South African Wine Country

Say "South Africa" and what comes to mind? Kruger National Park and cheetahs? Johannesburg and Soweto slums? Apartheid? Probably not fine wine, eh? The Stellenbosch-Franschoek valley area of South Africa's Western Cape produces some wonderfully drinkable wines! 

(A classic Cape Dutch style house)

Calitzdorp - a tiny town just outside the Swarzberg pass, is known for internationally award winning port. Now, I've never been a port fan before - but apparently i never had a good one - delicious!! This lovely town produces some heady, fruity (think raisins plus hazelnuts plus the smell of incoming rain and a hint of chocolate all layered on top of a little alcohol) liquor that is hard to put down. Indeed, after tasting about 6 ports, concluding with the 2006 vintage reserve, i decided NOT to! Asked the tasting manager if i could buy the glass so i could take the "dregs" with me, and she not only gave me the glass, but filled it up first! Port is very nice to sip while looking out truck windows along winding roads!! The Winery at Calitzdorp afforded me an opportunity to photograph a classic Cape Malay face. Cape Malay is a blend of native Africans with the various explorers and exploiters that reached here over the years - Dutch, Portuguese and Malasian. It is considered the height of sexiness for the women to knock out all of their front teeth!! Some people keep a set of dentures for work, some don't. She didn't! Sexy, eh?

Along the way we stopped at Ronnie's Sex Shop - a famous by-way on the way into Barrydale! Ronnie opened his little shop and some joker thoughtfully added the word "sex".

After Calitzdorp we headed over to Barrydale to meet up with the really great folks we met in Mozambique on the beach. Barrydale is an up-and-coming artsy little town on the edge of wine country - home to turn-of-the-century Cape Dutch architecture, fruit trees, grape arbors, and a brand new restaurant called Mez that not only has terrific food but is beautifully decorated by the artist-turned-chef owner Michelle.

Stop in for dinner if you're ever there - she only serves 2-3 mains per evening but they're different every week, along a Mediterranean theme. Last night was Provence night - cassoulette to die for!

 Tonight we're in Franschoek - home of the best restaurants in South Africa! Pics tomorrow when my camera is recharged!!


Eating our way around the cape! Julie, Jeff and Steve

Swarzberg Pass

Clinging precariously to the deep cut, redrock cliffs of the Swarzberg Pass, the scrub brush looks at first glance to be a desolate, lifeless mountain desert. Look closer. In wind so strong it threatens to tear off the truck doors, masses of wild pink geraniums, waxy pink and spiky king protea, and other wild flowers in masses of red, pink, yellow, purple, silver and green cling to the ragged mountainside. The flowers attract insects, which bring the birds - colorful sunbirds, canaries and finches by the dozens. The thorny acacia lives in harsh contrast to the soft purple asters that mass along the roadside. 

The road is a one lane, washboard twisting challenge that climbs a grade of more than 20 degrees in some places - the car coming up hill has the right of way! There are no guard rails between you and the 1000' sheer drop offs which run along side the roadway! If the gale would stop it would be a great place for base jumping! As it is, the ostrich looks right at home here in this wind-blasted area! 

Ostriches

The ostrich is a prehistoric looking fellow - massive bulky body, strong but naked legs, and utterly fay Charles Nelson Riley wings that flap like a frantic hairdresser! Stupid, aggressive, curious and greedy  (strangely like some humans, eh?) - if seagulls say "mine, mine, mine! (see "Finding Nemo") the ostrich says "What?! What?! What?!" The valley between the southern coast of South Africa and the area known as wine country is filled with these birds and it's a local delicacy. 


The first farm we came across had us so excited that we jumped out to photograph the 3 birds we saw in the distance. Turns out that there were HUNDREDS, and as soon as Steve started to photograph, they ALL had to come see what was going on! Hundreds of periscope heads squinting suspiciously to see what the other birds were looking at! Suddenly cows seem exotic!

 here they come!!

The bird party!

 Don't they live in a lovely valley?

The Garden Route

The waves along the southern coast of South Africa break at the foot of lush mountains. It rained hard all the last night and most of the day! Great day for sipping beer and eating oysters!So we headed for Knysna and tucked ourselves in!

Can't beat a place with a giant bottle of tobasco on the roof!! Later than evening we found a treehouse campgrounds with platforms in the trees where you pitch your tent. Our neighbors were vervet monkeys and hydida ibis.

Today we blasted through the Schwarzberg Pass - the breathtaking route between the Garden Route and the Wine Route. Craggy, wild mountains scattered with ostrich farms, birds and wild flowers of all kinds. 

 

The green lichen-covered sheer red rocks tower straight up from sea level to about 6000 feet. Along the way are lovely wild lupines, geraniums, proteas and lots of things i can't name!

So, we're off to a supper of ostrich, kudu and local shiraz! Peace, out! J

Update for the last week

WOW - it'ts been hard to find a place to blog from - not to mention the willpower to take time away from the beach to sit and type!! OK, enough bragging about beaches - here's what we've been doing!

