Wine Tours and Table Mountain

Friday night was fun. We went to a rugby club called the Springbok (which is South Africa's rugby mascot) and it was a good time, finally a club with people our age! We also tried absinthe, which is entertaining to drink. You pour a wine glass about a third full with it, and hold a spoon filled with sugar over the glass with a little bit of the liquid in it, then light the spoon on fire. When the sugar carmelizes, you stir it in, blow the flame out and drink the glass.

This is a picture of the first (and best) winery we went to in Stellenbosch.

The wine tour on saturday took us around Stellenbosch, to 4 different wineries. The first one was the most beautiful, and most stereotypical plantation. De Leuwen Jagt was the former name of it, which means the Lion Hunt in Afrikaans. We sat at tables on a lawn that overlooked the entire vinyard, and had mountains in the background. It was gorgeous. The next two wineries we went to were more modern, and very chic, but also beautiful. I don't like wine very much. So, all day I bought one bottle of dessert wine because it tastes like candy. It was a fun trip, and we got to check out the Cape Dutch architecture and enjoy all sorts of wine. We stopped in Stellenbosch for lunch, near the university and had some delicious food.

When we got home, a bunch of us took a taxi to Camp's Bay beach and watched the sun go down- the perfect ending to our day. We then went out for sushi, and since I hate the way seaweed tastes I got raw fish on rice which was much better. I had pad thai with it which I also enjoyed. I'm getting better about new foods.

This is a picture of the sunset on Camps Bay beach.

Sunday was Table Mountain day. We went to bed early so we could get up at 7 to get on the mountain and be done with it before noon. Table mountain is the wierdest mountain I've ever seen. We went to the botanical gardens then climbed up Skeleton Gorge to one of the highest points. We met a group of South African climbers who warned us not to take the cliff side route since it was difficult and made it seem like you could fall off the mountain. Having heard that from our friends who had climbed the week before, we opted for the resivour route.

This was a poor life choice. The boys who had the map kind of ditched us, and I ended up climbing with Kelly, Steph and Marcella. We walked past lakes with sandy beaches and red water, on the top of a mountain!!! It was extremely weird. After we passed them, we saw people laying out tanning, on top of table mountain in their bathing suits by the water. We kept hiking, and reached another summit, thinking it was the last one. It was not, and we headed downhill looking for the cable car lift to take us down. We climbed several summits this way. And by climbed I mean climbed cliff faces via the laddars that were bolted into them, or climbed along the cliff using chains bolted into it. We didn't know that we'd accidentally taken the advanced challenge trail. Poor choice. Basically we ran out of water, got scared, and luckily we decided to keep going, and as soon as we made it over the last ridge, we saw the cable car and restaurant off in the distance. Matt was waiting for us with chilled bottles of water, and we ate lunch and took pictures. We took the cable car down, which was also scary, considering that it had no glass windows on half of it. Oh dear.


This is a picture of the lake on top of Table Mountain. Wierd. You can see the city below in the distance.


After that rough morning, we went to Camps Bay, ate Kauai and spent the day at the beach. Glorious. Although the water was freezing.

Today was some what productive, we went to the Park and talked with the co researchers about our final project, and worked with them on gathering life stories of people. I went with three of them and we talked to people in about five houses and took pictures, and asked them information about themselves. The insides of the shacks are sometimes nice, you'd think it was a tiny regular home from the inside.

This is a picture from the look out station on Table Mountain, overlooking Camps Bay and the Atlantic.