Stellenbosch, Franschhoek, Paarl, and Cape Town, RSA

Our USA flags went back up on our rental car for the day and we wore some of our USA gear to celebrate our Independence Day.  We called Sylvia (from our Jo’burg B&B) for help in arranging a driver tomorrow in Jo’burg.  She totally remembered who we were and was as delightful as ever!  And she got us a driver!  We made one last valiant effort to find stamps to mail our postcards (Thanks again Richard and Carol for taking care of that for us!) and then took off with Claire and Ali on a tour of the Cape Winelands.  We drove through Stellenbosch (and the Stellenbosch campus) and then on to L’Ormarins in Franschhoek for wine tasting and old car viewing.  There is a car museum (Franschhoek Motor Museum) there with a TON of priceless cars on site.  There are so many cars that they rotate the selection through the three viewing warehouses.  Josh really liked checking out the old cars.  After the wine tasting, a worker there gave us a personal tour on the grounds past the historic buildings of the winery with beautiful Cape Dutch architecture.  The worker was quite taken with Josh and was certain that he was famous, but just couldn’t place him.  Ali tried to tell him he was a Kennedy, but the guy thought he saw him in a movie so we told him maybe he thought he was related to Daniel Craig.  It was so funny how sure this guy was that Josh wasn’t related to anybody, but actually WAS in the movies.  After our little tour we moved on to the Fairview winery in Paarl for cheese and wine tasting.  We checked out their goats and then headed back home for a proper braai send-off with Claire and Alistair, Richard and Carol, and Malcolm.  We had a great dinner with amazing people.  We were so sad to leave them.  After Malcolm, Claire and Ali left, we had one last evening of tea and biscuits with Carol and Richard.

Cape Town, RSA

Our previous drives to Hout Bay and to the Cape of Good Hope had left a small stretch of the Cape Town peninsula that we hadn’t seen.  After sleeping off the previous night’s wine and writing some postcards (though no one appears to use regular postal mail service in South Africa – that was a struggle, our lovely hosts Carol and Richard took the hassle on for us! Thanks guys!), we headed to Muizenberg with Claire for brunch at Knead.  There are some super famous changing shacks there for surfers and swimmers.  And Knead is a gorgeous refurbished building, as well.  From there, we drove the rest of the way of our missed loop around the Cape up to Chapman’s Peak, through Hout Bay to Camps Bay.  We stopped at roadside (really, cliffside) stalls for some crafts shopping, but didn’t buy anything.  We were in Camps Bay in time for the day’s first game so we went back to Sandbar.  We got to watch the Germany-Argentina 4-0 blowout and have sundowners (finally, proper sundowners – drinks in hand, with a view of the setting sun).  We also did some more shopping, buying a handmade soccer ball from Vida.  Our loop of the Cape now completed, we drove over the mountain pass back to Claire and Alistair’s house for wine and some Ben time!  We walked over to their neighborhood pub, Caffe Verdi, for dinner and the late Spain-Paraguay game.

Muizenberg:
Changing rooms:

View from Chapman’s Peak:

Josh, J & Claire at Chapman’s Peak:

We noticed how buggy our car got after our road trip while we were here:

Sandbar at Camps Bay:

Our Sundowners:

Enjoying drinks and the game and the view:

Camps Bay at dusk:

Cape Town, RSA

We headed down to the waterfront and found parking near the Clock Tower.  We were able to make it inside (through the line at the door) Paulaner after the 1st Brazil goal (10′).  It is a Beer Hall style establishment and we joined two old German gentlemen, 68 and 72 years old.  This was the 10th World Cup they had attended in a row – 40 years straight!  We got to hear their great stories and we had a good time.  We watched the Dutch beat Brazil!  After the game, we walked around the V&A Waterfront, before settling in at Hildebrand (under Alba, the bar we went to with Claire and Ali when we first arrived in Cape Town) for our anniversary dinner.  It is a grand, old waterfront restaurant.  Formal enough for a 5 year anniversary dinner with candlelit tables outside, under a tent with a heat lamp, on the water, but it still had TVs tucked away in the corners so we could watch the late game!  We had their carbonara and Cape Rock Lobster tail and tried our first Chenin Blanc.  It was an AMAZING CRAZY World Cup game:  a missed PK in the absolute last minute, last play of overtime, due to a handball, leading to a PK shoot out because it was still tied – where the Uruguay goalie then “guessed right” 4/4 times and managed to block 2!  The Africans everywhere were displeased by the “cheater” who handballed it, leading to the PKs in the first place. All Africans were pretty much rooting for the last African team in the Cup – even our formal waiters were lined up at the back of the tent watching the final, tense minutes.  After the craziness we headed home to recap our awesome day of Groot Constantia, District 6, Bo-Kaap, Paulaner Brauhaus, Hildebrand, the V&A Waterfront and two great soccer matches with Richard and Carol over more wine.  We had a GREAT 5th anniversary and we were happy to be back in Cape Town! (And Josh was so glad soccer was back, a great anniversary gift!)

