We made our way inland towards wine country. This was the final leg of the journey and potentially the most beautiful. After my ‘issues’ on the boat, I decided to drive (to avoid card sickness). Driving through South Africa you get a lot of surprises. Not just baboons but we also drove through an area of “African Horse Sickness” (obviously we have no photos because Josh never takes any when he’s copilot). The funniest thing we came across was this little truck driving in front of us offering “Voluntary Medical Male Circumcision”. I thought it would be funny to volunteer Josh but the truck was driving too fast (yes mother, there are people who drive faster than me), as he obviously had some urgent voluntary circumcision to see to.
Driving in to wine country it wasn’t anything like I expected. I’d been to vineyards before in South America and Europe but nothing like this. For one, it was by far the most beautiful I’ve ever seen. Especially with the afternoon sun covering the landscape, like a Hemingway-esque version of Africa 🙂
The other thing I never expected to see is such clear inequality. All the farms are of course owned by white, mainly Afrikaner families (and all except one in this region headed by men). It’s always kept in the family so there’s usually cousins owning different farms. And according to our landlady, a white lady from Namibia who bought a house here many years ago, it’s an impossible community to penetrate even if you’re white but not of old Afrikaner heritage.
Looking around the vineyards you can see business is going well- buildings are modern, new, and each vineyard/hotel/guesthouse is fancier than the next in an attempt to welcome/lure buyers (and the odd tourist looking for a free glass of wine like us).
But working on these lavish and sometimes extravagant farms is the black community. As we drive along around 4pm we see them walking the long way home in the heat, or piled up in a truck if you’re lucky enough to get a lift. And the towns that we drive through are a stark contrast to the fancy vineyards that we visit. Dirty streets, decrepit buildings, children in rags playing in the dirt- poverty everywhere. Here in this region, South Africa’s racial inequality is so blatantly clear. I have to say it actually got me more than a little upset and my unfair animosity towards this wealthy and entitled Afrikaner community grew.
After a few hours of driving, our first stop was Robertson, an up-coming wine growing area that had become one of the largest in the country. We would check it out and decide whether to stay or to move further towards Stellenbosche, the most famous and commercial wine producing district of South Africa.
We drove through this very humble town to a wine maker called Four Cousins (yes,owned by four cousins- kinda a “does what it says on the tin” branding approach) The Four Cousins wine bar/ restaurant looked like it had had more money invested in it than the whole of the rest of the district put together. I thought I would take full advantage of Josh driving the second half of the route and ordered myself a glass of rose. I had spent the last 6 months enjoying red wine and wanted to try something new but disappointingly it tasted more like slightly acidic Ribena then wine. Apparently the wines here are very sweet (definitely not my cup of tea).
But the visit wouldn’t be wasted- we were experiencing some of the most beautiful scenery of our trip and there were tractors everywhere – every wannabe Mexican cowgirl’s dream photo session. To Josh’s great dismay I wasn’t gonna let this opportunity pass. Josh ended up being designated photographer over the next two days in return for me being designated driver the following day.
We liked Robertson but not enough to stay, so after a while we made our way further inland. Josh suggested we take the extra scenic route (remember we were already in a Hemingway novel) which took us off road. We cobbled along some dirt road for about 20 minutes waiting for the scenic part and just as we started to lose hope and regret this decision, we moved in to what can only be described as one of the most beautiful drives of my life. For some reason it left such an amazing impression on me that months later I still quite often nostalgically travel back there in my mind. It’s difficult to describe the sensation but I told Josh I felt like I’d gone back in time to scenes from Gone with the Wind and the cotton pickers of the Deep South (U.S.) As a book/film fanatic I have read/watched scenes like this my whole life, but I have never lived one. The sun, the scenery and the people just came together perfectly. Definitely another “happy place” to add to the list.
As we recovered from our amazing drive and the sun set over the southernmost part of Africa we arrived at that night’s accommodation. Josh had found us a nice little country house owned by a Namibian lady. It was a historical house that used to belong to an Afrikaner family and so had a lot of Dutch influences. Very quaint and actually quite cute, although I still felt uncomfortable about the whole Afrikaner thing.
We settled in, had a tour of the surrounding countryside (accompanied by the compulsory photo opp – for the blog of course) and then came back for dinner. We had our 2 minute showers as water was scarce already (we were now dangerously close to Cape Town) and got ready for a lovely end to the evening- a totally not romantic candlelit cheese and wine dinner next to the vineyards.
In actual fact it was a very lovely and romantic setting. We were on our landlady’s terrace, overlooking the beautiful scenery, with amazing food (including posh cheeses and things like home made pate), and best of all we had access to her wine collection. Here I should mention that our landlady was a sommelier who had sat exams and had I don’t know how many special sommelier stars (you can ask Josh about that) but basically in layman’s terms she knew her shit.
The only thing that made this whole evening not romantic is Josh being the awkward Brit that he is going all hyper “British” on me every time I made a joke about our special date night. Obviously it was a purely platonic and friendly date night but even joking about this is apparently uncomfortable for some.
I did see Josh’s softer side that evening however- every time our landlady’s cute, young, pretty, blond daughter came out of the house to see if we needed anything. Then Josh would melt straight away and put on a much sweeter voice as he attempted to impress her with his charming and witty comments about how “lovely the evening is” or “how delicious her homemade humous is”.
Needless to say the only woman impressed that evening was me- and certainly not by Josh, but by the amazingly beautiful place we were lucky enough to find ourselves in. We rested well and prepared ourselves for the day of debauchery (and totally sober designated driving) that was to follow.
