch cafe called the " Mugg and Bean " where they also provide Free WiFi.
After picking up our ticket etc; we headed to the camp site to sign in. We were advised that they only deal in cash so I had to fork over R2000 for the site and another R200 ( refundable ) for the remote to open the gate. I only had R3000 on me as that is all I can get at one time from the ATM and I paid R120 for the Airtime so i'm getting low on cash. Also, I like to use NedBank ATM as they sometimes give me R5000. So now, Carroll ask the lady at the camp site about a place to reserve for Christmas Dinner and she called around and got one but we had to visit the place and pay R300 to reserve a seat. I'm sure you can see were I'm going... I'm running out of money so we decided to go to the Information Centre, get a list of things to do for the next week and then get some money and groceries. The Info centre was very helpful: getting money from the ATM was a different story. We parked at the Grocery store; convinced the parking marshall we would pay him when we returned and headed for an ATM at my favourite bank. There where 2 ATM machines outside the bank and it is closed because they close at 3 PM. I put my card in the machine and it ate my card and there is nobdy to help me. Luckily a lady came along and she seen my fustration and inquired. She went to my machine and played with the buttons to no avail. So she goes to the other machine and it ate her card. Now she is really mad and I found out that you do not want to Piss this lady off. She goes to the bank door and motions for someone to help but they ignore her. Then a lady comes out of the bank so she ask the lady for help but she convince me and her that the machine will eventually return the card. Neither me or the lady is buying that BS so she phones the bank and they answer; incidentally, it is her bank. Finally a lady comes out of the Bank to inform us that help is on the way and they will retrieve our card; and I'm thinking no way. Finally a "Loomis " type truck arrives with an Armed Guard and they retireve our cards but they hand them over to the bank lady. She takes both of us inside the bank and we have to sign a document plus produce my Passport to get my cardback. The Loomis guys says to try the machine as he "rebooted "it. I said, no way: One bitten.. Twice shy. thanks but I'll try another machine which I did.
So finally we get to shop for some groceries, which was our original plan then return to our camp site and make supper. Incidentally it has been rainning since noon but starting tomorrow it will be nothing but sunshine for the rest of the year