The fun began as soon as we landed in Cape Town. We got our luggage and walked out of baggage claim and saw a man holding a sign that said Mike Shwatz, he was our driver sent by Yola. He was an Afrikaner so he sounded just like the main character in District 9, in fact to my American ear all Afrikaners sound like the main character in District 9, it provides me with constant entertainment. Anyways -This was the first time I'd had a hired driver pick me up at an airport, it was great. He called Mike "sir" and I was "lady". As we walked out to the car I wondered what it would be, a towncar, a regular taxi? Nope, it was a 1977 Volvo with green pleather interior. We shoved our copious amounts of luggage into the car and set off for our new abode.

Our apartment is in the Garden's district of Cape Town, it's not too far from the famous District 6 that was brutally evacuated during Apartheid times, which was not that long ago. (Apartheid ended in 1996 when Nelson Mandela became president.) It's a great place, close to restaurants and a shopping center where I can buy organic yogurt and baby food. I set about settling in and learned a few things. First, a plug adaptor and a power converter are two different things. If you bring your spice grinder to grind up your flax seeds and you plug it using just a plug adaptor big sparks will fly out of the bottom. Don't leave your house at noon on a warm day, it's too hot to walk around the block. The cars have the right away here, look RIGHT first! BaBa is baby, everyone loves her and she loves everyone. All of South Africa has told me how clever she is and I must agree. Keira had her first mouth kiss last weekend. We were sharing a table at a restaurant with another couple who had a two year old. The mom, Abigail, was holding Keira on one knee and her son Harris climbed up on her other knee. Keira loves faces, especially toddler faces and she kept trying to grab Harris's face. Abigail said, "Why don't you give her a kiss." And so he did, right on the smacker. Of course Keira was trying to put his face in her mouth at the time so it was a sloppy kiss. Her interest in faces is mostly a strong desire to get your tongue. Sometimes she tries to grab it, but other times she puts her hand on your checks and tries to get your tongue in her mouth. I'm fairly sure that she's completely unaware that her mouth comes furnished with it's own tongue. I'm sure that we'll all think it's a lot less cute when she's a teenager kissing boys like that. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Keira's other new thing is walking. She needs two fingers belonging to a wiling adult to walk around with her. It started between the two couches in the apartment that face each other. She walk between Sean and I, between Mike and I. Now it's laps around the apartment. When she's not walking she's working out for it. We call it sitstand. She sits, she stands, she sits, stands; it's like baby squats. One time I counted and we got to 25 before I got tired and wanted to do something else.

Africa with a baby has been a lot like home. Keira breaks the ice by smiling and endears everyone to her. We go out to restaurants, markets, walks and adventures with her. She sleeps in the ergo when it's nap time and eats when she's hungry. So far nursing in public hasn't been a problem, quite frankly most people don't even notice. We leave for the Garden Route tomorrow and our real African vacation begins.


Sunday in the Winelands 3/29
Mike, Keira and I had a great day in the winelands of South Africa. We sat in the sun in a beautiful valley, tasted a little wine, ate cheese, olives and fresh baked bread. Keira watched dragonflies play in a waterfountain and then we went  into the town of Stellenbosch. It a little like Calistoga, only African. We had some wine and chatted with friends who just moved here. Then we bounced Keira to sleep as we wallked around town, looking at art and popping in and out of great little stores. We start in the shadow of a huge rhinosourus statue and looked in our foodie guide and looked for a place to eat dinner in town. Time after time we found a restaurant that sounded delicious, not too expensive and baby friendly, yeah, oh, closed for dinner Sunday. OK next place, next, next, next, ok, next town. We drove to Paarl, and drove around and around and around. We didn't find what we were looking for but everything was closed, except McDonalds, where I peed and we drove onto the next town. Same story only now it was dark. We finally stopped at a Mall that had a little chicken and ribs restaurant, Uncle Vinny's, and it had an OPEN sign, yeah!, it was closed. So Mike had some chicken from the KFC and I had some crackers and then we drove back to Cape Town. FYI South Africa is closed on Sunday night.