Me with Table Mountain in the background. Pretty sweet view.
With the Atlantic suburbs behind me. (kind of our neighborhood, including Sea Point). After we drove down from Signal Hill, Sam was feeling really rotten by then. So we headed to Table Mountain but decided to nix the hike. This turned out to be a really good decision since 1. Sam was feeling bad, and 2. on the way up when we saw the sheer rock faces, we realized that maybe we weren't quite "fit" enough to scale a rock wall. We drove to the lower cableway station, from where you take the cable car up Table Mountain. The cable car takes 10 minutes to ascend and the floor inside the car rotates as you go, so you continually get different views as you go up. It holds 65 people, so its a bit bigger than the gondola at Snowbird (Rich will appreciate that reference). Up at the top, Table Mountain is FLAT. Its well known for this all around the world since its very unique. There are all these hiking trails up there (really walking trails). We did one of the shorter ones since Sam wasn't feeling so good. The views were UHHHMAZING.
Cable car descending. Obviously Visa is a proud sponsor.
View of Lion's Head (left) and Signal Hill from Top of Table Mountain. We decided to come down before Sam died of stomach pain... so we rode the cable car down and then I got directions from a taxi driver to take Sam to the Mediclinic, which is like a chain of hospitals in Cape Town. So they did some quick tests and turned out they thought she had a stomach virus. So they prescribed a whole bunch of drugs for her, and we had to find the pharmacy to go get them. Then we decided to get some lunch, since her drugs had made her feel a bit better by then. We went to the McDonalds near Long Street (which is parallel to Loop street where we had to return the rental car to). McDonalds was amazing... I swear their chicken was just better than a chicken sandwich there would have been in the US. Of course my sandwich was obscenely spicy so I ended up downing a ton of water as well. Sam felt a lot better after having McDonalds... American remedy to the rescue! It was awesome.
Then we found the car rental place to bring the car back. But they said they were going to charge us a fine because the car was so dirty... remember the off-roading we did in Agulhas. So rather than pay a 388 rand fee for that (over $50), we drove to a gas station where we filled up and then also got them to give us some water and cleaner and one of those window squeegees and we just cleaned the car on our own. So when we returned to the Hertz dealer they said we wouldn't have to pay the fee. We decided to wander on Long Street, where we passed by Mama Africa (restaurant we would go to the next night) and the Pan African Market (cool African restaurant and market that was closed! bummer. Need to make our way back there). We then caught a cab back to the Sunflower Stop.
For dinner we caught a cab to the V&A waterfront and did a little pre-dinner shopping. Getting our cab was kind of funny, since usually to get a cab (you can't really just hail them on the street here) we just go to the bar at the hostel and ask the bartender to call a cab for us. So we asked Renan, our trusty (hot) Brazilian bartender, "Hey can you please call a cab for us?" and he responded, "You want a pizza?", and we almost died laughing. But we eventually communicated that we needed a TAXI and he called it and we arrived at the waterfront soon enough. There are a TON of stores there, so we started out by browsing through the mall. Sam and I each got a pair of Havaiana's at the Havaiana store that have the South African flag on the strap and has the big 5 on the flip flops themselves. Awesomeee. We got dinner at the Cape Town Fish Market, which is a restaurant that has a rotating sushi bar. We sat at the bar, and there's like a conveyor belt that goes by that has all these different sushi dishes on it and you just take off whatever you want as they go by. This is of course a dangerous system. I had two dishes of sushi and also ordered a platter that was a sauteed Angelfish with calamari, which was incredible. We were bummed out because the ferris wheel that they have at the waterfront was CLOSED. So we vowed to return to ride the ferris wheel.
