Table Mountain and Winelands Tour

Yesterday I woke up at 8 am and was supposed to go on my Cultural Tour, but decided to opt out. For one, I wasn't feeling super when I woke up and didn't want to be stuck driving around with a schedule to keep all day if I was sick. Also, I had heard that the tour isn't that great, that you get to see a couple neat things but the highlight is visiting a township, and doing so in a touristy way doesn't interest me. I know the point is to get a glimpse of their culture and township life but to me it seems like most people would just end up gawking at their poverty which seems wrong- these are peoples LIVES. I don't know, that's just the way I feel about it.

Instead Georgina and I decided to finally get to the top of Table Mountain the easy way- Cable Car! We went around noon and had to wait about 20 minutes to catch a car up. The cars are really neat- hold about 60 people and have a rotating floor, so you get a 360 degree view going up and down. It ascends the mountain in probably two minutes For most of the time you are hanging not too far above the mountain, but at a certain point all of a sudden you are hanging over NOTHING and that was kind of scary, though the views were INCREDIBLE. On top you can see everything- Camps Bay and the Twelve Apostles on one side, all of Cape Town, the Waterfront, Obs and beyond on another side, and then a huge expanse of mountains in another direction. We walked around on top for a while on nice trails and then we had lunch at the restaurant outside. We visited the gift shop (I bought a t-shirt) and then headed back down- were probably up there for about three hours. We are lucky that we just happened to chose this day to go because the weather was absolutely perfect up top, and a lot of the time this is not the case due to cloud coverage.



Today was all together an amazing day- WINELANDS TOUR! First and foremost, it was nice to have an outing with everyone (Georgina, Ida, Amy, Amanda, Jenn, Amanda, & Christiaan), an international bunch (3 Americans, 2 Canadians, 2 Norwegians, and an English girl). Everyone gets along great and really enjoys each other's company it seems. It is so nice to be forming friendships with these people and then to experience things with people that you genuinely like.

This morning I woke up at 6:30 am (seriously what is wrong with me?? My roommates will vouch for the fact that this is very unlike me... maybe I'm turning over a new leaf?). Unfortunately the first thing I did when I woke up was electrocute myself on an outlet- also I am rather accident-prone here. Anyways we left around 8:30 am I think and had about a 45 minute drive to the first winery (I will have to come back and fill in names- can't remember now). The drive became more and more scenic as we entered the winelands and passed dozens and dozens of estates. Finally we reached out destination- a beautiful estate with a driveway lined with orange trees up to an archway through which you could see the fountain the courtyard inside. We got a short tour throughout the buildings with huge vats to hold the wine and rooms filled with hundreds of wine barrels. We also got to go out and pick some grapes off the vine though they weren't quite ripe (they need another month or two). Then we sat down for the first tasting at a long table under an overhang overlooking the courtyard. All in all we probably tried nine or ten wines here I think- about 5 whites, 4 reds and one desert wine (approximately). With the last three we had chocolate to try with each- one piece of chai chocolate (I bought some of this- delicious), then a piece of salt chocolate (not my favorite, kind of strange but good) and then the last was the geranium chocolate which tasted like you were eating a flower. The whole experience was very informative, very relaxing, and very tasty. We probably sat there for two hours. (During which time it is important to note that I recruited THREE people (Amanda, Jenn, and Christiaan) to go skydiving!! Woohoo!)


At the first winery.


The whole group!

We left this estate and headed next to the cheetah conservation place to pet a cheetah! Of course you end up paying about $10 for 5 minutes with a cheetah but I don't care- it was worth it. We pet Joseph, a 6 year old male and he layed there and purred so loudly, he loved it. The place is for cheetahs that were abandoned by their mothers or whose mothers were killed, and they have 13 cheetahs. Sadly, after cheetahs have been raised in captivity they cannot be released back into the wild, but this seemed like an okay home for them. Joseph was big and beautiful and it was VERY neat to pet him and be so up close. Very cool experience.



After this we drove a while to our next destination- lunch, which was great because we were all STARVING (and a few of us tipsy as well). Lunch was on AVIVA at a cute restaurant called Essence- I had a chicken sandwhich, fries and a small salad. Next we drove to winery number two (along the way passing zebra, ostrich, etc along the road) where we had our second tasting. Tried probably 6 wines but this place was not quite as nice as the first, plus we were in a bit of a rush to get to our third winery. And the last one was, like the first, gorgeous! Beautiful gardens, fountains, and goats as well. At this place you could taste six wines for 20R- $2.00! Plus, you got to chose from a long list which ones you wanted to try. Everyone kind of rushed through and only tried about four, but Amy and I took our time and ended up trying seven (guess the people liked us), all of which were soooo good. I should have bought some. Granted, at the end of this Amy was tanked and I was pretty drunk but I guess that is what a day of wine tasting will do to you. It was fun. We also got to do a cheese tasting (delicious) and I bought two cheeses- one with cranberries in it and one goat cheese for $3.00 all together (probably would have cost at least $10.00 at home?). So those will be delicious to have at Bap this shift. We left this winery to head home but Amy suggested we head to the Waterfront instead for Harry's Pancakes, where everyone had to try the banana and cinnamon pancake dessert. We all agreed so drove straight to the Waterfront and ate outside by the water at sunset. I got a pancake with ground ostrich on it (my first taste of ostrich- good!) and then the banana pancake for desert (mmmmm!). I like the idea of pancakes with anything for any meal here, and it is very popular. Dinner was the perfect end to an amazing, beautiful, fun-filled day.


My ostrich pancake!

Now I am really tired and will probably head back and go pretty much straight to bed (need to call Mom and Dad first!). Tomorrow we are back to Bap, and on the way we are going to buy about 100 new bottles so that we can reorganize and relabel all of the babies bottles. Our shift is also working on making new poster boards with all the kids pictures on it (one currently hangs in the Bap flat but is very out of date). So these are our projects for this shift. We have decided to take a bit of action and do what we can to better the baby house since there are so many things there that need work.

Tomorrow night is an AVIVA braai at the Table View house, so we will come back from Bap after serving dinner and get to sleep at Obs tomorrow night (very nice!) and return to Bap on Thursday morning. I will spend Thursday night there, but Ida and I are coming home Friday night instead of staying until Saturday morning so that we can go Shark Cage Diving on Saturday (leaves around 5 am!). Sunday I am going kloofing, and now we are going to try to book skydiving for Monday (hopefully we will be able to do this though I have no idea how far in advance you need to book it and I guess often trips are canceled due to weather, so we will have to see about all that). In other words, my next break will be known as "Lauren's Adventure and Death-Defying Break" and I am SO excited.

After these past six days off all I can say is that I am incredibly happy here and with all that I have been seeing and doing. And now I get to go back to my babies... not a bad deal =)