Weekend Cooking: What We Ate on Holidays - South Africa

We are currently on holiday so you know what that means! Lots and lots of holiday photos!  

We travelled to South Africa to help celebrate my husband's parents 60th wedding anniversary but of course we took the opportunity to see a few things while we were here.

The flight from Australia is a long one. We had to fly to Sydney at 6am, and then fly from there to Johannesburg which is about 14 hours. We had previously agreed that getting on a plane to go on holidays is really the only reason why we willingly get up at such a crazy early time, but I have since realised there is one other exception which I will get to.

We arrived at my in-law's house just before dinner time, so despite being well fed on the plane we had two types of soup, and then dessert of milk tart and apple tart. My father-in-law is quite the baker, and there are definitely a couple of recipes that I need to get off him at some point.

The next day was their actual anniversary so we took them to a coffee shop in the morning, and then we all went out for dinner at a local restaurant. I will say that all the places that we went to on this trip were modern, clean and wouldn't look out of place in Australia. Definitely more so than the last time we were here 6 years ago. Food here is also very cheap. Let me clarify that, it is super cheap in Australian terms. I am sure it isn't for everyone here.

Whenever we go somewhere for family reasons, we still try to find things to do so that we can still feel a bit touristy. This time our touristy thing in Johannesburg was a visit to Soweto where we did a walking tour through the township. Most of the history that was talked about was the 1976 uprising, but we also visited the Mandela house, saw Archbishop Tutu's house and walked through the shanty town with a local. It was a really eye opening experience.

One of the stops was for lunch and this was a kota which is a hollowed out bread roll, which has chips, mango achar, cheese and eggs put in it. We chose to add a Russian sausage to ours.

The formal celebration was a lunch at a restaurant where friends and family could come together to acknowledge Jan and Corrie's 60th wedding anniversary! For my husband it had been many years since he had seen some of these people, so there was lots of reminiscing going on! Here is a pic just of the starters. Let's just say we didn't need dinner when we got home that day.1

After the big party on Saturday, on Sunday we headed to a game park about an hour and a half outside Johannesburg where we spent 3 days. We went on a game drive on that first night where we saw giraffes and a rhino, zebras, wildebeest and lots and lots of impalas and the first of several spectacular sunsets. Over the next couple of days we also did some self drives and saw a hippo, more giraffes and so much more.

The highlight though was the game drive that we did on Tuesday morning. This started at 6.30am (which is the only other reason I can think of to willingly get up at stupid o'clock), and we were so lucky. We got to see two lions with their kill, some monkeys, more giraffes, more of everything really. One of the highlights was getting to see a family group of cheetahs which were playing together. We were the only ones there to see them and we stopped and watched them for around 20 minutes. So gorgeous.

The place we stayed was absolutely beautiful, with lovely decor, spacious rooms and even a splashpool, although it was a bit cold to do anything more than just stick my hand in. My husband was in his element as we were able to light a fire in the boma on two nights. The villa was right out in the bush, and there were several different types of animals that you could see and hear just from the window. One of the funniest things we saw were two ostriches that raced us as we drove along the dirt road leading to the compound.

On the way back we took a bit of a detour and visited a town called Cullinan and we visited an operating diamond mine. This is where the Cullinan diamond was found. Once it was cut up and then polished there are two diamonds which form part of the British crown jewels. We learnt all about the mining, and got to see the mine pit. As my husband quite rightly said....it's a bloody big hole.

 

There aren't many things that my husband reminisces about foodwise, but there are a couple, one of which was a sauce burger, and so we had to make sure we had a least one of these. It is a pretty normal burger, but it has the addition of some sauce. I added mushroom sauce to mine and it was delicious.

 Another thing that he reminisced about were fizz pops - lollipops that have sherbet in the middle so we are taking a stack of them with us!

We started the trip with a giant capuccino with cream (which you can't get in Australia) and then I finished with a hot chocolate with cream, which brought back memories of Europe last year. In the background you can see a chai latte with cream, which you also never see at home. Along the way, I tried various other things including chicken livers which seems to be on all the menus here, koeksisters and various different types of sweets and other treats, ate way more rusks than I have ever had and so much more. We certainly ate well.

We also finally found a travel mascot. We have been looking for something to take with us on our travels, but hadn't found anything that really struck our fancy until now. Meet Dino the Rhino who is sitting on the edge of the splash pool at the villa. His name is Dino because we bought him in Dinokeng and we saw Rhinos there.

On to the next stop!

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