Then yesterday was our wine tour! Kevin, our tour guide/driver, picked us up at 8:30 am and we were on our way. There were 3 other people in the bus, an older Australian couple and then a kid from Brazil, who oddly enough didn't drink. We can't figure out if he just didn't know what kind of tour he had signed up for or if he just didn't get it or what. Weird. Our first stop was Fairview, which is a super famous winery that Sam had requested that we go to. We tasted 6 wines there and also got to taste cheeses! The cheese was incredible, and I bought two different kinds of fruit infused cheese (one with apricot and one with cranberries). I am just hoping that I can get it home without it spoiling. They said if you check it and its in the cargo of the plane it should keep it cool enough, so I hope thats right. The next stop was Solm's Delta. This one is a very interesting winery because they put 50% of their profits in a trust that goes to the education, medical bills, housing, etc. for their employees. This is one of the few wineries that has actually made steps to deal with the conditions and the way things were under apartheid. But Solm's actually makes a difference. We tried about 10 wines there, including an "experimental wine" that was a honey wine. It was actually really good. Sam ordered a case of 6 bottles to get sent to her home in NYC, and one of the bottles in it has my name on it! For some reason, you couldn't ship bottles to NJ - unsure why that was, especially considering that you could ship them to Hawaii, Alaska and Wyoming, all of which I think are much more difficult to get to/ random, but whatever, I don't make the rules.
After Solm's we went to Lanzerac. We tried three wines there and then had a picnic lunch that Kevin laid out for us. Pasta salad, ham sandwiches, salad, cheddar cheese and chips, and a yogurt sauce, and some really good bread that he had bought at Fairview for us. Lunch was amazing and really nice. We ate in the courtyard of the Lanzerac winery, which was just beautiful. Then we tried one more wine there after lunch. After lunch, Kevin drove us through Stellenbosch, which is a very old town in South Africa in the heart of wine country. Its a university town and has a ton of old buildings. Next up was a Brandy distillery. This was kind of an extra bonus and was very nice. When we entered they gave us all a brandy cocktail that tasted like peach nectar and was awesome. We got to try a 10 year aged and a 12 year aged brandy. The 12 year old one was just a bit smoother and richer flavored, but I wasn't really able to finish the 10 year old one.
The next stop was Spier winery, where we didn't taste any wines, but we got to pet CHEETAHS. They have a cheetah outreach center there, where they have several cheetahs. None of the other people petted the cheetahs, but they went in where you can just look at them. Sam and I were totally into it and went in to pet the cheetah. Our cheetah was named Joseph, and he was a 10 year old cheetah who is the oldest cheetah at the outreach center. Getting to pet him was SO insanely awesome.
This was just ridiculously cool to get to do. Then we proceeded onto our fourth winery, Vergenoegd. Here we saw them herding their ducks back into the winery for the night. They have these running ducks that they send out into the vineyard during the day to eat slugs and stuff and protect the plants (they can't send them out when the vines are ripening though or else they would eat the grapes). The ducks were hilarious to see running back into the winery. We went inside, and the building was like an old style Dutch house with a thatched roof and a gable in the center. Kevin said that they had the gable there because when the thatched roof would catch on fire, you needed the gable over the door so that as you run outside the burning thatch doesn't fall on you. We tried 9 different wines there. They only had one white wine, one rose, and the rest were all reds. They are really known for red wines. I got one bottle of the white ("Running Duck") and one of one of the red wines.
That was our last winery and then we headed back to Cape Town. Again on the way into the city, we drove past all of the slums. They are just staggering in their size and expanse.
Once we got back to the Sunflower Stop, we regrouped, and walked down to the V&A waterfront, hoping to ride the ferris wheel but it was closed! Allegedly, it was reopening today (Tuesday), so we are going to try it again on Wednesday. So we passed on the waterfront and took a cab to the City Center to go to Mama Africa. They specialize in game meats. I ordered grilled Springbok (basically tasted like lamb or beef, kind of a weird hybrid) and Sam ordered the mixed grill platter with crocodile, ostrich, springbok, kudu, and venison sausage. I tried to venison and the ostrich (both were yummy), but had to pass on the croc because it was a kebab with peanut sauce on it. So crocodile is still on my list to try. Once we were done with dinner, the band had started playing at the restaurant. It was a really cool African band with a lot of xylophones and two singers who were absolutely boss, so we stayed for a bit and checked that out.
Then we had to head back to the hostel since we were getting picked up this morning for the shark diving at 6:45 am! So that meant we would have to get up at 6:15 am to be ready in time. So we called it a night. Next entry will be today's adventure of shark diving, and our trip planned for tomorrow (Township Tour and Robben Island). Lates.
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