Table Mountain, Cheetahs, and Wine...

Day 3 South Africa:

This morning Tammy, Mychaela, Margaret, Jimmy, Flicker, Chris and I woke up early for our hike to the top of Table Mountain. All of the guidebooks said one must be ‘reasonably fit’ to do the hike, but this was a dramatic understatement!! This climb was by far the most physically demanding activity I have ever done.  We were climbing over boulders and up rocks for 2.5 hours before reaching the flat top of the mountain.  The path was the ‘easy route’ even!! It was such a great feeling turning in a circle and seeing ocean on either side with the huge city down below.  Feeling accomplished, yet exhausted, we had lunch looking out over the Indian Ocean from the top of the mountain. Quite the view!  After the long morning we made our way down to the base in just 1 minute on the rotating funicular.

For the second part of the day we drove out to Stellenbosh Wine Lands for an afternoon of wine tasting.  On the way out there we had all the windows down in the car and a black bee flew in and stung me on the leg!  I screamed because it felt like I got stabbed with a needle suddenly then it got swollen, hot, and red (I still have a weird bruise a week after the sting!!).  The drive was gorgeous though.  Our first stop in Stellenbosh was the cheetah sanctuary.  We all got to pet a cheetah and learn about their population struggle in Africa.  After, we went to Asara Winery where we tried 5 different wines and learned about what flavors to look for in each.  While I couldn’t quite taste the peach aroma or cherry blossom, I absolutely loved two of them.  We weren’t ready to leave the beautiful winery after our wine tasting was done so we moved to the outdoor lounge area with blankets and ordered a few bottles of our favorite wines.  The boys ordered some South African cigars and we all enjoyed the beautiful sunset.  It was one of my favorite moments of the entire semester just sitting there enjoying each others’ company surrounded by vineyards and stunning mountains.

For dinner we went to Moyo at Spier which is a must-do on any trip to the wine country. They have tree house seating and even painted our faces.  The tented restaurant has tea lights everywhere for a village experience. We sat right next to the stage and watched a traditional African performance.  The food was delicious! Completely exhausted we all fell asleep in the driveway by the fire pit waiting for our cab and agreed it was a great day!