New Year's Past ...

Note: This post is reprinted almost verbatim from a note I posted a couple of years ago on my personal Facebook page. I guess you could say I was a blogger long before I had a proper blog to use as a forum.

I am on the record as not being a huge fan of New Year’s Eve celebrations. Too much hype and expectation. Too many amateurs and check points on the road. Bloated prices and disappointing food.

NYE 2012 Stowe, VT

Ours are usually very low-key affairs and for the past 34 years typically spent with family at a ski resort somewhere watching an early evening torchlight parade on the mountain followed by fireworks. It was not unusual for me to then fall asleep on the couch after a delicious dinner watching The Thin Man on TV well before we switched over to the ball drop in Times Square at midnight.

But before I blog about this year's celebration, I will stroll down memory lane and recall my most memorable New Year’s Eve celebrations:

1.      (late 60’s) Growing up in Lyndhurst, when my parents went out to parties, my brother Bob, my sister Cheryl and I would create a diorama of a New Year’s Eve Party on my mother’s dressing table using all our Barbies and GI Joes etc. as revelers. We would crudely record a tape of Guy Lombardo music off of the TV, Guy’s countdown to midnight, add our own cries of “Happy New Year!,” and leave a note with instructions for my parents to play the tape when they came home.

2.      (maybe 1969) New Year’s Eve at my childhood babysitter Kathy Lonziak’s house after I babysat for her kids. The Lonziaks came home early from their party to shoot off rifles into the woods at midnight (they lived in the woods in rural Sussex County, NJ). This would not fly in Manhattan.

3.      (maybe 1970) My first New Year’s Eve party in Johnny Rizzo’s basement in Lyndhurst.  (My parents were upstairs with the Rizzos and Mustardos having their own NYE party.) It was my first "grown-up" NYE party, so of course it was the best!

Annual NYE beer at the Brewski Pub in VT 2010

4.      (1971-1977) The Florida years - a complete blur. I think it is probably better that way.

5.      (1978) Times Square, NY with Carla, her sister Ann and my sister Cheryl. We left our purses and wallets at home. We each carried only  an ID, one subway token to get back to Carla’s apartment in Brooklyn and a bottle of champagne. Nothing else in case we got pick-pocketed. I remember it was freezing! After the ball dropped, we went to a series of bars and parties around Manhattan until daylight loomed and I saw Carla sliding down the wall she was leaning against while talking to some guy in front of her. Time to go back to Brooklyn! The next day was my most memorable hangover! Everyone should do this at least once. My advice is to do it when you're young and comfort is not an issue. And oh yeah, you cannot bring Champagne anymore.

6.      (1979) Vince’s first big New Year’s Eve party at his house on Cedar Lake in Denville. Tons of friends spilled out of the house onto the lawn down to the lake where the house was situated. There was a bonfire going all night by the lake. It is actually a miracle no one was thrown into the frigid lake. Vince and I were secretly engaged! The next morning, there were people asleep everywhere -  in bathtubs, on couches, on the floor! No party - New Year's Eve or not, before or since - has ever been as good.
 

NYE 2012 Smugglers' Notch, VT

7.      (1981) Sailing aboard the Brigantine S/V Polynesia and then moored off St. Maarten at the end of a week long Windjammer cruise of the Leeward Islands. We had been in St. Barts the day before where we requisitioned a case of vintage Dom Perignon champagne. We danced barefoot to reggae music on the boat all night and we watched the fireworks display over the island at midnight from on board the ship.

8.      (1984) Bressanone, Italy with Vince and my sister Cheryl at the end of a three week Christmas vacation with my family through Greece and Italy, in the ballroom at the magnificent Hotel Elephant. We skied all day in Cortina and waltzed all night to a full orchestra! There was an elegant seven course Capodanno dinner including lentils for good luck, fireworks from the terrace at midnight, the Prosecco flowed and we crawled upstairs to our room in the wee hours.

NYE 2012 Smugglers' Notch, VT

9.      (1985) home with newborn Alex. Watched Dick Clark's Rockin' NYE on TV and toasted with some champagne. He slept through the night and so did we!

10.      (1986) Sam Kinison and Buster Poindexter at the Ritz Ballroom in NY with Marilyn and Nick. I was pregnant with my son Nick and couldn’t drink but David Johansen made it a party anyway!

11.  (Practically every year since 1985) Smugglers’ Notch, VT, the drill is pretty much the same every year: ski all day, have a celebratory brew at the local pub, watch the torchlight parade down the mountain followed by a fireworks display. We ate dinner out a few years – like Miguel’s in Stowe or the Trapp Family Lodge – but Vince is a much better cook so we mostly just ate in the condo in front of a nice fire with a nice bottle of wine and had a much better time.

