After work Friday, Lorena and I drove to Stellenbosch and stayed at a flat (apartment) that was attached to the house of a friend of Marinus'. It was very nice for $21/night. But it did hurt that that is about a day and a half's wages. In the morning I went for a swim in the owner's pool and saw a huge spider on the filter that looked like the one that I killed on the side of our house at the winery. Then I swam as fast as I could out of the pool.
Lorena and I took the cable car up Table Mountain and walked back down the nearly vertical mountain. The views were amazing. We walked from the West side of the mountain to the East side in 45 minutes and it was nearly flat. The walk 3000 feet down was steep and difficult, but fun. It seemed much better when we passed people walking up the mountain. It made the whole trip worthwhile.
Afterwards we went to the waterfront with all the other tourists. There is the mall in Cape Town, plenty of bars and restaurants, live music, and the port. I went to a brew pub and was very pleased to find good beer, although Scottish style. They were all sweet, but much better than anything else here. Dinner was a large platter of seafood. I got a good night's sleep after the hiking and beer.
Sunday morning we went to a beach South of Cape Town where the water is warmer, but it was so windy that it felt cold outside. Most people left the beach before noon. To kill time we went wine tasting at a couple fo places. Avontuur was very snooty: they took our name at the front gate and the woman behind the counter was rude. The wines were ok to pretty good. The next place was much better. The guy behind the bar knew his stuff, was very helpful and gave us generous pours. Try to pronounce this place: Blaauwklippen. The best part was they had Zinfandel! A white one, not pink, and red one, and a late harvest. The late harvest malbec tasted like chocolate. It is also the oldest winery in South Africa, over 300 years old.
On the way out of Stellenbosch, Marinus led us over a mountain pass with spectacular views and gorgeous mountains that I wanted to hike up. We saw babboons on the side of the road and wild ostriches.
Once back in the house at the winery, Lorena saw a woman with a child running away from a man. He was chasing her with a broken beer bottle and had blood all down his arm. We drove to the front of the winery to tell someone and saw a police car already here. It turned out that everyone was ok. The man got drunk all day and was jealous for some reason. We talked to Tina, the owner, and she was very nonchalant about the whole thing and said, "That's how they live," referring to the black people. Lorena and I shared our disgust for the racism here. I pointed out that it also about what class people are. The black people are kept in poverty, then white people blame it on the blacks. As an analogy I was thinking about how poor white people were treated in the US, such as the Irish when they first came over.
My posts will become less frequent now because we start harvesting on Tuesday, so I'll be busy and I won't be having much fun to write about.
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