Steve and Cathy's Blog

Yolanda, our guide at the Blaauwklippen Winery

The excursion du jour is to the town of Stellenbosch, which is about fifty miles from Cape Town. The town is a center of the western Cape wine-producing region, which has 600-800 “wine estates,” so we can see that this is a huge industry in the area.

This trip also gets us out of huge, wealthy Cape Town, and we will experience some of the suburbs of the city as we head along N2 (N stands for National), six lanes wide in the ‘burbs, narrowing to four lanes by the time we turn off to Stellenbosch.   Here are some observations we have and some information provided by our guide:

• Cape Town has incredible commuter traffic just like in the US. It’s stop and go at least ten miles out of town, and we are told that this jam will last up until 9:3o-10:00am Monday through Friday. There are thousands of 10-passenger white vans with a yellow stripe, which indicates some kind of commuter van system. There is a commuter rail system as well, and we are advised never to ride on it alone.
• Our road, N2, runs along the east coast for the entire width of the country. It is in very good condition and even the signage is in that green color so familiar to us in the states.
• We pass by an enormous walled-in vacant lot, and the guide points out that this was the location of the infamous District 6. During apartheid, squatters would put their corrugated steel shacks anyplace they could get away with it, and this area was one of the largest. In its typical harshness, the government would come along every once in a while and demolish all the houses, displacing the people. In a few weeks, they’d all be back with new squalid shacks. To this day, decades after the end of apartheid, the government doesn’t know what to do with the property. At this point, it’s kind of an inadvertent monument to the mistreatment of the apartheid era.
• We pass by the hospital where Dr. Christiaan Baarnard performed the first heart transplant. The 50^th anniversary of this achievement is about to be celebrated.
• We pass by one of the “townships” named Kisleesha, meaning “new home.”   During apartheid, blacks were consigned to live in these areas. There were no services, no nothing. People built tiny little living spaces out of corrugated steel and any other material they could find.   Obviously, apartheid officially ended twenty years ago, but these townships still exist, and the one we are passing goes on for miles with approximately 1 million people living there. It is jaw-dropping for us to see. Our guide explains that the government is trying to provide public housing for everyone that lives in these terrible conditions (and we do indeed see some), but it is a monumental task that is going to take years and years. The wait list is very, very long.
• The nation is 80% Black, 10% White and 10% Coloured. There is also a classification called Indian, as there were many slaves brought in from India, Indonesia and other far eastern areas, especially to the Durban area. The government does have something very similar to our affirmative action program to try and provide opportunities to minorities.
• English and Afrikaans were the two official languages in the country prior to the end of apartheid in 1994 when the number became eleven. The most widely spoken is Zulu.
• Black people identify by tribal history. For example, Nelson Mandela was Xhosa (pronounced cor’sah as near as I can tell). President Zuma, the present leader, is Zulu.
• Similar to the US, there are three levels of government: national (with a National Assembly), provincial (there were four provinces; now there are nine) and local. Elections are held every five years, with both national and provincial elections to be held next year.

Well, back to the tour. We arrive in Stellenbosch around 9:30. We are scheduled to do our winetasting first and then visit the town. Fortunately, our guide Ian thinks that possibly we may want to reverse the order, so we drive into the town to spend an hour.

It’s a very attractive, prosperous place. The architecture is described as Cape Dutch and there are many very nice shops. The streets are clean, the buildings painted either white or in very light colors. There is a gorgeous Dutch Reformed church, and a very interesting four-building museum that we decide would be a good way to spend our time.

One of the reasons for the prosperity is that it is home to the University of Stellenbosch, which is a highly regarded public university that specializes in career-prep curriculum such as medicine, law, business and so forth. It is customary to take a month off between mid-December and mid-January, and the university is still mostly closed until next week. There are many oak trees in the town and on the campus, and our guide says that the school is known as akerstadt (Oak Town)….I think that’s what Ian our guide said.

The four buildings are former homes, mostly of government officials (deputy sheriff is one). Each home represents a period of town history, and each has a woman dressed is appropriate garb to welcome us and describe what we will see. Every room is well appointed, and Cathy is especially interested in the kitchens. It gives us a very interesting introduction to this very interesting and historical town.

It is now 10:30 and we head for the Blaauwklippen Winery, the second oldest winery in the country. It is about 10 minutes outside of town, and it is a gorgeous estate. The landscaping was gorgeous with HUGE pink hydrangeas and view of mountains in the distance, the “Napa Valley of South Africa.” Our beautiful guide Yolanda (the subject of the picture heading this post) gives us a thorough tour of the winery itself, and we learn that they are just now beginning to process the grapes. All of the grapes grown on the property are to make red wine, and they purchase grapes from a local farm to produce white wine.