Millennium NYE 1999 Verbier, Switzerland

 12.  (1999) Gstaad and Verbier Switzerland. It was the millennium! Skied all day in Gstaad, had cocktails at Gstaad’s Palace Hotel with the Zimmermann’s (where they were staying but we were not), declined an invitation to the very formal New Year’s Eve party with the Zimmermann’s at the Palace Hotel Ballroom (no kids allowed!) and instead ushered in the new millennium with Réveillon oysters and some vintage Champagne at the wild street party in Verbier with Alex and Nick. We didn't even change out of our ski clothes. To quote a Frenchman we told later about our millennium celebration, "Ah, Verbier rocks!" From a Frenchman, that's an endorsement! When we got back to our ski condo, we stayed up all night and watched the new millennium dawn all over the world on CNN.

13.  (2006 & 2007) Breckenridge, CO with my sister's family. We skied all day, watched Breck’s torchlight parade and fireworks on the mountain from my sister's second floor porch and then the boys shot off firecrackers on the deck of Cheryl and Richard’s house with Jill and Patrick. I guess ski resorts on New Year’s Eve are pretty much all the same. I love that!!!






14.  (2011) Michael Feinstein and Kelli O’Hara at Feinstein's supper club in the Regency Hotel on Park Ave. 








I wore vintage black velvet Lanvin and Vince wore his tux. It was festive and low-key at the same time and as close to The Thin Man as I will ever get!

We watched the ball drop on a screen behind the stage, sang "Auld Lang Syne" with Michael and Kelli on stage and kissed each other and strangers at midnight!!! Happy New Year!!!

NYE 2012 Harrison Grille, Stowe, VT

15. Last year (2012). It would be our last New Year's in the US for quite a while - maybe forever - so we savored it. And luckily the snow gods gave us an awesome farewell! The snow was incredible, one of the best Christmas weeks we have ever had in Vermont. Ever. We skied all day at Stowe, had a delicious dinner at the Harrison Grille, dessert at the Trapp Family Lodge, drove back to Smugglers' just in time for the bonfire, torchlight parade and fireworks.

16. (2013) to be written ...

Holiday on The Garden Route

We spent the week between Christmas and New Year's exploring the Garden Route in the Western Cape. The Garden Route basically consists of the villages and national parks stretching along the N2 from Mossel Bay to Tsisikamma and the Storms River Mouth. It is an extraordinarily beautiful place! Here are some of the highlights:

Muscles, Mussels and Fossils in Mossel Bay

Besides being the home of our Shark Dive and the Champion "Post Office Tree" in the middle of the Bartolomeu Dias Museum Complex, Mossel Bay has much to recommend itself.

It has beautiful beaches, one of which was a stop on the largest inflatable boat race in the world, the Trans Agulhas Challenge. We watched it from the deck of the very accommodating Mossel Bay Yacht and Boat Club.

It was amazing to see these boats come flying from their start in Plettenberg Bay and run aground at the finish line in the middle of the crowded Mossel Bay Beach. Nerves and muscles of steel!

There were more muscles hard at work excavating one of the newer sites of one of the oldest Middle Stone Age humankind habitats in the world, the archaeological site at Pinnacle Point. A team of international experts have been busy studying ancient fossils left behind at the Pinnacle Point Caves, quite possibly the world’s first-ever seafood restaurant – albeit a self-service establishment.

But neither of those are the mossels that Mossel Bay was named for. It was named for the abundance of edible mussels in the bay. We had them at the Portuguese hotspot Bahia Dos Vaqueiros, but they are available everyone. Delicioso.






Gorgeous George 

George is veddy English having been named after the supposed illegitimate son of King George III, dontcha know? George Rex, who lived on the nearby Melkhoutkraul estate, neither confirmed nor denied his lineage to his dying day. George has beautiful Cape Georgian architecture and is the site of the Outeniqua Transport Museum.











Alas, the Outeniqua Choo-Yjoe steam train does not run anymore. The line was wrecked after flooding in 2009 and is currently "indefinitely" closed. Or in South African parlance, it will reopen "just now."

Alex was very disappointed as were we. We all have a soft spot for steam trains having lived in a former train station in Fanwood, NJ for 25 years. There is still hope ...

Wilderness is Wild

We drove up into the wilderness of Wilderness National Park and after all of our car travel, we took many much-needed hikes through its yellowwood, milkwood, ironwood and stinkwood forests.

The views were stupendous! You could see the many lakes on one side and the Indian Ocean on the other side of the narrow strip of barrier island along the Garden Route.







We stayed in Sedgefield 

We stayed in a cottage in the centrally located Garden Route village of Sedgefield. It was a quiet respite set on the dunes in the middle of the interlocking inland  lakes and the Indian Ocean.

There are several lakes strung along the N2 - the Langvlei, Rondevlei, the Swartvlei and the Groenvlei - and they called to us every day, "Come sailing, Kastens!" But as hard as we tried, we could not find a boat to rent.

This hobie sat on our shore unloved and unsailed the entire week we were there. No one seemed to know how to get in touch with the owner who was clearly taking his holiday elsewhere! We managed to get the names of some other boat owners from the Mossel Bay Yacht & Boat Club whom we will contact before our next visit outside of high season.

On either side of Sedgefield were a couple of wonderful Saturday food and craft markets.

We were able to fully stock up with the meats and veggies, the fresh bread, herbs and sauces that we needed for a week full of evening braais ...









