Outing to Franschhoek and amid wild animals
Trip Start
Jun 29, 2008
1
4
14
Trip End
Aug 31, 2008
Franschhoek,
Western Cape,
South Africa
Sunday, July 6, 2008
people attending the courses is so rich and they come from so diverse countries that it wants me to travel around even more, but I am definitely time and money limited! Yesterday, was also the first day I went out of Cape Town and saw how the rest of South Africa, namely Franschoek (not that far from CT), looked like. I have to say that the weather was horrible, still it was a fabolous outing with other young interns. It was also a good way to socialize with them and to my biggest surprise I even met a Flemish boy, which is excellent to practise my Dutch!!! franschhoek, is actually a small region given by the Dutch sailors to the French Huguenots who brought their expertise in the culture of wine and made the region very famous for that particular product. Their is a strong cultural heritage as many signs, farms etc do still have French names, but yet it is very rare to find people speaking French
Haute Cabrière entrance
. Interesting enough would be to see if there are some, and if yes, whether they also speak a kind of old French mixed with local influences alike what is today known a the "Afrikaans" language! South Africa is definitely a land of mixes and cultural "mélanges", which is so fascinating for a student in foreign languages like me. So we visited "Haute Cabrière" winery, which is obviously run by a family of English people who keep strong ties with French productors in France and in Spain as well. The owner, and his enthusiastic cynical, cold humour, led us through the caves and obviously invited us warmly to tastes the different kind of wines produced by the farm, for which most people came actually...For R30 it was quite honest! You can see on one of the picture a rainbow, but it is still far from reality. I had never seen a rainbow so close to me! After having lunched at Frenchhoek we went to the "Cheetah Outreach". We had the exclusivity to see cheetahs very very close and even to touch them!! very impressive I have to say, and people emplyed there do it on a voluntary basis for the love of an animal with is highly endangered. Luckily we had just the time to touch the cheetah before it rained again. I spent the rest of te day chilling with some friends of mine, none of them (except one) are from CT which is quite common here! there is an incredible living turn-over. I went out for the first time at a Café-Lounge club called Cubana, Beach Street/Straat. Originally a restaurant which turned out to be a real club, maybe becaus they offer Shisha and cigars. As I do not smoke and drink at all, I can not judge about the quality of the whole stuff, héhé. I was fine with my Coke and had a lot of fun! I am always amazed by how cheap it is, a guiness for R20, that is even not 2 €!! But of course do not fall in the trap of abusing too much thinking eveything is cheap anyway! Well, I am maybe going to the Ocean's Aquarium today. I will tell you about this later, after having finished my homework for my internship as well!!
