Rolands Uitspan Stellenbosch

Today we went on a wine tour to the Stellenbosch wine region just outside Cape Town.<br><br>It was a lovely day and we learnt about the process of wine making, I was surprised it only takes 21 days to make a white wine (C******nays take longer as they are oaked for a while), and reds take 1 to 4 years depending on the barrel time. The colour of red wine comes from a fermentation with the skins, which removed the pigment into the liquid. <br><br>As for the wines there were ...

Tonight, I find myself sitting amoungst a large amount of decisions... not personal decisions but material decisions. What t-shirt, how many pairs of socks, which will be the most comfortable underwear? immediately i think about how excited i am to go and rough it, to have choices, endless choices.. fluid plans. I imagine us deciding on the places we want to go, and on which day, at which time, all at the last minute... but these late decisions ...

... the 20th taste of wine, this winery was the only place that actually led us through a true (or at least as far as I know) tasting of the wines. No matter. The sun was shining, the wine was tasty and the company was superb- even the lunch was delicious! It was, in fact, at lunch when we all decided that we would stay an extra night in Stellenbosch. I've come to the conclusion that it is quite difficult to stay in one place for only ...

... try some Ostrich, it had quite a strange taste - sort of smoky and fragrant - but I think that was maybe because of the way it was cooked, I also had a little springbok which was basically like venison. There was a group performing drumming, singing and dancing to entertain us while we ate and (I hope it works) I've included a little clip of the singing for you to have a listen to. I think it was my favorite thing ...

... the day the woman at my ticket window, after hurriedly issuing tickets to the person before me, asked "how many?", I replied "two" and she said "here are your tickets for the 3pm ferry". With four hours to kill, we decided to go up to the Table Mountain Cableway and try our luck. The wind had been fairly strong that day and the cable car wasn't operating when we left Villa Lutzi. As we were driving up Kloof Nek Road towards the Cableway we could see that ...

... from young white South Africans that they intend on leaving because of a lack of opportunity for them here...I'm not sure how realistic their fears are or not.) One woman said that as bad as the economic or political situation in South Africa may seem at times, people trust that it will come around, and that the reason people are leaving is because of crime--it's the one issue, she argues, for which there is no foreseeable solution. As always, race was a ...

... nice people. The base was nuzzled in a little suburb beach town composed of decently well off people who were of the sleepy beach town nature. We were blessed with a great view of Mountain and a Bay with some nice ocean sounds to sleep too!! We crammed our overly packed and extremely burdening suit cases (4... full of wine, presents and way too much clothes), back packs, guitar case, and computer cases into my room and started on with our new Adventure in South Africa. The plan was ...

... layer of yeast on the bottom. The interesting part is how to get rid of this. The bottles are put into racks about 20 degrees top-down, and then for 2 weeks, they are turned 90 degrees, once a day. The bottles all have a mark on the bottom to indicate rotational position for this turning process - next time you get bubbly, check the bottom and see if the mark is there; if not, it was artificially carbonated. Of course ...

... to produce something new that they could show off for us. Mary and I laughed and clapped and dropped our jaws as we watched them. Just as things were starting to get out of hand and we were glad a regular teacher was coming in to relieve us, a young boy came in to the class and said "now you will watch this class all afternoon!" Ha ha ha ha. So here we are with 40 rambunctious boys and girls for two and a half hours with no ...

... the kilometres and kilometres of tin shacks that make up the acomodation style for most Capetowniens. While here we were met by Mr and Mrs Poelzl (aka Mum and Dad), as well as looking around the city we also did day trips out to Stellenbosch for some wine tasting, to Cape of Good Hope and a day trip to Hermanus for whale watching.