Wine tour and leaving Cape Town
Trip Start
Sep 20, 2009
1
3
40
Trip End
Mar 01, 2010
The Garden Route, Western Cape, South Africa
Monday, September 28, 2009
We are back in the land of the living after being in a few remote places where internet has been limited!
So, let me re-cap the last 4 or 5 days - I am losing track of what date it is and day for that matter so be patient!
Right - wine tour - Stellenbosch. Brilliant! Organised trip for an all girl day out drinking wine. Nice. 8 girls, one tour guide - female - and 4 vineyards. You can imagine the rest I'm sure. Champagne to start at 9:30am, followed by copious amounts of white wine, red wine, cheese, chocolate - a girls haven surely! And yes - I was merry. Well ok - drunk will do it. It was a great day out - I had just about all of my favorite things all in one day - the wine, the cheese, the chocolate, dogs (belonging to owners of the some of the vineyards), my travelling buddy of course - we even had U2 playing in the bus on the way home. All in all - thank you please!
And then it was time to leave Cape Town. We have hired a car for the next 3 weeks of our trip. The car arrived - a beautiful tiny blue thing I will refer to as the yoghurt pot. She is doing us proud up and down these mountain roads of South Africa. On leaving Cape Town in the yoghurt pot we 'aquired' two french lads we made friends with at Ashanti - Thomas and Vince. Pure gentlemen. Vince is well travelled and familiar with SA so took us to some beautiful spots en route to Cape Point and Simonstown. Cape Point is supposed to be the southern most point of SA but I knew this to be a lie!!! Damn those flippin' Safa's!! Trying to make a quick buck eh! So we refused to pay the 75 rand fee they wanted and carried on to Simonstown and Boulders Beach where a colony of penguins live. The boys bought us lunch to thank us for the trip in the car - they were then heading back to Cape Town. Again - a most pleasant day! Hoot hoot!!! (Martin - the hoot hoot fan club is growing by the way - we are aiming for 100 by the end of the trip)!!
And so we drove on in the yoghurt pot for around 3.5 hours to Cape Agulhas - the TRUE southern most tip of SA! Stayed at Cape Agulhas Backpacker - a wicked place! Again - more dogs here belonging to the owners - loving the SA's for their dog loving ability!!! We visited the 'most southern point' at sunset - amazing landscapes and sceanery along here. Blissful. We took a day trip in the pot to Pearly Beach and Danger Point - just coastal villages - nice and chilled. Held up on the way back by 100's of sheep in the road with the 'farmers' trying their best to move them along. An amusing moment as you will see!
After a couple of days chilling at Cape Agulhas we headed for Mossel Bay - but were advised to stop off at a bar on the R62 called Ronnies Sex Shop. A cool little bar off the main highway. It was called Ronnies Shop for a few years when he first opened it until some friends wrote the word 'sex' on the sign - today Ronnie has many more visitors stopping off at his bar to share a drink, have a photo done and perhaps leave behind some underwear, a hat or t-shirt hanging in the bar with all the others that have been left behind in the years gone by. Ronnie - an old timer and true SA - even worked in Kingston for a few years when he was in London - a small world eh! We met a chap here who said we must stay a night in a place up the road where natural hot springs fill large roman baths - and so we did. He showed us the way and it was fab! The bath we had must have been 3-4ft deep and filled to the brim with 42 degrees hot water straight from the spring - a giggle and a half to say the least! We had a braai in the evening (an SA bbq) - I even tried lamb for the first time as it is a bit of a tradtition for braai's - it was not to my liking - supped some wine and then slept well.
Moving onto Mossel Bay the next afternoon - we stayed on a stationery train on the beach. Quite novel but it was very open and there were some odd locals hanging around asking when we were going out - I'm guessing so they could then perhaps rob us of our things - too kooky for them! Not much security going on here which made our little guts have instincts about leaving our belongings unattended. And so we stayed in last night on the train and cooked up a most remarkable meal using one oven tray and two hobs, one Swiss army knife and a cup. Wait to you see the meal - most impressive!!!
And so this morning we left a cloudy Mossel Bay and have arrived at The Beach House Backpackers in Wilderness . This is a beautiful setting overlooking a lovely beach. Fresh pizza being cooked up here tonight on the open fire so we might just have to get involved in that. And we are hoping to go canoeing tomorrow on the rivers through the forest here.
All in all - this trip for me thus far has been a very good one. The people we are meeting along the way are superb - we have just bumped into a girl here who was at the backpacker in Cape Town on day 2 or 3. A lot of swapping of numbers going on as people will be at some on the places we are going around the world at the same time so we are planning to hook up with them. Two guys we met at Cape Agulhas have just opened a backpacker at Storms River - where the big bastard bungy takes place - so they have promised us 50% discount if we stay with them. How can a girl refuse! This country is full of wonderful people and this is just the start. Obviously it is not all about doing the 'big things' on this trip as we can't afford to be doing trips etc every day - but the best bits have definitely been just chilling at the backpackers, chatting to all sorts of people, making new friends and supping the wine of course.
Am I missing home.....? Not on your nelly!!!
Until we meet again.....
xxxx
