South America and South Africa

The five days before X-Mas Claire, Roberto and I did an excursion to the Garden Route along the coastline East to Cape Town and back on the Route 62, which is in the hinterland of the coast leading through a more mountainous area. The final half day we spent in the Wine Country of Stellenbosch having two wine tastings before the wineries closed. On our way to the Garden Route we visited the towns of Hermanus, Whale Watching capital of South Africa and Mossel Bay, which is a good place for Great White Shark encounters. However, we skipped both of the activities and were also not too excited about both towns. The whole region appears to be overly developed and I had the feeling it would have been good to be there 20ish years ago.

We made our first and second overnight stop in the decent little town of Wilderness, where I could do some paragliding. I didn’t know before about the flying sites here and close by and when about it I was eager to fly the next day. (Now Africa is the fourth continent I did paragliding.) I rented the equipment and went to the flying site “Map of Africa”, a soaring ridge with a landing zone right at the beach. The first flight was about 90 minutes and it was actually more difficult to get down than staying in the air but considering the 25plus other gliders in the air in a smallish site and that I didn’t have a reserve it was clearly safer to land than risking a collision.The day thereafter we went to Storm’s River Mouth where the strong breaking of waves impressed me a lot. I watched it for hours and didn’t get tired of the ever changing play of the water.

We chose to get back via the Route 62, a route that is considerable less popular  than the Garden Route but with a very different and according to my mind nicer appeal. I preferred it to the Garden Route as it is less developed and some of the towns had simply a friendly somewhat sleepy atmosphere. The night we spent in Oudtshoorn closer to Cape Town followed by an excursion over the Swartberg Pass and through the Swartberg Canyon the next morning. The strangely shaped rock formations reminded me of the lines of finger prints. We ended up in Montagu in a hostel where the units were former horse-boxes in a barn.

After traveling to Stellenbosch, the biggest and best known wine-producing region of South Africa we were there right in time for the wine tastings before the wineries closed. In the first one we had an interesting conversation with young winemaker about his philosophy of winemaking, what he would do differently than his boss, his view on the wines of the Old World and the New World, where he would like to travel to learn more about the wines, etc. I think we benefited from being the last customers of the days and that nobody else was around anymore. The other winery was one of the big ones called “Delheim” led by a German immigrant who was coming in the 1950’s to South Africa.

To summarize the excursion I must say these were some very pleasant days and the “backyards” of the country are also well worth visiting.