Cape Winelands... (12/2)

Napa Valley, move out of the way.... The Cape Winelands blow you to pieces!!!! Today we had our winelands tour (obviously). First let me just say that the Winelands here are so picturesque it is hard to explain without pictures. I don't think other vineyards could compare after seeing the views from where we were today. The wines themselves were good, too. Of course we enjoyed the types we normally would, while not caring as much for the ones we normally would not care for.... So not really any surprises there. They do offer plenty of new and different types of wines here though that we had never before tasted. The prices for purchase at the vineyards were actually cheaper than in the stores which is not really the case in Napa- that was a pleasant surprise.  Our tour took us through the three larger areas for wine west of Cape Town- Paarl, Franschhoek, and Stellenbosch. All of the towns were so darn cute!!!! We started the day off with a cellar tour followed by a cheese and wine tasting at Anura Vineyards. Anura is positioned on the foothills on the Simonsberg Mountains, between Paarl and Stellenbosch.  

At Anura:

We ended the day in Stellenbosch at Asara Vineyards for a wine tasting, followed by a stop at Spier Vineyards where they have the Cheetah Outreach. Here we were able to pet Cheetah's- very cool but they were overly strict. It was a full day affair, so not much else happened.

View at Asara:

Cheetah Outreach:

We are moving to Cape Town!!!!

Well, not really, but we are considering it. Every day we are here we fall more in love with this city... It is not that what we are doing is cooler than the other places we have been, but we just could fit in here so well (and it is even more gorgeous than the rest of Africa we have seen, which says a lot because it has all been amazing)!!!!

That being said, today was actually just a slow, relaxing day. We slept in for the first time, and even other days we have had the opportunity we still find ourselves waking up at 7 out of habit. Today, we slept until 9 o'clock... And at breakfast everyone was talking about the huge storm that passed through this morning. I am the lightest sleeper ever and I never heard anything so that is crazy; I must have been VERY tired (It was supposedly really loud). The sky was bright blue again when we woke up so we would never have known! This day was kind of an open day, as we had reserved backup days for the shark dive in case our original day had to be rescheduled. Kyle wanted to go to the World of Birds which also had a monkey jungle in it where you can play with the monkeys and let them crawl and hang on you. Honestly... I am not a bird person. They do not fascinate me at all, so I was not excited about it but was willing to go if that is what he wanted to do. We were there way too long, and I was so bored (it smelled really bad too!). The monkeys were cool, but that was only about 1/10 of our time there, haha. I think we spent 30 minutes just trying to find where they kept the honey badger so that Kyle could see it and think of Tyrann Mathieu of LSU (they call him the honey badger)... Go figure!

After we left the birds we went to Camps Bay to hang out. This is the Cape Town beach to see and be seen. I wanted to eat at Cafe Capri which was supposed to be delish, and also a celeb spotting point, haha. No celebs that I know of, but definitely a stylish trend spot which is also very laid back, looking onto the beach!! I had the BEST mixed drink I have ever had in my entire life there. It was so good that it was dangerous... I could drink them all day like water. It was called a Pink Passion- my mouth is watering just thinking about it!!! Our food was also delicious. It was hanging out here that made us start contemplating a way to move to Cape Town. Then we decided that when we have enough money we will just buy a condo there, and by then hopefully there is a direct flight from Houston. Our dogs would love it here too! Everyone brings their dogs along with them and there are parks lining the beaches to play with them at.... Ahhhh, the life!!!!!!!

Great White Shark Dive (11/30)

What a great ending to the month of November!! Great White Shark Diving.... One of the coolest things ever- it definitely shares the top spot of the trip for both of us (it's too hard to chose 1 event that has been the best!). We were picked up at 6:30 am for the trip to Gansbaai, which is the most famous place for Great White diving. The drive there is long... I didn't realize it would take that long just to get there, but I am definitely thankful they offer rides from Cape Town! I think we got to the dive shop around 10, ate and then got the briefing before heading to the boat. This part was VERY discouraging. They pretty much said that the visibility would be horrible, that no sharks had been spotted yet and it was unsure if we would see any- likely because there has been a drop in water temperature and this can cause the sharks to stay low until they are used to it. The day before they had started very slow in shark spotting so I think they were worried that could be the case again. Kyle and I were thinking uhhm, and why are we here today? Well, thank God that did not end up being the case!!!!

