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Stellenbosch.

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Aurogra online no prescription 1 mg Another difficult time finding lodging in the dark – apparently this whole area typically is without power every evening. We wanted to be in Simon’s Town, the town furthest out on the Cape of Good Hope, but everything appeared closed, and the place we had in our guidebook was not answering the phone. So we doubled back, heading up the Cape to Kalk Bay, where we found a very pretty, very chic guesthouse overlooking the sea.

It just gets more and more beautiful, as we go along. The road from Stellenbosch was incredible: the area appears to consist of a number of discrete ridges running on variations of north-south. Table Mountain is the most famous of these ridges, but is only one of many. Between the ridges are river valleys, some of great beauty and fertility. Stellenbosch lies at the head of one of these valleys. You come up over the Hottentots Holland Range – I am not making up the name – at Sir Lowry’s Pass, and beneath you is a vast basin, fringed by a white-sand beach at one end and mountains on every other side. The road was exceptionally tight and also very busy, and so we could not get photos, but it was beautiful to crest over the ridge and come sailing down into the basin – and we saw a baboon there too, just sitting at the side of the road.

We met with Professor Annemare Kotze for lunch in Stellenbosch. She was excited about SALVI’s work with Latin, and intrigued to hear that of spoken-language methods being used elsewhere. She brought with her a younger lecturer from the department, who noted that right now what people are excited about when it comes to teaching Classics – if they are excited about teaching at all, which is not always the case – is this use of spoken-language methods. It’s the only way anyone learns Hebrew, and now it is being used for teaching ancient Greek, especially koine, and Latin. But there was a general sense that Latin was not doing well in South Africa, and the prognosis was not good.

We ate in a lovely, chic bistro – chicer than chic, really, there wasn’t anyplace in New York as cool as this – one of those places which with generous applications of weathered wood and white paint manages to look immaculately perfect and utterly natural at once – and in general we were amazed by the look and feel of Stellenbosch. It was as nice as anything in Europe, but somehow a bit nicer, because it was newer, fresher, sunnier, drier – basically all the organization of northern Europe, all the good climate of southern Europe, and with a flair that was really quite different. The whole town was bathed in this wonderful combination of old and new: the streets were lined in white-painted colonnades, and the shops all had big glass windows and pretty clean things everywhere. The people looked radiant – beautiful, tall, fit, a nation of models – Dutch people who had finally gotten the sun and mountains they had always really wanted. The buildings were solid and stony, prettier than any university I had seen in Europe, as pretty as the buildings of Princeton but with more stylistic unity.

After lunch we visited the small but superb university botanical garden, which introduced me to many of the plants. And we had seen them earlier on our drive, but we still couldn’t believe our luck – the proteas, South Africa’s most exquisite plants, are coming into bloom. And in the botanical garden we saw some familiars like giant sequoias and (!) the tulip-poplar, Liriodendron tulipeferum, a good friend from home. After dessert at their little tea-house we put our laundry in a machine at a laundromat and went out for dinner, which was as usual excellent and we had wine and dessert and everything else and spent no money. I had a banana split, which had, somewhat unusually (but it was very nice), roasted sesame seeds on top of it, and the banana was roasted too. The waiters seemed very happy, and we asked about it – everyone just seemed happier in this part of the country. They were both, as it turns out, immigrants to South Africa, one from Congo, another from Zimbabwe.

But it’s not all rosy. Parking the car by the laundromat – which is not in the best part of town (they rarely are), the usual group of young black teenagers, looking like the full meaning of desperados, surrounded the car to help me park it, then as I walked away they promised to look after my car. We had seen this in Potchefstroom and Oudtshoorn as well.  I was happy to see the car in one piece when I returned. And as we returned, we ran into a group of drunken university students, who were as obnoxious as rich drunk university kids usually are. They were not worse than others, but here in South Africa I don’t have much patience for them. They intercepted us, started asking us where we were from and the like, and told us things like, “The problem with this country is the blacks, that’s the problem.” It was like being back in Princeton, but even worse.  I don’t know of a university that has managed to stay wealthy without prostituting itself to people like this.

Once we had our laundry we were off. Some difficulties, as I said, finding a place, but the power is back on now. Now our guesthouse is just about as chic and perfect as Meraki in Stellenbosch was. Catherine is pleased as punch and wants to take pictures of everything. I’m happy to be surrounded by beauty, as always. And we are just a few miles from the Cape of Good Hope. I can’t believe it. Tomorrow we go there, and then to Kirstenbosch.

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