Bo La Motte Farm Cottages Franschhoek

... very interesting to learn about how the wine is mde and the history of winemaking and after that the tasting commenced! We picked up our 1980s VW Golf hire car and headed to Franschhoek ("French Corner" in Afrikaans). Julie was very excited by the fact that all the places had French names, but sadly no one spoke any French (they effectively made it illegal soon after the French arrived in the late 17th century). Being the self ...

... Still: more buying. We have lunch here with ... a bottle of wine of course and liar dice. Kleine Zalze is the last one. Pretty jolly but we have enough wine for another week ! We all need a snooze after that. In the evening, we find a cozy restaurant with a nice garden. Food and games. Tomorrow we go to Cape Town, where we .... But you will see that tomorrow.

... I was flying the first leg of my trip. I had met two young men in the terminal before we boarded the plane. My first two companions on my journey-- although I can't remember their names... One of the men bought a bottle of rum in the airport and my other male companion bought us orange juice. We all sat in the terminal drinking and sharing stories and concerns about our future travels. One was going to Ghana because his sister was a high official in the US ...

... but has managed to get a room there while he does a three month internship for what I think is an engineering company. He had no-one to go up the Mountain with as his friend had just cancelled on him, so we said why didn't he come up with us, he agreed and we spent a very pleasant day together. So back to the story. A rather unassuming pair of guys in black T-shirts, one with a beard and tattoo, one who looked like a weedy mountian goat with a night cap on, were sitting by one ...

... Monday (14th) we got absolutely soaked getting here and back, and when we walked to the Spar to do our shopping it decided to start tipping it down. We returned home looking like a pair of drowned orphans or rats and I didn't have my coat, having locked it into my room and then managed to lock myself out of my room (this happened twice, and the second time I just went and bought a new padlock and got the university securtiy guys to come and clip my duff lock off.) There are no ...

... that caused a huge outcry in France. It was only after a court battle with the french government that Back was granted the right to keep his label. "Goats do Roam in Villages Red" and "Bored Doe" soon followed. There is even a "Goatfather". Those were the silly wines, but they did an incredibly good Sweet Red, that goes very well with blue cheese. We drove past Drakenstein prision where Mandela was kept until 1990, (which is still a working prision for petty criminals, we saw ...

... place. I didn't mind it so much. We stayed in the front dorms which apparently tend to be a bit cleaner I have heard. We also were only there for one night. It has a winetour which is very complete and cheap comparatively. It takes you to all the areas Stellenbosh, Franschhoek, and Pearrl, which in itself is a great deal just for transportation. The minibuses, tours and vineyards are quiet limiting on the weekends. The Otter's Bend in Franschhoek is supposed to be very ...

... in Cape Town, I started checking out all the interesting old buildings, and even the odd museum or two. It was actually colder than I expected, so I put on my of the clothes in my bag and reverted to sleeping in my sleeping bag at night rather than relying on the somewhat thin dormitory linens. I decided to climb Table Mountain with a guy I met from France, but he was a bit of a chain smoker, so it wasn't long before ...

... a few wineries and yet again (large sigh) eat more incredible food. We are staying at our first small inn (this place only has 6 rooms) and spent the first few minutes scrambling to get a table at the best places over the next two days. Franschhoek is in a beautiful, bucolic valley and is the quintessential example of a nice weekend getaway. The views are simply amazing. Lambryne says that she could live here ...

... held our collective breaths to go underwater and glimpse a small shark who was so disinterested in what we had to offer that it took 5 hours to meander out of its way, probably out of boredom, before being screeched at to get out (us, not the shark) so everyone else could be similarly stimulated. THEN, the captain of the boat said, "it's a really bad time of year to see sharks". Hey, no-one said that before they took our 800 rand. Jeez, I could get mugged for less than that ...