What is Love in the time of COVID?

Sometimes it’s testing your relationship to see how many consecutive hours you can stay at home together before wanting to kill each other. Sometimes it’s sharing an “office” and seeing how many of the other’s calls you can make it through before wanting to rip your ears out. Sometimes it’s making hard decisions about your wedding. Sometimes it’s losing guests at your wedding because you don’t have enough safety protocols. Sometimes it’s losing guests because you have too many safety protocols. And sometimes, it’s your honeymoon getting cancelled.

But sometimes Love in the time of COVID is getting married partly because all those hours at home together didn’t end with you killing each other. Sometimes it’s romantic date nights on the balcony with a delicious meal, a good bottle of wine, and free live music from the restaurant across the street. Sometimes it’s planning a dream trip together and hoping for the day COVID is gone. Sometimes it’s the extra sweetness of being able to still have a beautiful wedding with most of our family and friends in attendance to celebrate with us and everyone still healthy afterwards. And sometimes it’s our honeymoon ALMOST getting cancelled but not quite!

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We were beyond stoked for our honeymoon in South Africa from the moment we pinned it down. It was a country neither of us had been to that would give us a great mixture of romantic relaxation and adventure!

About a week before our honeymoon, Omicron broke loose… in South Africa of course. The texts starting coming in from friends, “Oh my God, are you going to still be able to go on your honeymoon?!” After about 3 of them, I just stopped answering. No way I was going to cancel my honeymoon if I didn’t have to. We were fully vaxxed and boosted and planned to be in a lot of open air outdoor environments for our trip, so when the information started coming out that Omicron is likely less severe than Delta and I read that the US travel ban to/from South Africa did not apply to US citizens, I was determined that our honeymoon would proceed as planned. I immediately started looking for alternative flight options in case ours through London got cancelled.

To our pleasant surprise, apart from one drastic but solvable flight time change, nothing was cancelled! Woohoo!

CAPE TOWN

Our first stop was Cape Town! We arrived early in the morning, one day earlier than our honeymoon package, so we booked a hotel with good ratings and a decent price along the waterfront. We took an Uber from the airport and could hardly believe this fancy thing was our hotel when we pulled up. Our room wasn’t quite ready, so we made a visit the hotel spa and booked a couples massage complete with champagne 🙂 Lovely! Also, side note, if you tell a hotel it’s your honeymoon, they do cool things like leave you a bottle of champagne on ice in your room and decorate your bed with flower petals! Pretty cool! We walked around the touristy but scenic Victoria & Alfred Waterfront and even got to experience a pretty incredible art exhibit featuring traditional woven baskets and other products from woman around the African continent.

The next day, we woke up and had an INCREDIBLE breakfast that included everything from sushi to oysters to grilled fish to yogurt and granola to custom made omelettes to pastries to cheese assortments and deli meats all the way to kebabs and baked lamb! Wow. As we were enjoying this amazing breakfast, we spotted something that looked like whales in the harbor outside the breakfast window. Other people stood up from their tables to see too. Humpback whales in the harbor! Apparently it was so rare this time of year, it even made the news that morning!

DAY 2

Later, we transferred to our historic hotel in the beautiful Gardens area of Cape Town and then scurried off to take our tour of Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner during apartheid. I realize that’s not a very romantic thing to do, but we felt it was an important piece of history to experience while we were in Cape Town even if it was filled with pain and injustice rather than honeymoon romance. And it was an incredible experience. Our tour was led by a former political prisoner who was also unjustly imprisoned at the same time as Nelson Mandela. He showed us his cell and told us his first-hand account of his time there. He also spent time explaining how different prisoners were treated differently and even housed in completely different conditions depending on their race. For example, the white prisoners were kept inland in much more comfortable indoor conditions. The colored inmates were kept on Robben Island, but they were allowed better food in the morning and things like socks and shoes occasionally and pants and long sleeves. The black inmates were treated the worst and were not allowed socks, shoes, or anything but shorts and short sleeves. They were also fed a questionable “energy drink” that everyone tried to avoid drinking because it made people impotent.

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After our tour, we headed for our reservation at Gold Restaurant, a largely tourist restaurant that showcases a 14 course meal with each course representing a different cuisine from a different country on the African continent. It also includes a djembe drumming lesson and traditional dance performances from different African countries, though not specifically South African. The food was incredible, though we ate less than we would have liked due to some stomach issues likely from the oysters the first day.

DAY 3

On the 3rd day, we had booked a group wine tour with a local guide. Due to all the COVID restrictions and travel bans, there were hardly any tourists in town, so our group tour ended up being a private tour with just the 2 of us and our guide! Pretty awesome luck for a honeymoon activity! Bruce, the guide, was happy to have tourists, and we were happy he was willing to take just the 2 of us. He took us to 4 different wineries, all which were different but equally amazing. The first one in Paarl had wine tastings paired with local cheeses! Honestly, if you know me, you know I loved the cheese even more than the wine (which was delicious). The second one around Franschhoek had phenomenal views and was paired with chocolate and citrus. We had a tasty lunch at the restaurant and headed to the 3rd winery. I didn’t actually know you’re supposed to use the spittoon, so by wine tasting number 3, I was let’s say, fully enjoying it. We ended our tour with a stop in one of the oldest Stellenbosch wineries known for its cobwebs inside its historic building (and other things too). We also met a guy working there who spoke 7 languages, which is relatively common in South Africa, and VERY impressive in my opinion.

DAY 4

On the 4th day, and our last day in Cape Town, we booked a group tour of the Cape Peninsula, which came highly recommended, and once again, we lucked out and ended up with a private tour! Our guide was a really cool guy who had retired from the police and told us about trying to take down gangs and working security for the World Cup 2010. He drove us around the coast past the stunning beaches and into the national park at the end point of the Cape of Good Hope where we saw ostriches running along the beach and baboon mothers chasing down their babies. We stopped for lunch at a seafood restaurant in a small fishing village along the cost before continuing on to the famous Boulder’s Beach where you can find an entire penguin colony! Hundreds of them! We stood watching as some huddled closely to others, some slept, and some waddled to and from the water. Some dove off rocks into the waves. Others waded in from the shore. One got knocked down by an expectedly big wave as he stood near the water lapping onto the shore. Another waddle-ran up to his friend before flapping his wings excitedly. They were adorable!

DAYS 5-8: SAFARI, next post!