Day 4 - jet lag and Red Leaf at Stellenbosch

I have definitely got a case of jet lag. I didn't think I would, seeing as my sleep cycle is whacky anyway, and I kind of set it up so sleeping on the plane would ease me into things. But I didn't get to sleep until about 2am last night and wasn't roused until 11am today. (Actually, that's a pretty normal sleep for me...)

Anyway, I was eventually knocked up by AJ this morning saying I had half an hour to get ready because we had to leave for a picnic with some of his friends.

I met Natalie and Kathy (not 100% sure on names here) who are old schoolmates of AJ's. Kathy is from S.A. but is living in Oxford now with her husband, and they're here to be formally church-wedded (as opposed to legally married, which they are now), at which the other two are doing the music. So that was nice. I felt a bit of a third wheel though (funny, since I was the fourth person) so I just went outside and smoked a pipe and left them to it.

It was particularly hot today, somewhere around the 30's Celsius - that's about the 80's Fahrenheit which isn't actually awful by Dallas Texas standards, I only noted it because it was hotter than it has been the last few days. Breezes made it fine though. UV index was around 8 I think, in the middle of the day. Yikes! It's back down now though.

Anyway, after some pottering about with music we decided to go for lunch, but instead of a picnic we opted to go to Stellenbosch and find a restaurant at a wine farm!

In case you don't know, South Africa is famous for its wine. A lot of colonization went on here, and today I learned about the French Huguenots who settled in the Cape of Good Hope in the late 1600's - most of them settled nearby where we were, in what's called Franschhoek ("French Corner"), bringing with them their wine farming techniques, for which the land is admirably suited.

After fighting with a GPS for a bit we eventually settled on a place called Red Leaf Restaurant. To my shame I couldn't resist being a tiny bit extravagant, and had an appetizers as well as a meal - escargot, for R32, alongside my chicken pasta (R60) and guava juice (R10). Since it was lunch and on the "light meals" menu I was kind of expecting a cold pasta, but got a whole plate full of a kind of alfredo thing that was just too much to put away.

Everyone else had a "hamburger", which I'll tell you was impressive (I was tempted to try it, but I can't digest beef) BUT understand it was eaten quite differently from how you'd have it in Texas. A giant slab of beef with some kind of onion and gravy on top, sitting over a thick piece of toasted bread, which they ate with knife and fork, spearing a piece of meat with the bread under it and eating like that. It came with a small side salad and some giant potato wedges. Delicious!

AJ and Kathy actually got a deal where they bought their burgers together, and for an extra ten rand included a bottle of wine. Let me just clarify, their whole meal (huge burgers, salad, potato) cost about $5.50, and for $12 total they got a bottle of wine which all of us shared...

So yeah, it was amazing. The wine was this stuff called Pinotage, which... well, if you're really curious go read: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinotage



Vineyards

Pretty view of... some mountain, I forget what this is called... and vineyards!


Yummy grapes on the vine.

AJ and Kathy (and Natalie below).

Unfortunately my batteries died right when the food came along, so I have no photos of that or the bottle of wine. Bleh.