Tuesday, Sept.18th. Once more up Table Mountain

(Posted on Sept. 27th at Sedgefield) Angela visited us in South Africa in 1978 and Alison brought her to Cape Town from Port Elizabeth, but the weather was never good enough to go up Table Mountain. Fortunately, she had better luck this time. We dropped Vic & Carol at the Waterfront and made arrangements to meet them for lunch, then headed up the mountain. Because every day had been clear since we went up with Chris & Linda, the lines were normal and we were soon in a cable car on our way to the top. This time, Alison and I wanted to make a hike of it so after walking for a while with Angela, we set out to walk to Maclear’s Beacon at the back of the mountain, overlooking False Bay and back over Somerset West and Gordon’s Bay. It turned out to be much further than we thought so it took us longer than we intended to be away.

We then joined Vic & Carol at Quay Four, the name of a fish restaurant. Alison was particularly impressed with the fish that she had – Dorado. Back to Somerset West and Vic & I investigated how we might be able to walk up part of the mountain (subsequently determined to be named “Helderberg”) that we could see from our residence. After walking and asking, we found that the gates to the “Helderberg Nature Reserve” were within driving distance of our house and that they open at 7 AM. We were determined to rise early and make an attempt to take a good walk up Helderberg mountain.

Monday, Sept 17th, Wine tasting and lunch at Franschhoek

(Posted on Sept. 26th at Sedgefield) On this day, Vic had arranged for the five of us to have a private wine tasting at a winery called Boekenhoutskloof in the Franschhoek Valley. Vic’s company distributes their wine in the Eastern Cape area so we were well looked after and the wine tasting was conducted by the winemaker himself, Rudiger Gretschel. Coincidentally, one of the red blends that they make is called The Wolftrap, which as you can imagine, is a popular table wine in the Wolff household. A bottle of The Wolftrap retails at about R32, or under $5 to those in the USA. One can easily buy a bottle of wine here to accompany a nice dinner at a price between R50-R100 ($7-$14). We also tasted some of Boekenhoutskloof premium wines, one of which was called “Chocolate Block” which was superb and cost R140 ($20). I bought four bottles, but don’t get excited, they won’t be coming back to the USA!

From Boekenhoutskloof, we drove a short distance round the Franschhoek Valley to have lunch at a restaurant called “La Petite Ferme”, which is situated in a most beautiful spot overlooking the whole valley. The photographs cannot do it justice. (http://www.lapetiteferme.co.za/). We had drinks on the lawn and lunch on the terrace.
After lunch, we stopped on our way home to Somerset West in Stellenbosch at the Lanzerac winery and I bought three bottles of Lanzerac rose, one of Alison’s old favorites from our early days in SA.
Back home to watch more 20/20 cricket and a light supper before bed!

Sunday, Sept 16th, Angela (Alison’s sister) arrives from England

(Posted Sept. 26th in Sedgefield).

Early morning Alison & I left for Cape Town International once more, this time to pick up Alison’s sister Angela, who had taken an overnight flight from Heathrow to Cape Town. We had a quiet day in Somerset West with the two sisters catching up on their latest news and me trying to write up a few days for the blog! Sunday evening was another showdown between England and South Africa, this time in the World cricket limited overs (20-20) championship (which SA also won). Interestingly, the USA has a side in the World Cup Rugby champs, but not in the cricket champs. Vic cooked two whole chickens on the Weber braai for supper.

Saturday, Sept. 15th, (Clare’s 30th birthday). Goodbye to Chris & Linda

(Posted Sept. 26th in Sedgefield) We were up early, but not as early as C&L, although they had done the majority of their packing on Friday night. We left the house just after 8.30 as we were also returning the VW microbus at the Cape Town International airport as well as putting Chris & Linda on their flight to Johannesburg. We replaced the VW with a smaller vehicle - a Toyota SUV (an Avanza – a model not available in the USA). We were sad to see C&L leave, but know that they considered their experience in SA the vacation of a lifetime. We certainly enjoyed their company and their enthusiasm for everything they saw.



