The Beautiful Winelands

On Monday, the 11^th, we took a trip out of town to explore three of the many vineyards in the winelands. Stephen, the owner of the lodge, gave us a detailed map with suggestions for which vineyards to see on our day trip. With 100s to choose from, his advice was helpful.

Our first stop was at the Fairview Farm, where they also make their own cheese. This was a highlight as we went straight for the cheese tasting! It was so delicious and we both instantly fell in love with goat’s milk camembert and a goat’s milk chevin. There were also great cow’s milk selections, including a cream cheese and a blue-style cheese called white rock with apricot. We immediately purchased a small wheel of the goat’s camembert and a loaf of freshly-baked ciabatta bread to have for lunch later that day!

After walking through the winery and the farmyard, we made our way to the town of Franschhoek (pronounced somewhat like Frahnzh hook), an adorable town with a tree-lined main street and delightful little shops and cafes. The town is also known for culinary excellence and is considered a food and wine capital. We stopped at the Haute Cabriere Vineyard which is nestled right up into a mountain overlooking the vast vineyards and town of Franschhoek. We visited the cellar to see where the wine is bottled and stored. Afterward, we wandered the main street of town and sat along the green in front of a Dutch colonial building where we indulged in our bread and cheese lunch with a nice cold Ginger Beer (a fave soda from New Zealand and Australia that we are so glad it here, too! Oh and South Africans also use sweet chilli, another fave from down under that we can’t get enough of.).

The next stop took us to the college town of Stellenbosch. Along the route, we came to Hillcrest Berry Orchards where we were quickly absorbed in the smells of berry everything – so many jams and fruit purees and frozen options. Ginnie tasted the fabulous Citrus Blossom Honey and instantly wished for pancakes over which to drizzle its deliciousness. We did pick ourselves up frozen treats; Anthony had the frozen apple juice (it was an apple juice ideal!) and ginnie had a homemade strawberry balsamic ice cream (it may sound like a weird combo, but it was really good and did not taste like vinegar at all). The journey continued with a stop at Tokara Wine and Olive Farm, which had the most interesting looking vine fields of all that neatly and uniformly curved along the hillside. This one makes olive oil and has four flavors, all of which looked incredible.

We also made a stop in Stellenbosch to check out another town of tree-lined streets and shops and cafes. The Oom Samie se Winkel is a curio shop that is a must for a walk-through so we spent time browsing the variety of odd items for sale – at one point ginnie walked nearly into some hanging dried fish! The Dutch in South Africa came up with dried meats (biltong) as a simple hand-held traveling food and there is a lot of it everywhere. The good thing is there is also a lot of dried fruits and many healthy snacks with nuts, fruits, and grains. We are stocking up since we don’t know what we’ll find in weeks to come.

A tour of the wine country is definitely a must on a visit of Cape Town as the scenery is beautiful and the vineyards are plentiful.

ukuthula na-uthando!

Anthony's Birthday on the Cape Peninsula

On Anthony’s birthday we awoke to another spectacular sunny warm day. Having planned to visit wine country, we opted to change our visit to The Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve for April 10^th due to an expected rain that never arrived. The visit began with a beautiful scenic drive as we twisted out of Cape Town through a southern route that hugged the coastline and offered spectacular views of the Atlantic Ocean, surrounding cliffs, and majestic mountains. The road follows the scenic Chapman’s Peak Drive and onward to Simon’s Town and the famous Boulder’s Beach, home to one of the largest colonies of African penguins (numbers show a population of approximately 2500). ginnie was looking forward to seeing the penguins since we booked our trip in October, so she was pretty excited to finally see them.

After securing our parking and walking a few minutes to the beach, we traveled along a few different designated narrow boardwalks to view the penguins. They were all over the beach, some in the water swimming and fishing, others enjoying the sun and sand, and many mothers taking care of their newborn babies (colored brown at birth) and minding their eggs. The penguin colony was really pretty awesome to observe and the walkways allowed visitors to get up close without disturbing their natural habitat. We took a lot of photos and even shot some video (see end of post) of the different groups as they waddled around the beach, enjoyed the surf, and acted silly. Unfortunately, there was no dancing a la Happy Feet, but nonetheless, they were a really interesting group for observation.

