Airports, Die Taal, Baines and Ceres

We woke up in squirrel country. Fortunately Theo had spotted a notice that Eskom was turning its power off for the morning and so most of us showered the night before. Joan showered by candlelight and Marinus took Jemma to bath... Only there was no bath in the Gents bathrooms, but then what are laundry basins for?

We watched the squirrels playing and Theo and Marinus got all the luggage sorted to get going for the airport.... It was really sad to see the "GreenJam" team go, but there is a consolation in the fact that we had such a ball that we will definitely have to do this again sometime!
Caleb made sure to tell Jemma: "I'll see you again soon!"

Then we headed off to Paarl which was a bit of an unpleasant drive as there are so many road works. When we got there, we went up to the Taal Monument which is the only monument to a language in the world. There is also a cache there and a nice view of Paarl's Pearl Rocks.

We saw (and found) it all! We also found the Presby Church when Theo recognised the street that it was in. We decided to get lunch in Paarl and do some shopping, and so, after a nice Spur lunch we headed off to Ceres.

BUT.... to get to Ceres you go over the Baineskloof pass! This was constructed under the supervision of Andrew Baine who was assisted by his 16 year old son Thomas who would go on to build many of the famous passes around Cape Town (and Grahamstown!)

All the blasting was done with gunpowder as they did not have dynamite and there are long sections where you are driving a road that is on stone platforms made by hand.

There is a cache at the top of the pass and so we stopped for a while before making the descent...

The pass is narrow and winding and beautiful to look at and terrifying if you're driving a huge campervan. There is a height restriction because at some point there is a rock overhang. We also had about 80 bikers coming back from somewhere coming from the front and from the looks of it, they'd had a liquid lunch because they were often on the wrong side of the road! We had one guy (with a passenger) come around the bend on the wrong side just as Bren was taking a photo. Theo had to stomp the brakes.

We arrived in beautiful Ceres and booked in at the caravan park and then went looking for a church as we missed the morning service in Stellenbosch because of the airport run. There were no English evening services to be found and so we went to the NG Moedergemeente's evening service which marked the start of their Pinkster Dienste. There was a men's choir singing as we came in and the minister preached a thought-provoking sermon about taking God's name in vain and gave us a lot to think about. It was good to be in church...