We were originally going to try the visibility at a different spot from the usual area the operators do the dives at, however once we arrived there they had gotten calls that there had indeed been spottings at the other location so we headed back out there. They asked for the first 8 volunteers and of course Kyle and I were the first in to get suited up! They worked on the chum and had sharks around before we even had time to get in our wet suits. Brian is the owner who is famous for being on every dive himself, and also famous for the best chum in the industry drawing more sharks than anyone else- he knows his stuff! So we jump in our areas of the cage, and all I was thinking was "holy shit the water is FREEZING" (as there are sharks all around)!!! It was 13 degrees Celsius, or 55 degrees Fahrenheit... That is VERY cold water! On a side note, we learned that the water around the cape is actually colder in the summer months than in the winter... This is due to the melting of ice in the Antarctic and that water moving in. So Brian would start saying "Get down, get down, coming from the right/left"... We would all dunk under and watch as the shark attacked the bait in front of our cage... It was pretty rad! And it just kept getting better as the day went on. The water visibility was terrible, that was certainly true. You could not see the sharks unless they were within 3-4 feet from you (max). The good side of this was when Brian originally threw out the bait and asked us to go under to see if we could spot it and we all said no he moved it in MUCH closer to us.... On a day with good visibility it would be kept much further from the cage. This is what made the experience though... The sharks were running into & rattling the cage, and coming right at you on the surface, mouths open. Female sharks are bigger than males, and we had a couple very aggressive females come around which game some good shows!!! Unfortunately with the visibility being so bad the underwater camera pictures are not so great, but the best shows were on the water surface anyways, and we have video and pictures of many good moments. We were able to go back in the water a few times as well which was cool. Those creatures are actually very intriguing- just not sure after I saw their aggression that I would want to be hanging out with them without metal bars between us. Do you hear jaws music when you look at the below pictures (1st one take on the boat, 2nd one from inside the cage)???

We made friends with people on the ride, one lives in Manhattan and is in the film industry- she is now a producer but used to be a film editor and has asked for both the video taken by the guy on the boat who you buy it from in it's original format, and we plan to send her our video as well... She is going to compile a cool video also using my pictures and make something much better than the crap they tried to sell. Also on board was an 80 year old lady from New Jersey, haha, I think they told her she was the 2nd oldest to have done it. When we were back in Cape Town getting dropped off one nice guy from Israel who had seen some of the pictures I took kindly asked if I would mind sending them to him because all he could think about on the way home were the pictures I took, haha. Maybe I should copyright them, and then maybe I could land a job photographing sharks for a living, haha. I would love to go back in the winter when the sharks do the breaching, I could be on a boat all day watching and photographing that, it is amazing stuff!!

Anyways.... When we got back the rest of the evening was pretty uneventful. We went to eat at a delicious Portuguese Italian restaurant, and then hit the sack... It had been a long day in the sun!

Seals, Penguins, Cape Point & The Cape of Good Hope (11/29)

Tuesday we had booked a full day tour of Cape Point. Along the drive to the most south-western point of Africa were a few other stops as well. The first- Hout Bay where we could take a cruise to Duiker Island, aka Seal Island. About a 45 min round trip ride to see thousands of seals. Definitely worth the stop, it's neat to see that many seals in one place. An interesting fact we learned is that a very large percent of the seals just sitting around sunbathing on the island are males- male seals are extremely lazy and do most of the laying around where the female seals like to be more active & on the go. Another not so fun fact we learned is that seals kill penguin just to eat their stomachs which are full of fish.... Not cool! When we returned from the cruise around the island we loaded up and got back on the road.

The next short stop was just a brief picture op stop at Chapmans Bay. In case I have not mentioned how beautiful Cape Town and the surrounding beaches are, WOW! They are the prettiest we have ever seen, it can be breathtaking. So we are driving up the side of the cliffs and every turn is just spectacular views, it's ridiculous. Anyways, Chapmans Bay was one of the more popular ones. So after a few snaps, we are back on route to Simon's Town.

Simons Town is the city that boasts the famous Boulder's Beach where you can literally hang out with African Penguin colony's- which are there 365 days a year. They are so little and cute- the 2nd smallest breed of penguin in the world (the smallest reside in Australia). There are so many of them, too! It was very neat to watch them interact with each other, although most of them just stand there still. Did you know that when penguins chose a mate they stay with that one single mate for their life?? So special! People say they smell bad; maybe it was just the beach winds, but I did not think so.

We continued south down to the Cape of Good Hope. I guess I had always thought before that Cape Point is the Cape of Good Hope, but that is not the case. There really is not much at the Cape of Good Hope minus the sign which is a must do picture op, but that is about it. So we hopped out to take pictures with the sign, and then completed the final very short drive to cape point (which included several ostrich spottings). You can either take a hike up to the top of Cape Point or you can take a trolly ride up & down. There is the famous red & white lighthouse at the top, but what not everyone realizes is that there is actually another lighthouse which is the real one used further down on the cliffside- not visible from the point where most people go. I had asked our guide about it and she had kinda brushed it off and said not to take the hike to it because it was too long and we were on a time limit there. Kyle and I had opted to do the trolly up, and hike down.... Ended up working perfect! On the way down we saw the hidden turnoff for the second lighthouse and decided to be rebels and do it! So glad we did- it was pretty cool, there were maybe 2 others there, and took us much less time than our guide had claimed. She actually didn't believe us when we said we had done it, and I am sure the others in our group were jealous we were able to see it and they did not take the chance.

When we left here the plan was to head back up to Cape Town for a tour of Kirstenbosch Gardens, the 7th best rated gardens in the world. We stopped for a few more coastal pictures on the way back, but that was really it. We spent around an hour at the Gardens, and they are just beautiful. What I would give to have a place like that in the states to just enjoy a picnic. Everything was so green, and they had beautiful flowers. It doesn't hurt that the backdrop for the gardens is already picturesque. I decided to buy seeds of some of my favorite flowers to try at home... Probably use my moms green thumb to help me out with that!

Instead of having our guide drop us off at our B&B when the tour was over we had her take us to the V&A Waterfront so that we could catch the bus which takes you to the top of Signal Hill, the famous spot for African sunsets, Cape Town fashion. We picked up a bottle of wine and Subway for our picnic and took the bus to wait for the spectacular views.  Africa, I heart you!

Cape Town... Why are we just now meeting??? (11/28)

Our first full day in Cape Town, and our first day out to see the town. The weather... Absolutely PERFECT!!!! Like a gorgeous spring day in Houston, but better! Table Mountain is known for the tablecloth of clouds which hovers over it, but today... Nothing but blue sky. It worked perfect that it happened to be the day planned on the itinerary for table mountain. That was the start to our day, and we spent much longer up there than I had expected. So much to explore, and the views.... So beautiful!! We got too many good pictures. So after exploring the top of Table Mountain we took the red bus around town too see and explore more of Cape Town. We were in love! Had a late lunch at San Marco at the V&A Waterfront- delicious!!!!! Did a little shopping there, then took the bus to Green Market square. We found that when we got there everyone was packing up their tables so there was not much time to look around. We stopped for Gelato at the place known for the best in town, yummy. When we went to catch the bus home we realized we missed the last bus, so we navigated our way around town back to our B&B, exploring some things on the way. We decided to call it a night, the next 2 days will be long ones....

Leaving one Paradise for another.... (11/27)

Not a whoe lot of excitement Sunday... We woke up and packed for our departure, and left for the airport around 10. We had to stop through Joburg where we planned to pick up our missing bag which they never had sent to us in Vic Falls as promised. We did find it in the airport, and it was obvious that the bag must have gotten stuck in a conveyor belt or something in London... The handle was ripped off (which also had once had the sticker bag tag which was gone and why it never made it further). It looked torn up in a couple other places as well. It is a shame all of those school supplies were left behind, our plans now are to find someone who can find a good place around cape town for them. The Joburg airport originally tried to give us hell about the weight of the bags and wanted us to pay more and I almost lost it on them. It's a long story, but we really do not like that airport.... Thank God this was the last time we had to go through there. The flight to Cape Town went well, and by the way, South African Airways is the best. Everything about their flight experience is better than Continental. The food, the service, the leg room, free alcohol, on time, etc., etc. Wish we would have flown the entire way with them! We arrived in Cape Town as the sun was going down- we just headed to the hotel and got checked in. Met a nice girl from Australia that lives in Joburg... That was about the extent of the day...