1.04.2016 – 1.04.2016  22 °C

Waking up in a vineyard is a pretty fine thing! Looking out over the vineyards in my super soft bed was pretty hard to beat! (Can’t half tell I rate this hotel huh?~ Mymering BTW if you are ever in the area). The owner had offered the night before to take us all for a hike first thing around his farm, so we took him up on the offer and headed up through the vineyards to a close by mountain for a view over the valley. Walk was pretty easy, although quite scree-y so had to be a bit careful of footing~ plenty of unusual looking red cacti to keep me occupied. The view from the top was spectacular- you could see the whole farm and then some, we could even see mum down eating brekky (well dad could thru his camera lens).

We hit the road after brekky all thinking we probably wouldn’t top last night’s accom. The road now turned south west to Barrydale, thru Montague and on to Stellenbosch (wine capital of SA). In fact, the whole road was one big wine route, we travelled thru a port town, brandy town + so many wineries that we started to wonder how they all stay in business~ export we guess. Barrydale had gotten a wrap in our guide book as somewhere worth stopping for a coffee and a squiz—we drove into town and thought huh? After some driving around and scratching heads we headed back to the hwy deciding to give Barrydale a miss… and we found the coffee shops! Stopped for a tack view (look around tacky souvenir shops~ haven’t found anything yet for the wall of tack) + a coffee before continuing along the road to Stellenbosch.

Pretty spectacular drive today through the mountains. The mountains are all steep granite crags that seem to be “right next to you”- the road weaved around and in and out of these mountains all day. Pretty special. We eventually arrived into Stellenbosch mid afternoon and after finding our hotel and checking in (easily as nice as last night~ although double the price) we went for a wander around town. Stellenbosch is the second oldest town in SA and it shows. The area we are staying in is slightly reminiscent of New Orleans, big old pre-Victorian mansions, surrounded by big old oak trees.. pretty nice! 🙂

Stellenbosch is known for its food and its wine~ we ended up in a little wine bar testing out some of the local vintage, before finding ourselves some pretty tasty Indian (yep not quite the gastronomy I was portraying). Tomorrow we are planning an early start to see Franschhoek (Hugenot descended wine area) before heading into Cape Town; our base for the next few days before we head to Namibia