As we left the Boulder’s Beach area we were immediately struck by the large number of street signs that read “! Baboons” This was interesting for many reasons. First off, we had read in many places that there are large numbers of wild baboons roving around in great numbers across South Africa, yet we hadn’t seen any in our travels as of today, secondly, it was just really strange to see an actual red triangular street sign that warned of the presence of baboons on the road. Anyways, we headed further down the road and eventually reached the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve. The Reserve is part of an extensive national parks system across South Africa and its size encompasses the entire Cape Peninsula. Upon reaching the visitor’s center one can become quickly overwhelmed by the number of trail options for hiking, running, cycling, and walking. We perused the various offerings and settled on two (The Cape of Good Hope Trail and a second smaller trail that would pass a few other areas of interest). After leaving the center we made our way to the popular Cape Point area and trekked the somewhat short, but incredibly beautiful trail to the old lighthouse and WWII radio towers (established when U-Boats began to unexpectedly threatened Cape Town and the surrounding cities during WWII). These little coves carved into the rock offered some amazing views of the Atlantic Ocean from all sides. Did we mention that it was incredibly windy here? Thus the reason for the Cape of Good Hope – so named by early explorers due to the vicious assaults doled out on passing ships. The Cape was first discovered in 1488 by Bartolomeu Dias from Spain. Over its long and tumultuous history it has single handedly been responsible for hundreds of shipwrecks (many of which can be viewed at different points along some of the more extensive hiking routes).

As we headed back down the hill, we opted to trek out to the nearby Old Lighthouse Trail which actually followed along the entire Cape Point peninsula and ended at pretty darn near land’s end. It was a short trail that we had initially taken because our map misled us to believe that it was the actual southernmost point, however, as we neared the end, we read an additional map en-route that more clearly designated where the actual Cape of Good Hope point lay (just a lee bit to our left) and we opted to finish this trail and then head for the famous Cape of Good Hope just a short 1-hr walk away. The Cape of Good Hope is the South-Western most point on Africa’s continent and is represented by an immensely rocky coastline surrounded on all sides by crashing waves and rough seas driven by fierce winds. We spent some time here just taking in the views, walking on the rocks, and then taking a picture of us standing at the famous sign marking the area's latitude and longitude.

As we left the Cape of Good Hope area and began our travels through the remaining areas of the park we were suddenly startled by quite an interesting sight – Baboons were sitting on the roofs and hoods of cars that had been parked along the surf beach (some even had passengers in them waiting patiently for the mischievous beasts to alight from their vehicles). This was our first of many baboon sightings so we opted to slow to a stop, shoot a few pictures, and move along in an nonthreatening manner (we didn’t want them coming after us!) We spent the remainder of the afternoon visiting many different parts of the park and viewing some interesting things that included more baboons, beaches, cool rock formations, large memorials and dedications to Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco de Gama (early explorers who gained notoriety for their discoveries and charting of the Cape of Good Hope and surrounding peninsula). Our visit to the park was truly an exceptional experience and it was awe-inspiring to observe the incredible beauty of our planet, as well as the powerful forces that shape and create such amazing places.

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About Cape Town

Cape Town is a lovely city surrounded by mountains and the ocean. We explored all we could in our week in town and found there is really something for everyone here. We were fortunate to have 8 days of gorgeous weather and were able to do all the things we planned in our time here. While we are sad to leave, we have some pretty exciting sites to visit in the coming days and look forward to some game parks and nature treks and beach excursions.

Read on for highlights of our Cape Town adventures.

On our first full day (after the travel recovery day during which we simply walked around the city center and Greenmarket Square) we hiked up Lion’s Head, a 669-m peak that overlooks the city and the ocean and provides excellent views of the massive Table Mountain. At one point the hike splits and the adventurous climber can skip quite a bit of walking by pulling herself up using chains. Ginnie took the long way, but Anthony climbed right up! At the top, we rested to enjoy the views and eat our lunch above the city. After the climb, we walked back to the backpackers lodge through the quaint neighborhoods and stumbled upon a chocolate house where we promptly found a few treats.

