On Saturday, our program organized a day at a wine festival in Stellenbosch. I imagined Stellenbosch to be the South African equivalent of Napa, but apparently it’s a college town with a lot of wine. I slept through most of bus ride (per usual) but the area around Stellenbosch looked beautiful, and it’s only 45 minutes by train so I’m sure we’ll be back. I had this idea of what wine tasting was and thought we (all 160 of us) would be on a tour learning obscure facts about wine and trying all selections. Obviously impractical. I was wondering how logistically it was going to work out until we arrived and learned this wine tasting was actually a wine festival. We walked around a pretty small area with different stands and different wines. We each had 5 tickets which we could use to sample wines. I tried 5 white wines and I honestly could not tell one from another or from a box of wine. At least I wasn’t alone; we were all asking the vendors what the difference between chardonnay and sauvignon blanc is. I’m sure they were appalled. The theme of the festival seemed to be “find your personality” and upon entering they handed us a sheet with 8 personality descriptions. Apparently you were supposed to find the most applicable one to yourself and sample the corresponding wine. Within a minute I pinpointed 4 of my friends, but neither I nor anyone could find a fitting personality description for me. I’m not sure what this means—and if it’s good or terrible—but at least I know I’m fairly indescribable, at least in terms of wine.
Wine Festival
On Sunday, we woke up at 6:30 and hiked table mountain, the biggest mountain in Cape Town. It always tops this list of “things to do in Cape Town,” and after a week of planning, we were determined to finally do it. The main concern in planning to hike table mountain is the weather. It’s often windy here, and because of the elevation, the wind makes it significantly harder. It also can be very cloudy, with a “tablecloth” covering the mountain and blocking the amazing view at the top. We choose a perfectly clear and calm day—the only problem was that the high was 90 degrees. Before the hike, I assumed the hike would be a dirt path with wood-defined stairs. This wasn’t the case. The “stairs” were 2 foot high rocks that were uneven and steep. The mountain is high, and even with the trail crossing back, the elevation increase was substantial and the hike was much more difficult than I imaged, especially because of the heat. When we (finally) reached the top, the view was amazing and everything was well worth it.
Table Mountain from Below
The View from Above
Later that day, being the prime athletes that we are, we hiked Lion’s Head, another mountain next to Table Mountain. The feat of athleticism was only completed because of the amazing stories we heard of hiking to Lion’s Head to watch the sun set and the full moon rise. Of course we choose the day with the full moon to hike Table Mountain. Lion’s Head was a much easier hike, and was much more similar to my imagined Table Mountain than real Table Mountain. The end was more difficult, with ladders and some rock climbing, but the top was beautiful. On one side we watched a beautiful sunset, tainted by only one or two clouds in the sky, and on the other side, the full moon rose over an orange, pink, and blue sky. We hiked down under only the light of the moon (and a flashlight), which was scary at times but the view was definitely worth it.
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