Wine Tour

Today is our last day in Cape Town and also the day of our wine Tour. It is also hot 32degrees and that's centigrade.

Our tour operator arrived at 8 am to take us to Cape Town to pick up some Brazilian teachers (I didn't ask them if they had one) Then we headed for Franchoek. Wine production in this area started in the 1800's when a group of French Huguenots settled in the area. A chap from the Dutch East India Company got production going by integrating the French into the Dutch community. The tow has a wild west feel with one tree lined main street running through it's middle with wide gabled buildings on either side. After a quick walk around we had a mountain bike ride around the surrounding countryside to work u a thirst.

Our first winery was the Le Grande estate. Very quiet and peaceful and a pleasant atmosphere t start our wine tasting of their 5 wines finishing off with a very nice Muscadet.

Next we visited Stellenbosch - the heart of Afrikanerdom and the site of South Africa's second university and also our next vineyard. Six ore glasses of six different wines and it was time for lunch followed by a tour of the cellars and the wine making machinery. This was a small scale operation compared to some of the estates.

Our final vineyard was a more commercial outfit which had expanded into a cheetah awareness project where visitors could get up close to some captive cheetahs - something to do before the wine tasting.

All in all a pleasant way to end off a week in Cape Town and listening to the stories from other volunteers which are too many to mention now.Tomorrow it's off to Annaponpondo with a 22 hour coach trip so no post tomorrow.