After falling asleep in a hot bath, I fell asleep again on my bed.  After a  few hours, I thought I might try to eat a little.  I did eat a little, but not even half my dinner, and I was not feeling to well again.  I was able to get to sleep without the cramps bothering too much, and slept pretty good, waking up a few times to de-hydrate.  Once I nearly fell over trying to stand up out of bed.  After that I remembered to use my arms to get up, not my legs.

Sunday, Tiekie called and offered to collect us for breakfast and the beach.  I was very ill and didn't feel like eating at all, so we agreed that they would pick us up at our hotel at 5:30 and we'd join them for dinner.  After quite a while, we tried breakfast.  I was still not feeling good, so I ate very little.  And it didn't stay long.  In the afternoon we walked down the beach to Thirsty's.   The walk may have made me feel better, but I was hungry, so we had some Windhoek and fried calamari and chips.  Then we walked back to our hotel along the beach.

This is the beach when we walked to Thirsty's  There was a lot of commotion near the water.  We thought someone was in trouble, as the lifeguards kept padding in and out on their boards.  Then we were told by some passers-by that there was a school of Mackerel, which is the darkish spot in the water above the surfboards.  Notice the big ships on the horizon.  They are lined up waiting entry to the Port of Durban, the busiest port on the continent of Africa.

This is the show at Thirsy's:  a ship steams out of the harbor channel, piloted by a licensed pilot from the Port of Durban.  The Port's helicopter follows the ship out and lowers a ring for the pilot to climb into.

Then the pilot climbs into the ring, and the helicopter raises him or her up into the helicopter.  Here the pilot has just been lifted off the deck.  Then the helicopter flies back into port or takes the pilot out to another ship waiting to enter the harbor.  And we go back to drinking our nice, cold, Windhoek lager.

Tiekie and Gavin picked us up at our hotel and we had a drink on the terrace, then we piled into Gavin's Isuzu and he drove us up the coast to their flats at Umhlozi, a resort NW of Durban about 20 minutes.  There we met their other club mates for dinner: Uwe had run another silver medal, and his wife Diana, Alex had run 8:20, his wife Pauline and their son Leon, who was home on break from his studies at Northern Illinois University where he is a swimmer.  Glen (had ruptured his Achilles tendon during the race) and his wife Lauren.  We had a great time, food and conversation.  Our new friends changed chairs partway through dinner so we all got to talk with different people, which was kind of neat.  Tiekie would not let us pay for dinner, or even chip in.  We adjourned upstairs (quite slowly, in an amusing fashion) for drinks at the bar.  We had a pretty goof time, and none of were feeling any pain, until we tried to come back down the stairs.  Before Gavin and Tiekie took us back to our hotel, we were given bright pink Florida Running Club tee shirts ("The Drinking Club With a Running Problem") and some biltong.  What a terrific evening.

Early the next morning we caught a shuttle bus from the Balmoral to the airport, and flew to Capetown.  There we rented a car and drove into Capetown.  We parked in the city and walked around for a while, seeing some of the historic sights and the government gardens.  Then we attempted to drive around the cape peninsula.  We had been warned that the road was closed for renovations but we tried anyway.  

We drove across the peninsula and found ourselves in the wine district.  We tried to get rooms at a highly recommended hotel, but it was closed for 3 months (remember this is winter there, and not the tourist season).  So we tried another place that was in a pamphlet that Tom had from a few years ago, called Deimersfontein, in Wellington.  There was  a new manager and he wasn't sure if they were open, but he checked, and we were shown to wonderful accommodations.  We inquired if we could get dinner, and he checked with the chef.  Yes, they would be able to whip something up.  At 7:30 we showed up as requested at the main house, and were shown to a wood-paneled dining room, with a wood fire (most probably eucalyptus) in the fireplace, a large room and table, set for two.  We had a really good, what I would call, gourmet, dinner.  Partway through, our host informed us that the owners, Mr. and Mrs. Sonenberg, would like to join us for dinner.  They did, and I was pretty impressed that the owners would be bothered to entertain us personally.  They were British, and we had a great time.  After dessert, we repaired with them to the living room, another fireplace, where coffee, tea and port were served.  The bed was really soft that night.

In the morning, we were served another wonderful breakfast, checked out, and headed for the wine country.  Mr. Sonenberg interrupted his schedule to eat with us and give us driving instructions on how to get to the places he recommended.  We first went to Franschoek to visit the Huguenot Museum and cemetery.  After that, we drove back through Paarl to Stellenbosch, and finished up at Somerset West and the Vergelegen Estate.  Vergelegen is a word that is pronounced without using any "V" or "G" sounds, something like furfeleffen.  Anyway, it was a fine place, and we ordered some wine, but had to leave in a hurry for the airport.