9.6.06 Stellenbosch, Robertson and Oudtshoorn Hello and a warm welcome from the wine regions not far from CT. We’ve escaped the big city for the time being, and it certainly is nice to have a change of scenery! We decided to take the landy for a bit of a warm up run around to give us a better chance to see how she moves and what little niggles she might have and we can iron out any faults and really make sure she is ready for the big off. So we thought for the time being we would move in country and try to escape the rain a bit! By the way sorry if I confused you before talking about a campervan and then the landy, we haven’t bought both, we hired the campervan just for a week whilst sorting out the landy. We couldn’t resist the pull of the wine regions (that is Jason couldn’t!) and we were told that the routes and scenery out there were lovely too. Stellenbosch is only about an hour’s drive from CT and we stayed in a hostel called the Stumble Inn! Well I mean we stayed in the car park in the rooftop tent!! I guess that will be a common problem for us in the urban hostels, their camping areas are quite often behind the hostel building and we just aren’t going to get the landy through the front door!! But hey we’ll cope and it’s actually quite helpful because they don’t charge us as much for staying, but we still use all their facilities! Now Stellenbosch is a lovely little town with big hills all around it, it’s a beautiful setting. It has a very small American town feel to it, which is quite strange, but it’s lovely old style buildings make it a very attractive place. Obviously the most important focal point are the many wineries in the area and all of them are open for wine tasting (yum yum!). We met a great couple in the hostel (Ben and Karen, from Australia and America) and they were travelling around like us and we hooked up with them for an afternoon’s slurping (checking out some good ones for you Tor!). Driving to the wineries is really picturesque, lovely rocky outcrops with miles of vineyards at the foothills. It is a nice time of year to come because all the autumnal colours are out and when the sun is setting it really sets off the colours. The wineries are set around stunning estates and look very idyllic and Jas, Karen and Ben had a very good time testing lots of different wines. I’m the first person to admit that I’m not a wine drinker so I was more than happy to be the driver and let them indulge! I was lucky that at one of the tastings the vineyard had developed their own special chocolates to have with some of the wines to bring out the flavours more. They certainly were different, dark chocolate with rock salt in it, dark chocolate with ginger and chai (Indian tea), and milk chocolate with Turkish delight. Apparently they did go particularly well with the wines, but I’ll just take their word for it as I just ate mine neat! After a couple of days we moved on to Robertson, another wine area which we were told had a ‘Wacky Wine Weekend’ on. We thought we’d see what that was all about and amongst other things each of the wineries offer FREE wine tasting all weekend, there’s lots of food tasting and live music, boat trips, ghost tours and more! The highlight we have heard is that one of the wineries fills a 10,000 litre plunge pool with red wine and then drops a 4 carat diamond in it!!! Then for 50p you can have a swim in it and have a look for the diamond (how though I can’t imagine!) and if you find it you keep it! Jas has said he might have a go, not for finding the diamond mind you, just for the chance to swim in the wine!!! As it turns out he didn't go in, it was way too chilly for it, but it was fun watching other people freeze in there! We also found an amazing maze and cactus farm with over 2,500 different species! Sounds dull but it was surprisingly interesting!! Jas got some good photos too, every day's a camera day!! Then we moved further up to Oudtshoorn which is the major region for ostrich farming. Yep it is very odd seeing large fields full of ostriches, mile after mile. They are rapidly turning into one of my favourite animals, they look really funny running around. To see a truck load of them driving past with just their heads bobbing up and down is quite peculiar!! This are is also well known for it’s mountain passes and we drove through one called Swartberg Pass which was absolutely stunning and very very high up. The pass ends up following a gorge and that was beautiful! We also visited Cango caves which are Africa’s largest show caves and one of the seven wonders of Southern Africa. We went on the longer adventure tour which involved crawling around and squeezing through parts of the caves with names such as the Tunnel of Love, Devil’s Chimney and the Letterbox!! It was great and the big chambers with lots of stalactites and stalagmites were really lovely. Well you now find us back in CT finalising the mechanics on the landy and checking that we have got everything (we hope!) for setting off to Namibia on Monday! Yes I know we have spent a while in S.A. where all is still relatively civilised, but you’ll be pleased to hear that as of next week we are embarking on the more adventurous parts of our trip. At last we will be heading in to the relatively unknown (for us anyway!) and we will be regaling you with tales of wild animals surrounding the landy, 4x4 white knuckle journeys and other African high jinks!! For now though we will relax during our last few days in CT and I promise that the next weblog will be a landy special with an insight to all of our gizmos and gadgets and pictures for you to see us and it in full glory!! Bye bye for now and we’ll be back soon!