When we left T & K's house in Swazi we headed for Lesotho (pronounced Lesutu). This could easily be the place to film another Lord of the Rings episode - it's the tallest place south of Kenya's Kilamanjaro. Indeed, the entire country is at altitude - the only place that can make that claim in Africa. Lesotho is a heritage kingdom carved out from South AFrica and entirely surrounded by it. By far the most pleasant border experience we've had to date, the border guards joined us that evening at the Highest Bar In Africa for a beer and a story.

Julie in the bar

Jeff and Steve in the bar.

Lesotho is a land of sheep, wool, overgrazing cattle and shepards on horseback. It's been absolutely completely deforested, yet it has an odd, harsh beauty of a high altitude pastureland and stunning mountain vistas. Took us about 4 hours to climb what claimed to be a mountain track (!) to reach the top - and despite our 4x4 Nissan and expert driving by Jeff, we still got smoked by a 2x4 minibus full of locals with tiny tires! Of course, WE had stopped to take pictures (yeah, pictures, that's it). Stayed 2 nights so that Jeff and Steve could hike, and i had a lovely horse ride across the high valley to the edge of the escarpment and through the grazing herds. Despite being not much to look at, my pony was a wonderful beast and it was a really nice morning (cold and sunny - the warmest time of year here and it was no more than 60!) 

We blasted across middle south africa to reach the sea - no real interesting stories to tell there - EXCEPT we did some bird watching from the car, and actually spotted the rare Bearded Vultures (no dirty jokes, it really is a bird!) along with the Long Tailed Widow bird (not to be confused with the Whyda) and the short tailed widow, and the red bishop!!

We spent a really beautiful day at the beach in Storm River Mouth - inside the Tsitsikamma National park. Definately a recommended stop, we saw whales breaching from the beach! The waves at this beach are HUGE - crashing relentlessly upon a line of rocks about 10 meters off shore.

There is a can't-be-beat hike along the beach that climbs about 500 meters to a promonitory that has breathtaking views of whale migration, during which you are kept risky company by monkeys and baboons.

We spotted the Cape Wagtail - a flirtacious little brown job that took us all day to identify - along with some sort of cormoran (sorry Scott!)


That's it for now - we're currently in Knaysna eating oysters by the dozens and drinking nice wine! Then it's off to the garden route with a stop to see our new friends from the Mozambiquan beach camp, and then on to the wine country. Hopefully i'll be able to get some photos up from there!
Cheers!

Swaziland and beyond

Picture Africa and you usually picture savannas and acacia trees and maybe the occasional baobab. Not Swaziland. Swazi is a tiny country bordering Mozambique and surrounded on 3 sides by South Africa. It's mountains and fog and green everywhere you look. It's cattle that wander unrestrained and national parks that still have rhinos. It's an inherited monarchy struggling with modern demands for a constitution-based democracy. It has the worst HIV rate in possibly the entire world (50% of all pregnant women test positive - imagine!) despite millions and millions of dollars spent annually on prevention and treatment strategies (although this is starting to stabilize).


Friends Thom and Kerry that we met in Ghana now live and work here with their 2 little girls. They bought a very cool house on the edge of a hillside that would be PRICELESS in the USA. 

The view from the living room - pretty great even with the fog, eh?

Our friend's back yard, pretty great, eh? And they have monkeys too! plus a lemon tree, a terraced veggie garden and of course, lots of free climbing opportunities! This is a place virtually free of mosquitos and malaria as well, and not many snakes or scorpions here in the hills either. While there isn't much crime either, Kumsi the giant boerboel will protect them from almost anything!

Swazi is also a land with lots of interesting and inspired artists. The land is perfect for raising mohair goats, and the local women spin and weave the wool into lovely shawls. There is also a thriving basket weaving industry that makes far lovelier baskets than anything we have in Zambia. 

So, we've spent a couple of days relaxing here in the cool and misty mountains enjoying old friendships. Yesterday we picked up our traveling companion Steve, and today we're off to Lesotho - another tiny country completely surrounded by South Africa. Hopefully we'll have more luck with our traveling electronic devices and cooler, crackberry and other devices will be supportive. 

oh - P.S. The election in Mozambique went off without any violence at all, and (surprise, surprise) the incumbent has been declared the winner. Ah well, at least it was peaceful! Did i tell you that all the streets of Maputo are named after communist and marxist heros? Yep, there's a Vladamir Lenin street, a Ho Chi Men boulevard, a Chang Kai Shec street, and of course, a Robert Mugabe way. Eliminates any doubts as to their political loyalties!

Random notes

8 countries in 40 days with no plan and a cooler of beer. That's what we intended but the darned cooler isn't working as planned. Technically, we have a cooler of beer, but as it's HOT, well, it's not nearly as much fun. Darn. now we'll have to stop along the way for rehydration!

Really enjoying the rain here - it was the dry season in Zambia and we hadn't seen rain in 6 months. Gets smelly. 

Friends in Swazi here have a bohrboel dog - HUGE beast! Will post photo soon.