“Napa” Wine valley of South Africa

The end of our South African adventure took us about an hour and a half east of Cape Town to the beautiful Stellenbosch wine valley. It reminded us very much of the equivalent of the Napa wine valley in California. There were devastatingly stunning views of vineyards spread across verdant valleys surrounded by dramatic towering mountains. The mountains were nothing like what you would see around Napa but high-end wine estates with quaint inns and world-class restaurants were. Another thing that reminded us of northern California in the summer was the temperatures. They hovered in the low to upper 90s while we were there. Being non-drinkers, the industry was a bit lost on us but we could certainly enjoy the abounding aesthetic pleasures in every direction. For any wine lovers visiting South Africa, this would be a must-see stop on your itinerary.

Even before getting to our accommodations we stopped for lunch at an acclaimed restaurant that was part of a large wine estate and felt like we were living in some sort of fantasy world that wouldn’t normally include us.

Afterward, we checked into our inn where we would spend the next two nights. It was part of a vineyard estate, also, and the vines and mountains were prominently displayed from the floor to ceiling windows across our room.

It happened to be Valentine’s Day which we found out is a big holiday in South Africa. Our inn had booked dinner for us at a restaurant in the nearby town of Stellenbosch. It was a short drive and our first introduction to parking in urban areas. There are men who post themselves near any public parking area whether it be on-street or off. They wear neon green vests and expect you to pay them some small amount (maybe the equivalent of $1.50 an hour to “watch” your car while you are gone. We didn’t really know whether this was legitimate but accepted the amount he told us to pay him. Later on we were told that he should have given us a ticket that proved we had paid him so that no one else could claim we needed to pay them when we returned to the car. It left us both a bit anxious throughout dinner which was too bad but, again, part of understanding and experiencing the local culture.

As far as dinner, though, it was a beautifully presented, expertly served, quality meal consisting of many courses. It was too much to eat everything but we enjoyed every bite we had. After dinner we returned to our car. As it turned out, a different man did approach us and ask for money when we got back to the car but we just said we had already paid someone else and offered him the two roses we’d been given at dinner and he seemed content.

Our second day there, we drove into the foothills at one end of the valley to a small, quaint, town called Franschoek. It must mean “French Town” in Dutch because there were many references to all things French including an abundance of French restaurants and wine tasting venues. We walked around taking in the different feel of the town, doing some shopping, and finding a place for lunch.

Upon leaving the town, we decided to stop at a car museum we’d heard about. It was the Franschoek Motor Museum and consisted of 4 large buildings holding one man’s extensive car collection on his own estate. There were representative automobiles from the beginning of their invention all the way up to modern super cars from the 2000s. It was nicely done and, as car lovers, something we really appreciated.

One of the most fun things we did while in the Stellenbosch area was to go to the night market at the Boschendal Estate during dinner time. It occurs every Friday night and is set on the extensive and gorgeous grounds of this particular working vineyard. We got there shortly after it started and it was already full of, what seemed to be, mostly locals, groups of friends, and families all enjoying the setting, the extensive food stalls, booths selling home-made goods, and live music. It had a festive, fair-like feel to it and you could see that this would be something to attend regularly if you lived in the area.

We left the Stellenbosch Valley late Saturday morning, our final day to be in South Africa. We decided to drive to the Cape of Good Hope and experience the most south-western point of the African continent before turning our car in at the airport and catching the first of our two flights home. It turned out to be a long drive taking us past townships (very poor areas with small shacks made of pallet wood and tin corrugated roofs), along the open southern ocean, and through seaside towns which seemed popular with the Dutch and northern European visitors, before getting to the part of this cape which was desolate, isolated, and reminded us of moonscapes in certain areas. Once we were in the National Park, we learned that the Cape of Good Hope is not actually the southern most part of the continent, hence the wording on the sign saying most “south-western point”. It is also not actually the place which marks the meeting of the Indian Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean. That place is actually on another cape almost two hundred kilometers to the east. But this peninsula, which was named the Cape of Good Hope by a Portuguese king because of the great optimism engendered by the opening of a sea route to India and the East for his explorers, is symbolically considered to be the end of the the African continent because it is the place where ships stop sailing south and turn to the east when rounding the continent. It is a stark and dramatic landmark which felt somewhat momentous to be standing on and a fitting ending to what we consider to be our favorite trip to date, our eclectic tour of South Africa.

As this is being written, we have completed the first leg home, from Cape Town to Paris and are awaiting our flight from here to Los Angeles. No matter how fantastic our adventures, we always look forward to being home and thus nearer to our family and friends.