Stellenbosch

We celebrated the first weekend together in South Africa in high style: wine tasting in the Stellenbosch region. For Erika, it was a return to the scene of a previous trip, but this time she and her co-workers all had their significant others to escort them. Once again, we hired the awesome Dean to drive us around from vineyard to vineyard. Ushering a bunch of wine drinking tourists around all day could be torturous, but Dean's a tough ex-cop, so it's a walk in the park for him.  Dean:

The weather and the wine were fantastic and we hit five or six different places. South African wine is quite good and we especially liked a variety called Pinotage, which comes from a grape engineered from two separate grapes (sorry for all the technical terms...) and which one of our hosts complained that the French refer to as a blend, although the South African's would beg to differ. Anyway, pinotage is a full bodied red wine which often has a chocolaty flavor. Wine and chocolate? Oh, yeah.  

The vineyards and tasting rooms were all gorgeous, from the one that was underground:

to the one under a giant English oak:

There was a great anecdote about English oaks being brought to South Africa to make barrels, but the rest of that anecdote is a casualty of the wine tasting... 

When the day wound down we headed to Spier, a vineyard/resort where we had dinner and spent the night. The restaurant served African food and was a little touristy (we had our faces painted. Don't judge- there was a lot of wine involved) but the food was amazing and our friends Dave and Ed joined the band:

We left the next morning with full bellies and loaded down with several bottles of wine from the many vineyards we'd visited. This beautiful region is just over an hour outside of Cape Town and should be part of any visit to the Cape. 

Robben Island

Robben Island is a small island north of Cape Town (the geography of Cape Town was constantly screwing with Rob's head. He had always figured that it was on the southern coast of South Africa, but it's really on the western coast and, due to the shape of the bay, it actually faces north/northwest. If it weren't for the giant mountain as a reference point, he would have been hopelessly lost. We're explaining this because if you were like Rob, you would think that an island north of Cape Town was in the middle of South Africa). The island was home to the prison where Nelson Mandela was held for 18 of his 27 years of imprisonment and the prison (and island) is now a museum. 

The tour of the island is in three parts. The first part is a 25 minute video that plays on the ferry on the way to the island, which gives some of the history of the island and an informative background of the politics and discrimination of the apartheid era. But, if you're like Rob and you ride on the top of the ferry so you can take 40 pictures of sailboats, you miss the video and only find out about it after the fact... But just look at that sailboat.  So peaceful.

The second part of the tour is a 45 minute bus tour around the island. The bus tour is led by a museum guide, who was incredibly informative and funny and the tour was really good, but you never leave the bus and the windows are closed, so you can't really take pictures. They are trying to preserve the island, so it's understandable that they don't need thousands of tourists tromping all over, and while you don't really need pictures of the guards' houses or other infrastructure, there were a couple of places that it would have been nice to see up close. 

The final part of the tour is the prison itself. The tour guides are either former prisoners or former guards. Rob's guide was a former prisoner named Glen, who had been imprisoned for six years for organizing protests against the apartheid government. Glen had mixed feelings about returning to the prison, which is understandable of course, but even more incredible when you learn that the tour guides all live on the island with their families (Glen says the ex-prisoners and the ex-guards don't really hang out). 

The prisoners on Robben Island were forced to do manual labor. There is a limestone quarry where many of them, including Mandela, dug limestone and where the dust and bright light off the stone caused many of them to lose some of their eyesight. They also built extensions of the prison and all the buildings (and tennis courts, etc) that the guards lived in. The prison was built using slate from the island and the buildings are strangely beautiful.  

Depending on the offense or sentence of the prisoner, they either lived in a community room, with 24 to a room, or alone in a tiny cell. Despite the circumstances, the political prisoners were very organized and created a network to teach each other to read, write, and other skills. Over time, the prisoners fought for and got the right to receive newspapers and a radio, so they were able to get a little access to the outside world. Though it gradually improved, for many years, the waiting list for family members to visit took almost 2 years to 'process.' Eventually, they were able to take correspondence courses and receive degrees. Mandela was moved to another prison in 1984, in part (some say) to prevent or disrupt the education and organization of the younger generation of prisoners. In fact many political prisoners were moved in the early eighties, though the prison remained in use until 1996. 