Yolanda next leads us to a large room with a huge u-shaped table that we all sit around. It is time for the wine tasting! We are on this tour with our friend Pat from Toronto, which makes the day even more special. Yolanda starts us off with a sauvignon blanc, then a white zinfandel, then another white, then a malbec, and we finish with a desert wine. And these aren’t just little tastes, mind you. These are half glasses with refills. Within fifteen minutes, the noise in the room is so loud that we have to clink glasses to get everyone’s attention so Yolanda can introduce the next selection. Wine has made this a very convivial group. The wine is for sale, of course, and the prices are, well, unbelievable. We swear we must be getting the currency conversion wrong.

We are there for at least forty minutes, and then Yolanda invites us to a gin tasting. Yes, a gin tasting! Cathy and Pat are all about that, and we go into this much smaller room and line up for tastes of three flavors of gins that are for sale.   Cathy can’t resist and buys a bottle. [Cathy: “African Botanicals” is the flavor and it is quite tasty!]

Then we proceed into the wine store, where we purchase eight bottles to bring back to the ship. Cathy has confirmed that there are no restrictions on how much we can bring back to consume in our stateroom, but if we bring one to the restaurant, there is a $20 corkage fee.

We all pile back on to our bus and are taken back to our ship. Needless to say, it’s a pretty quiet ride. We do pass by some large industrial-type buildings, and Steve inquires about them. It’s a movie studio, and we see two old ships. Turns out that this is where Pirates of the Caribbean was made!

Back to the Insignia just before Terrace Café closes, lunch on the stern again, and then “sleep fast,” our term for a short nap before, at 3:45, we are to be taken to our hotel for the beginning of our four-day rail journey through South Africa. We go to Martinis Bar, our meeting place, and are delighted to see that our friends M & J from Maryland are also on this trip. We also meet Kreg and Judy from Oregon, and will be joined by B J and Joanne from the Eastern Shore, who are on the Mount Nelson Hotel High Tea excursion. We are driven to the Radisson Blu Hotel, which is right on the water about twenty minutes from the ship.

This is a four-night tour that includes a hotel stay in Cape Town, three days/two night on Rovos Rail going from Cape Town to Pretoria, an airplane flight from Johannesburg to Durban, and another hotel stay in Durban, where we are to meet the ship. Originally we were to stay at the world famous Mount Nelson Hotel, but about a week before it is to start, we are told that the Mount Nelson is out but we will be at a similarly ranked hostelry.

Hmmm….not so much.   The hotel is beautiful, that’s for sure. And our Room 106 overlooks the water, an area full of umbrellas and deck chairs, and an infinity pool to swim in.   The room is immense and well appointed. So far, so good.

We relax for a while. The first thing Cathy notes outside is the infinity pool. Seagulls have taken it over as if it were built for their pleasure. They bob around, bathing and flapping their wings having a grand old time. It’s hysterical to watch. There must be thirty of them in there.

The next thing we see is a little unnerving: Our ship Insignia leaving Cape Town harbor without us. It’s a very strange feeling. This is our new home, and off it goes with most of our stuff, most of our new friends, and we are left here in Cape Town watching it leave.

So we explore the room and its amenities, and Steve reads the explanation about the electric current. It is very vague. There appears to be a plug for 110V power for us Americans and certainly one for 220V, but Steve, knowing little or nothing about such things, won’t take a chance and just plug in his laptop only to see it go up in smoke because it isn’t the proper current.

So we go down to see the concierge to see if 110V is available or if a transformer is available. He doesn’t know what the hell I am talking about and sends us to Reception. This very complex question completely rattles one young lady, confuses a second one, and they testily make a couple of phone calls. A transformer will be sent to our room. After this disagreeable experience, we head for dinner in the hotel.

This is a different story. The staff is super polite, the food is delicious, and we have a very pleasant meal. We return to the room, and of course no transformer has been delivered. Steve rolls the dice, and plugs in the laptop to the plug that looks like 110V. Voila! It works. Now wouldn’t you think the hotel staff would know that all the rooms come with both currents? So this question is answered by experimentation.

The phone system is the next issue. Supposedly, so that we are not put out having to make multiple calls for service, there is a “One Touch” number. We hit the key, and all we get is a busy signal. Over and over, we do this. Busy signals. Obviously this one touch nonsense is a bust. The hell with it. We go to bed. Things will get better, we are sure.