Trip report: Southern Africa
OK, so I've had my takeaway and a bottle of Belgian beer. The cats have stopped attention-seeking and the house is quiet because Sally is 20 miles away with an IV antibiotic drip in her arm failing to...
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Day 13: Thursday - Winelands
It was a lovely cool morning:
We headed back onto R62 - the alternative inland route to the busy N2 coast road. Immediately on the left was this establishment - I'd heard people talk about it before:
Ronnies erm, naugthy shop
It is a bar, and allegedly friends painted the S word between the words Ronnies and Shop as a prank.
This alternate route twists through the distorted rock showing the power of plate tectonics.
Now we descended finally into the cape Winelands of the Western Cape region. Vineyards began to appear with their distinctive white houses:
In Robertson the wine industry was evident everywhere. Workers amongst the vines picked into small plastic crates; Tractors towed trailers of grapes from smaller vineyards; Trucks with tipper bodies carried grapes from the big wine estates. The air was sweet with the scent of wine:
This warning sign was a bit late for our trip:
Now we have reached a milestone. We started the journey driving roads around Johannesburg familiar to me from my many trips there. As we pulled onto the R43 we were now driving roads I have driven during trips to Cape Town, joining two destinations at either ends of the country I had only ever flown directly to.
From now on I have the advantage that I am not planning the trip based upon research, but based upon my previous experiences, and I can take Sally to places I know she will like. The first is a route over the pass above Franschhoek which I have done a couple of times:
I chose this route into the Western Cape region as the view from the top gives you a great introduction to the region - coming over this pass you feel you have finally arrived:
We descend into Franschhoek and park at the Huguenot Monument - a monument for French protestant settlers who arrived in the Cape starting in 1671. This explains why amongst the African and Dutch surnames, there are quite a number of French names as well in the Cape.
From there we walked into the little town itself. It is a lovely place full of art galleries and restaurants:
Of course, these restaurants cannot be ignored:
It would have been a dereliction of my duties to fail to visit a wine estate. There are hundreds around the area, but I felt that Boschendal would be a good one to see, partly due to its classic Dutch farm house and its history as part of the estate of the ever-present Cecil Rhodes:
Of course these estates make a lot of money from not only selling wines wholesale, but also through paid tours, souvenirs, their restaurants and cafes (they have done a good job of diversification in order to maximize their incomes) and of course selling crates of wine to visitors.
We went to the wine tasting area. Many wine estates have a wine tasting area and, knowing it is mainly tourists drinking, they levy a small charge to cover the costs. Boschendal did not, but when the young lady came out she handed us a 'menu' of wines. However, this was more of an order form than a menu and assumed you were buying at least a case of wine for export, and although no more expensive than wine I buy at home, I had no intention of buying a whole case from here just for the sake of it. I therefore didn't want to sample wine under false pretences. So I told the lady, but she said "no problem, you don't have to buy, just let me know which wine you would like to taste". So Sally tried a sparkling rose (about $35 per bottle) and I tried a Chardonnay (about $20 per bottle). It was lovely sitting there sampling wine, but one of us still had to drive.
Near Franschhoek is Victor Verster prison. This is where Nelson Mandela was moved to in 1988 for just over a year at the end of his time in prison (he had lived in prisons as a political prisoner continuously since the early '60s). Here he was housed in a villa with a private cook, a huge change from the tiny cell he had inhabited for decades on Robben Island, but it allowed a location where the government could hold discussions and negotiations with him on the road to the ending of apartheid and free elections.
Backing onto the prison was a large campground, with a strange fake windmill at its entrance:
This campground was pretty expensive. The receptionist said they were fully booked tomorrow, which made me worried about finding another campground to stay in tomorrow, since we hadn't booked anywhere.
The campground was large and maybe 30% occupied. However the campground only took up a small proportion of a large site, the rest of which had trailer homes and vacation chalets. There was a large swimming pool, but no-one was in it.
Strangely we were given an RF ID tag (against a $30 deposit) to open the bathrooms. They have clearly had problems in the past - having to have the bathrooms secured by an electronically controlled iron railings. Inside was nice and clean, but the individual toilet cubicles lacked toilet paper. Instead they had a central dispenser by the entrance - so unless you brought your own paper you would have to estimate the amount you needed and pull off a suitable handful before entering a cubicle.
Exploring the site I saw this nice early Land Cruiser camper:
Stay tuned for the Cape...
It was a lovely cool morning:
We headed back onto R62 - the alternative inland route to the busy N2 coast road. Immediately on the left was this establishment - I'd heard people talk about it before:
Ronnies erm, naugthy shop
It is a bar, and allegedly friends painted the S word between the words Ronnies and Shop as a prank.
This alternate route twists through the distorted rock showing the power of plate tectonics.
Now we descended finally into the cape Winelands of the Western Cape region. Vineyards began to appear with their distinctive white houses:
In Robertson the wine industry was evident everywhere. Workers amongst the vines picked into small plastic crates; Tractors towed trailers of grapes from smaller vineyards; Trucks with tipper bodies carried grapes from the big wine estates. The air was sweet with the scent of wine:
This warning sign was a bit late for our trip:
Now we have reached a milestone. We started the journey driving roads around Johannesburg familiar to me from my many trips there. As we pulled onto the R43 we were now driving roads I have driven during trips to Cape Town, joining two destinations at either ends of the country I had only ever flown directly to.
From now on I have the advantage that I am not planning the trip based upon research, but based upon my previous experiences, and I can take Sally to places I know she will like. The first is a route over the pass above Franschhoek which I have done a couple of times:
I chose this route into the Western Cape region as the view from the top gives you a great introduction to the region - coming over this pass you feel you have finally arrived:
We descend into Franschhoek and park at the Huguenot Monument - a monument for French protestant settlers who arrived in the Cape starting in 1671. This explains why amongst the African and Dutch surnames, there are quite a number of French names as well in the Cape.
From there we walked into the little town itself. It is a lovely place full of art galleries and restaurants:
Of course, these restaurants cannot be ignored:
It would have been a dereliction of my duties to fail to visit a wine estate. There are hundreds around the area, but I felt that Boschendal would be a good one to see, partly due to its classic Dutch farm house and its history as part of the estate of the ever-present Cecil Rhodes:
Of course these estates make a lot of money from not only selling wines wholesale, but also through paid tours, souvenirs, their restaurants and cafes (they have done a good job of diversification in order to maximize their incomes) and of course selling crates of wine to visitors.
We went to the wine tasting area. Many wine estates have a wine tasting area and, knowing it is mainly tourists drinking, they levy a small charge to cover the costs. Boschendal did not, but when the young lady came out she handed us a 'menu' of wines. However, this was more of an order form than a menu and assumed you were buying at least a case of wine for export, and although no more expensive than wine I buy at home, I had no intention of buying a whole case from here just for the sake of it. I therefore didn't want to sample wine under false pretences. So I told the lady, but she said "no problem, you don't have to buy, just let me know which wine you would like to taste". So Sally tried a sparkling rose (about $35 per bottle) and I tried a Chardonnay (about $20 per bottle). It was lovely sitting there sampling wine, but one of us still had to drive.
Near Franschhoek is Victor Verster prison. This is where Nelson Mandela was moved to in 1988 for just over a year at the end of his time in prison (he had lived in prisons as a political prisoner continuously since the early '60s). Here he was housed in a villa with a private cook, a huge change from the tiny cell he had inhabited for decades on Robben Island, but it allowed a location where the government could hold discussions and negotiations with him on the road to the ending of apartheid and free elections.
Backing onto the prison was a large campground, with a strange fake windmill at its entrance:
This campground was pretty expensive. The receptionist said they were fully booked tomorrow, which made me worried about finding another campground to stay in tomorrow, since we hadn't booked anywhere.
The campground was large and maybe 30% occupied. However the campground only took up a small proportion of a large site, the rest of which had trailer homes and vacation chalets. There was a large swimming pool, but no-one was in it.
Strangely we were given an RF ID tag (against a $30 deposit) to open the bathrooms. They have clearly had problems in the past - having to have the bathrooms secured by an electronically controlled iron railings. Inside was nice and clean, but the individual toilet cubicles lacked toilet paper. Instead they had a central dispenser by the entrance - so unless you brought your own paper you would have to estimate the amount you needed and pull off a suitable handful before entering a cubicle.
Exploring the site I saw this nice early Land Cruiser camper:
Stay tuned for the Cape...
