My last week

My future boss in New Zealand, Gerhard, said that if I brought him a decent bottle of South African brandy, then he'd trade me for a New Zealand Pinot. I promised him I'd stop at the distillery in Robertson on my way out of town. He gave me instructions on public transportation to Carterton, the town near the winery and I remembered how pleasant public transport is in that country. A bus leaves every fifteen minutes from Wellington airport which will take me to the train station in thirty minutes which is plenty of time to catch my train north. The train even stops in Carterton, a town of 4,200 people. For the weekend, we moved into the big house one last time and went to Marinus' house for an indoor braai. They are so crazy about their wood-fired barbecues that they build a fire pit inside. And yet they are too lazy to make a cup of real coffee. Baffling...Anyway, Celeste's brother and his wife were there to say goodbye before they moved to Botswana the next week. Marinus kept us up late complaining about the vineyards here and drinking Scotch. We went into Worcester to go to the mall in the back of Marinus' small pick up. We made a lot of friends waving at us through town. One car even pulled up along side us and yelled something in Afrikaans. I did some research on the Garden Route and weighed my options for what to do after New Zealand because they require that I have a flight booked out of the country before my visa would expire. Fiji sounded like a good time to me, so I'll probably get a flight before I leave South Africa. Lorena made more bread, and some brownies using the owner's ingredients. That was the good part about staying in the big house. On Monday, we cleaned and got ready to press, but Alfred came by after work and told us we were harvesting instead because it was supposed to rain on Wednesday. Marinus invited us to another braai to celebrate the end of harvest.