Cape Town, RSA

We visited Bo-Kaap (official), the Malay Quarter.  It is a gorgeous neighborhood of bright pastel houses and buildings.  Many Muslims live there and there are great calls to prayers.  It is definitely unique from all the other neighborhoods and has a very distinct, community feel.  We really enjoyed our time there and had a nice chat with a gentlemen who was returning home after afternoon prayers (he liked that we enjoyed his neighborhood).  We walked all over the neighborhood, up and down the slopes, and found some cute hipster stores encroaching on the edges.  We headed back to the center of Bo-Kaap for a Cape Malay lunch at Biesmiellah.  We had Denningvleis (a yummy lamb dish) and Bobotie.  It was super good.

Cape Town, RSA

We drove from Constantia to the District 6 Museum.  It reminded us a bit of what happened with the forced relocations here in Boston in the West End.  We learned a lot about how the forced removals of black South Africans were legalized and how the museum is a place to keep the memories of the people of District 6.  It was heady stuff.

Cape Town, RSA

We celebrated our 5 year anniversary with a big day!  After getting a bit lost on the way, we started at Groot Constantia, “the oldest and most historic of wine farms in South Africa”.  We had an a-may-zing breakfast in the charming courtyard seats of Groot Constantia’s Jonkerhuis Restaurant.  We walked around the grounds, admired the Cape Dutch architecture, stopped by the gift shop and picked up some gifts.

Cape Agulhas, RSA to Cape Town, RSA (225km or 140mi)

After our great time at the southernmost tip of the continent, we spent a few minutes fiddling with the GPS (and with the analog maps) attempting to figure out if there was a connecting coastal route we could drive the whole way back to Cape Town.  Nothing seemed to work; the roads on the map didn’t appear to connect and they also weren’t named – just dashed lines.  So we decided not to chance it.  We gave Claire a call and her ma offered us a home-cooked meal for dinner!  That clinched it and our new goal was to find the quickest route home.  We took R316 through Napier (which was super cute) back up to the N2 and straight back to Cape Town.  The drive home took us less than 2 hours.  We had homemade lasagna with Claire, Richard and Carol.  It was delicious!  Thanks Carol!!  Somewhere along the route we had passed Ali going in the opposite direction, as he had driven to PE with friends for tomorrow’s game.  And other than the serious nature of Josh’s increasing soccer withdrawal, we were starting to recuperate from our colds.

The sunset almost caused many almost crashes:

Ben got tuckered out.  He was such a cuddlebug!

The drive back to Cape Town from Cape Agulhas:



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Cape Town, RSA to Oudtshoorn, RSA (420km or 260mi)

As depressed people do, we slept in a bit after the USA loss… USA loss, Celtics loss… It all seemed so much.  We decided to go on a sports-soul healing drive across the entire Western Cape and on across the Eastern Cape as well.  Richard encouraged us that our previous plans of just taking 1 day to drive to Addo (where we had reservations for Monday & Tuesday night) and 1 day back was not long enough to enjoy the drive.  After sleeping off the heavy losses, we hung out with our South African family and made some reservations for Oudtshoorn (official site) for the night – in a place where Richard and Carol knew someone who had stayed there before and they highly recommended it.  Additionally, Richard had a spare cell phone and SIM card so we didn’t have to go buy another one!  Even though we had barely used our previous cell, having one available as needed made us feel so much more connected and able adjust plans as needed.  It was so kind of them to let us borrow theirs and it made everything right with our world again (well, other than our USA loss – wink, wink).

We had heard of the Garden Route before we got to South Africa, and knew that we wanted to drive that one way of our trip to Addo – but when we arrived we learned of Route 62 (wiki).  Richard again highly recommended this scenic drive to Addo.  It was a gorgeous route along the mountains, and the striking landscapes seemed to change drastically by the hour.  We rattled off comparisons we were familiar with as drove.  Here is just a short sampling of some the wildly varied places we were reminded in the quickly changing landscape of the drive:  Grand Canyon, American Southwest, Petrified Forest, Australian Outback (although we’ve never been), the Badlands, Washington State, and West Virginia.

