Stellenbosch, South Africa

2-18-09

Stellenbosch, South Africa

I LOVE SOUTH AFRICA! That’s the short story. The long story goes like this…

We arrived about an hour late because of heavy fog. We had to pass through a narrow channel to enter the harbor at Cape Town. The fog reminded me of San Francisco, and it burned off by late morning. At breakfast, I met up with one of Heather’s friends whom I had only met briefly before. We decided to go wine tasting outside of Cape Town. South Africa is famous for their wines; try them, they are wonderful! South Africa produces 1,000,000,000 liters of wine annually. Most of the wine is produced in the Cape Winelands, where Stellenbosch is located.

We got off the ship as soon as we were cleared by customs, and wandered around the waterfront. The harbor is built up with shops and nice restaurants… it was a nice change from the usual industrial harbors that we dock at. There were street musicians and a ton of shopping. Theresa, Andrew, Dana, Morgan, and I took the noon train to Stellenbosch. It was a slow train, although cheap ($1.20 US) and we arrived at around 1:30. The terrain was mountainous and very green. There were large vineyards near the train with beautiful mountains in the background. We got off the train in Stellenbosch with little idea what to do. About 100 meters down the road was the Bergkelder Winery. We walked in and asked for a wine tasting. We were the only ones there, and had our own bartender who was very nice. It was incredibly cheap, 15 Rand for 7 different wines. 10 Rand = 1 US$ Bergkelder is a big distributor, and had many different brands. Fleur de Lac is the label that we tried. We started with 2 white wines: chardonnay and chenin blanc. We then moved to reds: cabernet sauvignon, merlot, and pinotage. Pinotage is a distinctively South African wine. It is not made anywhere else. A professor at the Stellenbosch University crossed a Pinot Noir vine with a Cinsaut vine, and created the Pinotage grape. It produces a very fruity red wine, which I really liked. The Cabernet Sauvignon was my favorite. We finished with a desert wine, and a glass of amarula. Amarula is also a special South African drink, made from the fruit of the amarula plant. The fruits are citrusy, and elephants love them. The drink comes out to something close to Baileys, and is very sweet.

I considered buying wine and shipping it home, because the wine was great and very cheap. The bottles were about 50-75 Rand, and although I don’t know too much about wine, I know it was good wine. However, shipping to the US would have cost about $400 US. Sorry mom! We had a really good time at Bergkelder Winery, though. It really introduced me to wine, because I was able to taste many different kinds with someone who was very knowledgeable. Our bartender would tell us what flavors we were supposed to taste, and I almost got it (kinda?). We took a taxi to Spier, which is one of the most famous wineries in South Africa. It was really built up to cater to visitors, as there is a very nice hotel and restaurant there. It’s where I want to honeymoon!!! It was beautiful. We tasted a few wines, and went to the restaurant. It was a little too early for dinner, so we split a bottle and some appetizers. The restaurant is called Moya, and is spectacular. They built platforms up into the oak trees, and many of the tables were up among the trees. You could look out and see the vineyards and mountains. I loved it. It looked like there was a place for dancing after dark, with a live band. I would love to come back some day.

Unfortunately, we had to take the evening train back. The train ride back was really interesting, because most people were getting off work. I love to people watch, and I was so interested in all the people getting on and off the train. We arrived in Cape Town at around 8:30 and were starving! We had heard of a place called Mama Africa where they served African food, i.e. gemsbok, ostrich, springbok, etc. We went, and it was terribly crowded. The estimated an hour for a table. There were a ton of students from SAS there, which made it fun. There was also a live band, mostly percussion, so we decided to wait. The band had two wooden xylophone-type instruments, a djembe (drum), bongos, a drumset, and occasionally saxophones. They had pretty much all of my favorite instruments. We listened for an hour, and saw that we were no where near the top of the list for food, so Andrew and I decided to go somewhere else for food with Tim, Carrie, and Kristen. We walked just across the street to a restaurant called Cape to Cuba, which had Cuban food. It was really good, and our waiter was very entertaining. We headed home around midnight, because I had to get ready for a safari that left at 4:30am the next morning!! It was incredible, but more on that later…