Faffing Around The Garden Route

Tessa and I started our road trip by heading into winelands for a couple of days. The first winery we stopped at also grew olives and I was given a lesson in tasting olive oil. I have now aquired a taste for olives as well. I'm maturing left and right! We spent the night in Franschoek and our days tasting wines and cheeses, eating delicious food. A winery in Paarl was just down the hill from the Taal Monument (to the Afrikaans language, the only monument to a language in the world) but the very phallic nature of the language portion of the monument was nicely offset by the vaginal impression of the South Africa portion. Afrikaaners fucking up South Africa anyone? Nothing like a little time in another country to become increasingly intolerant and cynical. After a final day of tasting we headed to Gouritzmond to stay at the holiday house of Tessa's friend Kate. Unfortunately, Kate and her crew of friends were unable to join us so we had the gorgeous, beach-fronting house to ourselves. However, in a frustrating turn of events my blood tester decided that it is crap requiring us to spend a day driving into a pharmacy in Mossel Bay. Mossel Bay is mostly oil refinery and could have been a very nice town if it weren't so ugly. After a couple of nights in Gouritz we headed back an hour towards Cape Town to Stilbaai where another friend of Tessa's had a holiday house on the river just up from the beach. The ghetto conditions of the house were easily offset by the copious amount of braaiing and beer drinking that the group of 14 did. We left a day early to head further east to meet up with Tessa's family at a cabin they had rented on Swartvlei. Bicycling, walking, braaiing, swimming, sailing, water skiing were just a few of the activities that we did. I have made the unpleasant discovery that my back is not conduscive to water skiing and spent the rest of that day high on serious painkillers, moving around like my father and lying on my back. You don't know until you try... A day trip into Knysna was dampened by afternoon rain but the brewery tasting was inside. Once again we left a day early but this was to return to Cape Town. In a quick turn of events my friend Brett had the opportunity to go to Norway with his girlfriends so I had to see him before he left. We had both been looking forward to having a couple of weeks to go climbing and drinking so were a bit bleak about that but we have been discussing plans to meet up in Europe, South-East Asia or South America some time in the future. Cape Town is a safer place without the two of us together. Kirstenbosch Gardens has restarted their summer Sunday Sunset Concert series so we met up with friends to sit in the grass and drink wine. The plan for my last eight days: more wine, more beer, more movies, more hikes, more diving, more eating, less sleeping.