To get to Route 62, first we drove N1 through the Winelands and through a mountain range using the Huguenot Tunnel.  At Worcester we turned East on R60.  R60 follows the mountains to R62 and is a gorgeous drive.  We stopped in Robertson (official site) at the Rooiberg Winery (as Richard had suggested), but they were closed on Sundays so we ate at Bourbon Street and had Rooiberg wine there.  We drove through the super cute towns of Montague (official site) and Barrydale (official site) while listening to the game in both English and Afrikaans on the radio.  We thought we could understand the Afrikaans broadcast well enough to know when a goal had been scored and for which team, but it turns out when we get into range of an English broadcast several goals had been scored for both Germany and England that we had been unaware of!

We passed by Ronnie’s Sex Shop – which is supposed to be an awesome pub – but we had just gotten to a good radio station with the game in English and the sun was starting to set so we didn’t want to miss any of the landscape.  (The sunset was gorgeous!)

Despite our efforts, it was dark by the time we got to Oudtshoorn.  The Buffelsdrift Game Lodge, where we were staying, was  about 7km outside of town.  It was INCREDIBLY lux.  We tried to document the luxury details in the “tent” before we headed to dinner at the lodge restaurant.  We had an AMAZING dinner:  South African wine, ostrich wellington, venison loin medium rare, Afrikaans oven bread and malva pudding with custard.  Over the top ridiculously good.  We can’t say enough about the accommodations or the dinner – amazing.  Jeannette loved her HOT pedestal bath with salts and we loved falling asleep to a cacophony of loud birds. A great start to our road trip inside of a trip.

Our route for the day:

Our first start of the Mountain Route:

We saw baboons!

Huguenot Tunnel:

Cute church in Barrydale:

Canyons, just as the sun was going down:

Our tent at the Buffelsdrift Game Lodge:

Cape Town, RSA

When we got back from the Cape of Good Hope, we made our way back downtown.  We had good seats in The Dubliner like the previous USA win, but it didn’t have the same “vibe” so we decided to try our luck at finding a new locale and more American comrades.  We walked up and down Long Street, gathering a greater nucleus of American fans each trip until we were in a group of about 25 or so.  As a group we decided to head to the Purple Turtle (which we had previously heard was a bit shady).  We paid a small cover.  Inside we watched a great game with lots of Americans.  By the end of the night, the USA had lost a game and we were down a South African cell phone.   Come to find out a pickpocket had worked the whole crowd and scored a few wallets and phones that evening.

We were pretty dejected as we had to walk the length of Long Street to get to our car through super happy and singing South Africans (they were cheering for any African team at this point).  One favorite though came from a European fan (can’t recall which country though) who yelled at us: “What do you say now, USA?”  I just replied, “Next World Cup”, with a wry smile.  This immediately made them smile and say, “Yeah, us too.”

In conclusion, The Dubliner > Purple Turtle.

Cape Town, RSA

After seeing the penguins, we headed the rest of the way down False Bay to the Cape of Good Hope.  There were all sorts of signs for baboons and Josh finally got to see some on the way into the National Park (Jeannette was taking a cat nap).  The old lighthouse was beautiful and we had a good time exploring around Cape Point.  It was SUPER windy (as will be evidenced in the photos below).  All in all, this day out on the Cape of Good Hope was a very successful trip for Josh’s inner child to finally see where Prince Henry the Navigator dabbled in exploration, as it had fully captured his imagination when he was a boy.  When we left the park, we decided to go home the “quick” way so that we could catch some of the Round 2 Uruguay-Korea game.  We were able to do just that and watch the second half at home before heading back downtown to watch the USA play in the second round.

Our drive from Kalk Bay, to Simon’s Town, to Boulders Beach, to Cape Point:

Inside the Cape of Good Hope National Park:

The old lighthouse:

Hold on to your cap, Josh!

Needless to say, we needed a comb after we left!

You’re looking at the southernmost tip of… Cape Point! (They have determined that Cape Agulhas is farther south on the African continent, though most Cape Towners still talk about the Cape of Good Hope as the southernmost tip.  When you remind them it isn’t, they say “Well, it’s the symbolic southernmost tip of Africa. They have no need for L’Agulhas. Haha!)

This is the modern beacon for the Cape Point.  The old lighthouse is no longer functioning.

A story of the bad hair day to come:

Looking North: