Gem and Stu’s World Tour

After the previous day of being bogged we left the luxury of the hotel at 6am to make up some miles. We stopped and had breakfast on the roadside (in the rain) and managed to get to the SA border at about 1pm. This is when the sun suddenly came out and it became incredibly hot!

Just over the SA border we drove to a really nice campsite on the Orange River. Unfortunately, there was no time for resting as we had to do the final truck clean and clean the inside and outside of our tents. This was a hard job but I think we got off lightly as we only had to wash all the pots and pans (Gem) and Stu had to wash the outside of the truck. After a watching a beautiful sunset we had a couple of drinks in the bar on the river and went to sleep for the last time in our humble tent! It was so oppressively hot during the night however that I had to keep sticking my head out the tent just to get some air!

The next day we drove all the way through SA to Stellenbosch - when we stopped for lunch, I was so impressed that I could go to a proper toilet and buy an ice lolly! When we arrived at the hostel in Stellenbosch (at about 6pm) it was full of drunk German teenagers trying to throw you in the pool - very odd. After a Greek meal we then hit the sack ready for the long awaited wine tour the next day!

The wine tour itself was brilliant. We all piled into 2 mini buses and headed off to the wineries! At the first (Simonsig) we got showed around and sampled some lovely white wines and sparkling wines (we were also shown the traditional way of opening a bottle of bubbly with a sword - something I got to do when we went on the wine tour with Karen a week or so later). It was all very civilised at first but after the 2nd winery (Boschendal) (and the 12th ‘taste’ of wine) we were beginning to feel rather merry! Lunch was the next stop (andyou got a glass of wine with that as well) and it was lovely! The 3rd place (Franschoek) was a bit of a blur and the 4th winery (Fairview) was great as you got unlimited cheese with the wine! It was lovely and I wished we had bought some cheese. They also a wine called Goats do Roam Villages, which was mildly amusing.

Getting back to the hostel things were rather raucous (and now I realised the Germans the night before had been to the wine tour that day). Stu and I went on our own for dinner as we did not want a huge meal but the search for a cheap pub to have a small meal turned into a bit of a pub crawl - oppppss.

The last day of the trek was quite short really - I had a sore head and was pleased that it was only an hours drive to Cape Town. We arrived at a really nice hostel with a pool so we made use of that and then in the evening had our final group meal at a game restaurant.

Here endeth the trek!