Off to South Africa 2020

Today we took a road trip over a mountain to Franschhoek, the St. Helena of South Africa’s winelands region. It was a beautiful day for a drive, and traffic wasn’t bad at all, although downtown Franschhoek was reasonably busy, all things considered. We had lunch in a pub in the restored train station. And we found three of the Big Five wild critters - and they held very still for us. 😉 A Cape buffalo - An elephant (a bit smaller than those we’ve seen in the wild on previous trips - must be a baby) - And a rhino - After lunch we continued our drive through the mountains on the far side of Franschhoek, pulling over several times to take in the views. And we came across more baboons.  These aren’t great photos since they were in the shade. These two looked like teddy bears - right after I took the picture, one shoved the other over. This big guy sat on a rock and looked at me. We continued over the pass and came down into a valley with miles of apple orchards where the ripe fruit was...

Today we decided to drive south toward the coastal town of Somerset West and visit a winery or two along the way. Our first stop was Avontuur Estate, a vineyard and horse farm just a couple of miles from our hotel. Since they have both a restaurant and tasting room, we thought we might have lunch there as well as tasting wine.   While I sampled their wares, John asked to get a table for lunch. We had arrived just at noon and thought it unusual that so many people were already there - usually wineries get busy later in the afternoon.  However, we discovered that the newly enacted coronavirus laws require that no alcohol be served after 1pm on Sundays (6pm other days of the week).   I finished my tastings - and bought a bottle of excellent Chardonnay - and we went to the restaurant to be seated for lunch.  Suddenly the maitre d’ (aka Brunhilda) had no recollection of John asking for a table, and gave us a line of nonsense about a limit of 50 people in the restaurant (t...

While we’ve had to modify our travel plans and extend our stay in Stellenbosch, we’re not exactly languishing here.  For one thing, we’re in a suite that’s larger than John’s first house.  And in the event that’s not enough room for us, we practically have the hotel to ourselves. If you look very closely at that white speck at the end of the parking lot, that’s our car.  Our very lonely car. On Saturday we went out and about, including a stop at a nearby shopping center (spelled “centre” here).  It appears that beanbag chairs are back - Bronze sheep were hanging out in the mall - Since there are so few people at the hotel, the restaurants have cut back their hours, so we were forced to order our light lunch in the bar and enjoy it on the patio  - This is my idea of roughing it!

We’re now in Stellenbosch, in the heart of the wine region just north of Cape Town. Beautiful weather, a very nice place to stay, and no crowds.  That’s an understatement - there’s almost nobody here.  This is a popular vacation spot for Europeans, but they’re not going anywhere.  When we asked about extending our hotel stay, the clerk threw back her head and laughed before she regained her professional composure and said that it wouldn’t be a problem. In the meantime, we’re enjoying our stay.  Today we arranged for an Uber driver to take us to Simon’s Town to go to Mineral World. It’s an unassuming building that houses one of the world’s largest gemstone factories, where precious and semi-precious stones from all over the world are tumbled, faceted, and made into jewelry and other objects.   There’s also a museum with amazing specimens, and, of course, a shop.   I shopped. The drive there was along the coast, and en route back we stopped to watch the surfe...

Like most of our road trips here, our drive to Robertson was over mountain passes and through gorges - with even more spectacular rock formations. After breakfast, we spent the morning lounging around the pool, and then decided to drive into town.  This is a wine region, as well as other olives and other crops, so we planned to visit wineries and have a nice late lunch.  Didn’t quite work - the wineries we stopped at were closed, as was the olive oil place just up the road from our cottage.  We struck out on lunch, too - finally ended up with fast food. After stopping at a Super Spar (South Africa’s Fred Meyer) for a few supplies, we headed back to the cottage and went for a walk around the area.   The flowers are beautiful - We loved this sign along the drive to our cottage - John liked this bench -

On Monday morning we had breakfast with the two other couples that were staying at the B&B - both happened to be from Germany, but they weren’t traveling together.  We had gotten to know them last night when we all opted to have dinner at the B&B, as well. After breakfast we packed up and hit the road again, this time heading for the town of Robertson (where we’ve never been before) by way of two familiar stops. The first was lunch at Diesel & Creme - a fun spot in the small town of Barrydale that we discovered on our first trip to South Africa five years ago. It’s a popular lunch place with good food and a delightful array of old diesel pumps, signs, etc. Our next stop isn’t what it looks like... “Ronnie’s Sex Shop” is a famous roadside attraction that’s 1) NOT a porn shop, and 2) the result of a practical joke.  Ronnie bought the derelict building with plans to restore it and open a roadside fruit and vegetable stand (there’s a lot of produce grown in this area)....