... and the wine and snacks we needed for our nightly card and 30 Seconds game nights too.












Knysna is Nice

Knysna is a lovely town that could easily have come intact to South Africa straight from Cape Cod or Marin County. In the words of Yogi Berra or John Fogerty even, it was like "déjà vu all over again."

Knysna is the home of the July Oyster Festival but luckily the little devils are available all year round from the oyster farms on Thesen Island and from ocean beds in Plett Bay.

And to wash those oysters down, we turned to Knysna's other culinary delight, the largest independent brewery in South Africa, Mitchell's Brewery.

Vince first tasted Mitchell's beer at the Jozi Craft Beer Fest last May and he insisted we stop in for a fresh beer and a sample tour and taste. Lucky we did because this was a farewell tour of sorts.

Mitchell's is moving to bigger digs come early 2014. The beer has been brewed by Lew Mitchell and now Dave McRae (who has been with Mitchell's since 1984) in its original home plant and brewpub for the past 30 years using hops grown locally all along Mossel Bay.












We found Mitchell's right in the middle of its big move to its new home right on the Knysna Quays. Its production is going to double and its beer garden is going to feature a full restaurant after the move. The increased production will make their distribution centers happy in Joburg and Durban. They insist that their quality will not falter with the increased production and there are currently no plans to distribute outside of South Africa. This will make Vince happy too!

Knysna is also the home of the largest indigenous forest in South Africa. The Knysna Forest was once home to the last remaining forest elephants in the world. Their descendents are now safely settled in Knysna Elephant Sanctuary along with some of South Africa's other orphaned, rescued and culled elephants.




Plett Bay has Plenty
 
Plettenberg Bay has plenty to do. We did not do any of it ... except eat some of its excellent oysters. There was just too much to do along the rest of the Garden Route and we prefer to come back and visit Plett Bay outside of the busy holiday week when the beaches and restaurants are teeming with vacationers. Then we will be able to just stay put at the lovely Beacon Island Hotel and never leave!

Full Stop in Swellendam

We stopped in for lunch in the cute little town of Swellendam on the drive over from the Garden Route to Gordon's Bay and Cape Town.

It is a little architectural gem.
















And speaking of little gems, The Arch is coming!

 The Full Stop Cafe for some lunch ...
















... with a sense of humour on the side.

Champion Trees of South Africa

The Champion Tree Project of the South African Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries is the only one of its kind on the African continent. Each year a panel of experts evaluates trees nominated by the public according to strict criteria - age, size, historical significance.












We saw the Giant Yellowwood in Knysna Forest and a champion Baobab in Limpopo.

And we also visited one of the most famous of the many trees of historic importance in South Africa, the "Post Office Tree" of Mossel Bay.

A sprawling milkwood (Sideroxylon ineme), it covers a half an acre of land! The story goes that in 1501, a letter of the Portugese explorer Pedro Cabral was found in an old shoe at this tree by the crew of a visiting ship, in which he recounted the loss of Bartholomew Dias and his ship at sea.

There is a  post office box erected at the base of the tree and you can post letters ...

 or a postcard using a special commemorative stamp.

We did!

I am sure I will receive this postcard a lot sooner than the one I "posted" at Post Office Bay on Floreana Island in the Galapagos. There you leave your letters and postcards in one of the wooden mailboxes. Historically, the mail was picked up by  passing ships who posted them when they reached an inhabited port.

Nowadays, eco-tourists visiting the Galapagos are encouraged to pick up letters and postcards addressed to a place in your home country or some other country you might be visiting in the next year and post them when you get there. I picked up some postcards to mail in the United States and some for Vince to mail in Switzerland where he had an apartment at the time. I also picked up some addressed to France and Germany since we would be spending part of the Christmas holiday there that year. And of course, I left behind a postcard addressed to myself at home in NJ.

I did receive my Galapagos postcard eventually and still have it in storage with my trip scrapbook. A little more reliable than a message in a bottle.

Red, White and Blue in the Karoo

We visited the Safari Ostrich Show Farm in Oudtshoorn in the Klein Karoo while we were in the neighb.



Yes, it was a little hoaky. Okay alot.

There were ostrich races and we got to sit and ride on the backs of ostriches.

And it was a little sad, knowing that most of these ostriches will end up on someone's braai.

 Vince feeding an emu. The right way.












Okay, not so sad anymore. The little bugger bit me! Maybe he noticed that my purse has ostrich leather trim!






 

We learned so much about the ostrich like the fact that it is not native to South Africa at all. 

 


We saw a red ostrich native to Kenya, ...

a white ostrich bred in South Africa, and ...

a blue ostrich native to Zimbabwe.

Once farmed exclusively for their feathers for use as elaborate fans and to adorn huge hats, they are now farmed mostly for their meat and skins.














Their unfertilized eggs, whose shells were once used to hold water for the San Bushman, are now used to make decorative lamps and jewelry.
 









Their feathers, which will grow back after being cut, are used to make a very important South African commodity, feather dusters.