Really high winds came in the next day, so we took that as our sign to spend the day walking through the historical sections of the city where we walked through the Company’s Garden, visited museums, and wandered through old Dutch areas. We returned to the Greenmarket Square to peruse the various stalls and get ideas for a piece of African art that will adorn our home eventually. The Company’s Gardens were grown when the Dutch East India Company designed a green space for both function and pleasure. It’s a nice long garden with lots of lush landscape and plants that have grown for 100’s of years. On the way into the garden we saw the former Parliament building, one of many examples of Cape Dutch architecture, as well as a large National Library and an old Dutch-style church. Further along we came to the Jewish museum and complex area where the Cape Town Holocaust Centre is housed. The exhibit was a moving testimony to the victims of the Holocaust and a reminder of how such an atrocity is bred from hatred and fear of difference. From there we continued our walk and came to the Castle of Good Hope, a large pentagonal fortress built by the Dutch East India Company and is the oldest surviving building in South Africa. We found our way to the District 6 Museum which chronicles the experience of the diverse peoples who lived in the District 6 neighborhood of Cape Town and were forced to move to segregated townships due to Apartheid. The museum shares the people’s stories in their words and pictures of the diverse community that was split up for forced segregation. Now, there is a land reclamation program in the works, however there are a lot of challenges due to the buildings put in place of former homes and the current residents/businesses not wanting to move.

a township of Cape Town; it's important to keep in mind there is still much to do to strengthen race relations and work to reduce poverty in the country

For the following day, we’d already reserved our tickets to visit Robben Island. After our tour, we stayed at the V&A (Victoria & Alfred) Waterfront where we enjoyed our lunch on a bench by the water and then wandered through the craft shops and visited Nobel Square where bronze statues of the four South African Nobel Prize winners stand with famous quotes written in the plaza. We also wandered into a big mall with two bookstores; a bookstore is always a treat when we are travelling since there are many places without good access to books and we get plenty of titles to add to our reading list (the list has grown so long that we feel we need a year just to devote to reading!!).

Our next day was Saturday the 9^th and we were fortunate to awake to a cloudless, sunny, not-windy day which made it possible to climb Table Mountain. We were well prepared for a 3-hour uphill, steep, rocky, in-the-direct-sun hike based on comments from fellow travelers and the lengthy safety review by Wayne (the manager of the lodge). We were both looking forward to the climb for days (weeks, really, after we’d spoken with Mrs. Rudolph – she teaches with Mrs. Tarzia and is South African) and had our water, snacks, sunblock, and ginnie’s hat ready by 9am. We were so glad to climb on a Saturday as there were many other climbers, most of whom shared our pace of climbing and stopping and climbing again. We also happened to climb on the same day as an HIV/AIDS Charity Climb was occurring. This was for brave souls who committed to climb up and down as many times as they could during the park’s hours; we heard a man set a goal for 11 round trips. This is a climb that is up a steep, rock-faced mountain that is in direct sunlight all day – these folks are impressive! I hope he achieved his goal. We also learned from another climber that the record for going up is 29 minutes and for coming down is 12 minutes! There were a couple dogs climbing as well, and one small pitbull mix was running up that mountain – he passed us early on; we talked to his owner and he told us the dog uses 3.5L of water each way (some of it is for dousing on the dog to cool him), pretty impressive little guy. He was all muscle, but with short legs there were still a few steps he couldn’t manage on his own. The climb was amazing and we finished in 2 hours – apparently all this hiking for the past three months provided some extra stamina, or perhaps it was simply the camaraderie of chatting with fellow climbers and keeping a steady pace to keep with the flow. At the top there were many cheers from our peers as we all reveled in reaching our goal. We spent another couple hours walking around the top to enjoy the views of Cape Town, which were vast and stunning. We ate our sandwiches and indulged in a refreshing ice cold Coke (it’s not always the case we can get a cold Coke on these travels, so it’s been nice here in SA to find them everywhere!). While we could have climbed back down, the steep steps would be really rough on the knees and we aren’t spring chickens anymore, so we took the cable car down. That was a quick ride then we walked back through town to return to the lodge, with a stop for ice cream on the way back – it was a hot day, we needed it!