After the tour, visitors have about 15 minutes to wander around until the ferry is ready and most people go check out the island's penguin colony. The locals seem to think this is somewhat ridiculous- as our bus guide said, "The penguins are over there. People seem to like them. If you've never seen one, they are white and black." However, if you ever go, the time is better spent wandering the standing exhibit in the prison, which Glen may or may not have mentioned to his group (Glen's method of giving a tour was pretty much to not stop talking, whether or not everyone had caught up to him or not). 

Rob says a tour of Robben Island is a must if you visit Cape Town. He is (and he suspects, most Americans are) fairly ignorant of most of South Africa's history and Robben Island is a stunning introduction to apartheid, as seen through the eyes of a political prisoner. 

The view of Table Mountain from a cell on Robben Island

I Bless The Rains Down in Afffrica!

A month without posting! For shame. Not that we haven't been busy. Erika came back from Cape Town and, having spent a month in a hotel, cooked up a storm, culminating in our annual pie party. The pie party was a belated celebration of National Pie Day, delayed because of Erika's business trip and to coincide with the now annual visit of our dear friend, Jane. Everyone brings a pie, sweet or savory, baked or bought, and we all share. It's as awesome as it sounds. We ended up with something like a dozen pies and according to Rob and his PPLO stats (Percentage of Pie Left Over) Erika's savory tamale pie (with amazing polenta crust!) was the hit of the evening: 

Rob also got to visit his friend, Jon, who was in the neighborhood (well, Brussels) for a couple days with work. We are well aware that we live a crazy life when we get emails saying, 'hey, I'll be in Brussels for a couple days if you want to grab a beer.'  

And speaking of living that crazy life, Rob recently joined Erika for a couple weeks in Cape Town. Leaving cold, wet, and gray Amsterdam for sunny, 80 degree Cape Town? Yes, please. 

Cape Town is a city of 3 million sandwiched between the Atlantic Ocean and the majestic Table Mountain. (Next to Table Mountain is another mountain with two parts, the Lion's Head and hilariously, the Lion's Rump). Going to Cape Town is like just dipping your toe into Africa. The city has a very European feel, due to its English and Dutch colonial (and slave trading) heritage. In fact, one of Erika's South African coworkers claims that you have to drive at least 3 hours away from Cape Town to get into real Africa. However, for those of us just visiting, the realities of Africa are very apparent, driving past the townships (suburb-sized ghettos where the 'houses' consist of tin and aluminum shacks stacked next to each other) and into the city, where most people live in either gated communities or in houses with huge fences and barred windows. 

Luckily, despite its troubled past, the city (and South Africa) feels full of promise and growth. South Africa is set to host the 2010 World Cup, so there are dozens of highway, hotel, and other construction projects in addition the building of a new stadium. The papers count down the days until the World Cup and the sense of pride and enthusiasm in showing of the country is palpable and even contagious. Everyone, both black and white (and, as they are classified in South Africa, colored, which are the South Africans that are neither black nor white but are descendent from the many Indonesian, Indian, or other Middle Eastern or Asian immigrants, former slaves, and servants that made their way or were brought to South Africa) is very excited to have visitors and very proud of the country- and for good reason. The land is simply gorgeous, the people are friendly and absolutely beautiful, and the food is fantastic, cheap, and washed down with delicious South African wines. 

We had an incredible time and we'll be putting up more posts this week about our trips, including wine tasting, visiting the Cape of Good Hope, Rob's first cricket match, our safari and more. Rob's back in Amsterdam with the 1500+ pictures we took so there should be plenty to see both on the blog and on the flickr account soon.