Let the holiday spirit be with you!

OWN CORRESPONDENT

For many the December packing has become part of a long-established holiday ritual and it’s again time to dust off the cobwebs from a patiently waiting seaside cottage, while the more adventurous will try new destinations each year. Of course there are those who prefer the tranquil beauty of the Eastern Free State or will be braving the heat of a game park, in case one of the “Big Five” suddenly appears!

Then there are also some wise ones who cannot wait for all their fellow-Gautengers to get out of the city and leave it to them – wide open and quiet. What a blissful thought! We asked a handful of people where they are heading to.

Terri Singer

Terri and her accountant husband Alan will be spending five days in a chalet at Hunters Rest and three days at the Sun City Hotel.

“It is different there’” she said. “There is no one around; it is quiet and tranquil.”

Terri is a nursery school teacher at Yeshiva College, where she has taught children of four who turn five during the year. 

“It’s the best,” she says of her teaching.  

Kim Wener

Kim lives in Parklands, Cape Town, which she calls the place to be; she moved there with her husband from Johannesburg just under three years ago.

She is staying in Cape Town for the holidays and her mother, Jenny Rosenston, is coming to spend 10 days with them later this month.

“I haven’t seen her in almost a year,” Kim said.

Both she and her husband have stopped work for the holiday season. She intends spending her time shopping, going to restaurants and taking her mother all over, mainly to the beach. Kim likes the Fish Hoek and Muizenberg beaches, but will also take her mother to the Blauwberg beach, near where she lives.

Ben Neuberger

Fifteen-year-old Ben Neuberger left for Habonim camp on Wednesday.

Ben, who starts at Herzlia High School in Cape Town next year, has been a member of the movement for five years and has attended the camp every year. This year he will be in the Sollelim age group.

He enjoys the camping experience. “You are with your friends all day. There is always something to do. You don’t get bored. Then there’s the beach,” he said.

“Every year there is a new topic to talk about, always addressing some problems in the world.”

Many of his contemporaries are also attending the camp – “about 10 of my good friends”.

Nikki Lieb

Nikki is already in Cape Town with her family – husband Elan and their three children of 10, eight and three – for their three-week holiday. They will be there until December 28, based in Milnerton.

“We flew down and have a car here,” she told the SA Jewish Report, speaking from an outing in Stellenbosch.

“The kids enjoy the freedom. You can walk here very freely.”

Jonty Tuchten

Jonty (24), an audit associate, has just passed his honours in accountancy and is rewarding himself with a three-week trip to London and Israel from this weekend.

He will be spending 10 days in each place – touring with friends in London and visiting his sister, her husband and his six-month-old nephew in Jerusalem, where they have lived for three years.

“Specifically at this time it is important to go to Israel. We won’t change the way we live,” said Jonty, a self-proclaimed “ardent Zionist”.

He has been planning the trip for about three months.

Paula Baetu

Psychometrist Paula is doing a road trip to Coffee Bay in the Eastern Cape.

Last year she and three friends went on a road trip to the Northern Cape and drove down to Cape Town from Port Nolloth. They made no advance bookings, but took tents with them, travelling in two cars.

The first trip lasted two-and-a-half weeks, but because of work commitments, the four friends (with one change) are going for only a week at the end of December.

They will drive to Clarens in the Eastern Free State and from there through the Sani Pass in the Drakensberg to the KZN coast and down to Coffee Bay.

“I heard about it a couple of years ago. It is a hippy community, where one can both give and receive. I am looking forward to that,” she said.