We went out to lunch at the Oak Tree Restaurant on the Lourensford Wine Estate, one of many, many wineries in the Somerset West, Stellenbosch, Paarl and general Cape Region. From there we returned to watch the World Cup rugby match that all the SA fans had been waiting for – the Springboks v England. It was annihilation in SA’s favor.

Friday, Sept 14th, Table Mountain and “The Waterfront” (The Umbles’ last full day).

(Posted Sept. 25th, Sedgefield). The danger of only having one full day in Cape Town is that the weather could be bad and there would be no point or fun in going up Table Mountain. Fortunately, we woke up on Friday morning to glorious sunshine. Unfortunately, there had been bad weather all week in Cape Town so every tourist in town headed to the cableway on Friday morning, so there were long lines and quite a long wait. However, once we got in the cable car, we all forgot about the wait and enjoyed the moment and the views. Spectacular as always!

From the Cableway, we went to Cape Town’s second most popular attraction, “The Victoria & Alfred Waterfront” down at the harbor. We had lunch at a favorite pub & restaurant of Vic’s, “Ferrymans Tavern”, followed by shopping for those inclined. We got back to SW in time for sundowners and then Vic cooked the snoek to perfection on a Weber braai. Another great day.

Thursday, Sept. 13th, De Hoop to Cape Town (Somerset West).

(Posted Sept. 25th in Sedgefield)

We got an early start on our way to Somerset West as we had decided to take the scenic coast route instead of going back inland. We went through Bredasdorp, which is just 30K from Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the African Continent. We stopped in Stanford at the Birkenhead Brewery and as it was only five minutes to opening time, waited until 10AM and then had a beer tasting as opposed to a wine tasting, although there was also a winery in the grounds. From there we went to Hermanus (another famous whale spotting town, but we didn’t see any whales that morning), Betty’s Bay, on to False Bay (a body of water) and into Gordon’s Bay where we had lunch at a pub in the little fishing harbor.
After lunch, we went to Strand where we picked up some snoek (a Cape Town specialty fish) for our next braai, and then on into SW, where we moved into Carol’s brother’s vacation home – a very, very nice vacation home!
After settling in, we went out for the evening to the Spier Winery to a restaurant called Moyo. The restaurant is in a large marquee and has an African theme with symbolic hand washing at the table, face painting, African style blankets on every chair to put around your shoulders and, of course, African music and dancing as entertainment. Naturally, the food was also (South) African, and was served buffet style from multiple stations serving different categories of dishes (fish, curry, braai, stew, etc.) along one side of the marquee. It was well done and a very fun evening. (See www.moyo.co.za)

Tuesday, Wednesday, Sept. 11th, 12th, Sundays River to De Hoop Nature Reserve

(Posted at Sedgefield on Sept. 24th). On Tuesday morning we drove to the airport in Port Elizabeth and picked up a VW microbus that we would use to transport the six of us with luggage to De Hoop and then on to Cape Town. We repacked and got on our way down the “Garden Route” en route to De Hoop, a journey of about 650K, of which the last 60-70K is on dirt roads. Our accommodation was in self-catering cottages and was very nice. We had two adjacent cottages and set up one as the main base where we would eat. The reserve contains the 15K long De Hoop Vlei: “A wetland of international importance for migratory birds. Of the 260 bird species recorded, 97 are waterbirds, etc." The vlei was formed by a river mouth being cut off by sand dunes.

In addition to the birds, there are many species of antelope in the reserve, including the bontebok which is indigenous to the area, but was almost hunted to extinction until the remaining 22 where protected by being placed in a reserve.

Although we were interested in both bird and game viewing, our main hope of coming to De Hoop was to see the whales! Quoting the tour guide: “The waters off De Hoop have the largest concentration of southern right whales along the South African coast and the reserve offers superb vantage points for viewing these majestic creatures”. We were not disappointed. On Wednesday morning when we got to the shoreline, we were able to see many, many whales in the shallow blue water along the coast. These whales have come into the bay to calf, so do not “jump” and thrash about, but they are quite clearly visible and “blow” huge spouts of water into the air. Unfortunately, they are also very difficult to photograph and I don’t think we have a “great” picture of the whales to show you. They are much easier to follow in the video.
It was another great day.