After recovering from the walk, we spent Anthony’s birthday traveling along the Cape Peninsula – separate post to follow. There is also a separate post on our next day during which we toured the Winelands. On our last full day in Cape Town, we returned to the waterfront to walk to the World Cup Stadium and enjoy more time at the craft markets and shops along the seaside. Our return took us back through Greenmarket Square where we purchased a beautiful batik. At this rate, we are going to need a lot of wall space in our home because we just keep finding great pieces to frame (and we started doing this in our travels years ago, so the collection is really growing!). Batiks are painted fabrics that are then baked and covered in candle wax to set them. They are quite beautiful and we are fond of the one we found after several stalls. We have loved the African merchants, they have a great upbeat attitude and all joke around with us as we visit them, no high-pressure business like in some other world markets we have passed. Although, the laid back joking and comments are some pretty persuasive dealings… We met people from many parts of Africa who come to South Africa where they find a better opportunity to make money. It was hard to not buy from some of them.

We have fallen in love with Cape Town and feel certain we will return!

Ukuthula na-uthando!

"The journey's never long when freedom's the destination"

Our tour of World Heritage Sites continued with an incredible visit to Robben Island off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa. We have been anticipating the visit since it’s such an important page in the tumultuous history of the country and in particular the era of Apartheid. One of its most recent uses was as a maximum security prison for political prisoners from 1961 through 1991, includingNelson Mandela. The island’s history is filled with isolation of people from the mainland for a variety of reasons, primarily as a prison, but the island also served as a leper colony and a place for the mentally and chronically ill. In fact, we saw the home of a doctor in which he shackled epileptic patients in his basement to cure them of the evil that overcame them to cause the seizures.
Robben Island holds an important place in history and it was a sobering visit. Our tour guide is a former prisoner named Jama who was held at the island for 5 years on the charge of terrorism because he led student protests against the government and Apartheid politics. Prior to Jama’s incarceration, the prisoners were required to conduct hard labor and would work all day in a lime quarry where they broke stones. The harsh sun caused great damage to all, including the wardens who were not permitted to wear sunglasses as they were not part of the regulation uniform. Being politically active and socially-minded prisoners (among criminals as well, but they learned to keep them separate as the leaders were quite influential), they were able to help many wardens realize they too were prisoners of a broken political system and they were also suffering.

The government did not seem to fully consider what it would mean to have all their political opponents, highly educated men together for all this time; while there were rules against socializing while working the men always found ways and they were able to build a strong coalition that, once released, was able to hold their own against the government in negotiations and led to the breakdown of Apartheid and movement toward a more just society in South Africa. In keeping with the segregationist policies of the time, it is important to note that white political prisoners were held in a separate prison on the mainland and women also had their own prison. There are certainly many remnants of the era visible with the townships and remaining feelings of separation, but as a society progress is being made.

this is Nelson Mandela's cell; shows prisoner's items. prisoners got beds in later years in the 1970s but started with just these blankets on the floor

in cell block A, all the cells have a photo of the prisoner and an anecdote by him; many also have an item of significance to him and his time on Robben Island

Throughout our tour we could still feel how fresh the prison is, it’s only been since 1996 that prisoners have no longer been held there (after the release of the political prisoners it was still used for criminals). The timeline shows the history of the island as a place of isolation and segregation by those fearful of others who threaten their power or sense of security. We feel fortunate to have visited such an important historical landmark and to have met such an incredible and resilient leader who fought for his beliefs and endured the injustice of such a system yet seeks to find the positive from disadvantage.

prisoner identification card

the prisoners' diet, even this was different based on racial designation until prisoners held a hunger strike in 1978 and they began to feed them all the same menu

when the prisoners held a reunion, each took a limestone and made this pile to symbolize their experience and turning their disadvantage to an advantage

view of Cape Town waterfront and Table Mountain from the ferry

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