Marius again helped us out this morning with ideas of where to go
and what to see. Being Sunday it is likely that some places will be
closed but he seemed quite confident that we would still find lots
of places open for business as usual. It’s also Mother’s Day here in
South Africa so he told us that most places will probably be busy
for lunch.
Our first stop was the Boschendal vineyard which was founded
in 1685 making it the second oldest in South Africa after the
Constantia vineyard in Cape Town. It has a colourful history having
at one stage been owned by Cecil Rhodes who was instrumental in
improving some of the properties and buildings on the estate
although he never lived long enough to see the end results. Here, as
with many of the other estates, they are combining the best of new
technology and modern wine making with old traditional techniques.
Our guide books say that you need to pre-book for the tours here but
not se. By luck we arrived just before a scheduled tour time and
with no-one else there had a tour for just the two of us.
Gleaming metal vats fill the first room of the cellars but
next door, with a heady smell of fermenting grapes, is the store for
all the barrels, stacked five high. Running along the width of the
barrel store is a room that is only opened once a year or on special
occasions for VIP visits. It’s the vineyards wine library, something
that we have not seen at any other vineyard. Here they store a
sample of every wine they make. Once a year their wine masters
unlock the gates and spend a day sampling and tasting the wines to
make sure that they are ageing correctly and to determine which can
be released for sale. It must be one heck of a party as they have a
lot of bottles to get through!
The tasting here was probably one of the best we have
experienced. You are given a list of their available wines and you
select the five that you would like to try. These are then placed in
front on you on a piece of white paper so that you know which one is
which and can scribble your own notes on the wine. You are given a
tasting card with lists of the different characteristics to look out
for as well as the vineyards own descriptions of its wine and the
staff are on hand to help with any questions you may have.
Boschendal is set in a stunning valley with green fields
rolling away in front of you and the mountains framing it all as a
backdrop. From here we continued on towards Stellenbosch, stopping
at Marius’s next recommendation the Hill Crest Berry Farm. As its
name implies this is a fruit farm. You don’t actually seem to be
able to visit the farm itself but they have a shop selling their
produce and a restaurant/café with great views out over the valley
below. The only thing that marrs the scene is the main road which
you can clearly see and hear in the valley below. As it was Mother’s
Day they were doing quite a roaring trade having to juggle many
requests to move indoors out of the cool autumn breeze that was
blowing.
From the farm we headed into Stellenbosch, a university town
and one that had a pleasant feel to it. We found tourist information
but they had just closed up for the day and the chap that was
locking up refused to pop back inside and pick up a copy of their
walking tour leaflet for us. So we decided to come back tomorrow and
headed on instead for our next stop on Marius’s trail, Spier. We had
expected this to be another vineyard with the possibility of a tour
and a tasting but the sight and size of the car park soon made us
realise it was much more than that.
There is a hotel, with conference centre and golf course but
Spier is somewhere that you could come and spend a family day out as
well. There is a lake with manicured gardens around it for picnics
although, not having had to pay to get in, you have to buy your
picnic here and can’t bring your own with you! There are several
different places to buy food and drink, a couple of shops, an old
house which is now a small museum, a wine tasting area and today
there were lots of people out with their Mum’s.
We had both decided that we had reached saturation on the wine
tasting front so instead we headed to Spier's other attractions, the
cheetah outreach area and eagle encounters, both of which you had to
pay to get into. The cheetahs are housed in wire pens on the edge of
the Spier estate. A viewing platform enables you to look down on top
of them and if you want to you can pay more money to be able to go
into the cages and stroke the cheetahs. They are beautiful animals
but like many others on a warm Sunday afternoon they were very
docile and were having a nap.
Getting up-close with the birds of prey at Spier
Another cage near to the cheetahs had two really adorable
Anatolian Shepherd puppies. The centre here breed the dogs and then
encourage the local farmers to use them on their farms. The dogs are
natural protectors of livestock crops and keep the wild cheetahs at
bay. This means that the farmers do not need to shoot the wild
cheetah’s to protect their crops. The puppies were superb, bundles
of fluff and fur falling over each other in play. Further up fully
grown adults were also having a Sunday snooze and they were large
and powerful dogs, not suitable for your average family pet.
Next to the cheetahs they have what they call the eagle
encounter, a collection of various different birds of prey. Most
have ended up here as rescue animals having been injured, poisoned,
illegally removed from their nests or having become too much of a
problem for owners who had bought them as pets. The centre tries to
rehabilitate the birds where possible which often means they have to
train them how to fly and to hunt as well as stopping the birds
thinking that they are the same as people.
One of the birds they had here was a Secretary Bird, one we
had seen in the national parks from a distance but never close up.
These birds are enormous with large powerful legs that they use to
stamp on their prey. Another, a type of vulture, was lying in the
sun with its wings spread out either side and looking a bit like a
penguin. Some of the birds you could hold and stroke but you need to
maintain a healthy respect for them because they are still semi
wild, as an unsupervised little girl found out when she walked up
too close and got a couple of pecks on her cheek.
The staff run various sessions throughout the day to explain
more about the birds, their lifestyles and what makes them tick. We
caught a couple of the shows and sat in awe as the trainers had the
birds of prey flying about all over the place hunting for food and
catching “prey”, usually a small ball with a bit of meat tied on
somewhere. It is a long process to rehabilitate some of these birds
and the people who work here are definitely here for the love of the
animals.
It was late in the day by the time we left Spier and we headed
back to Paarl still with many of Marius’s recommendations left
unexplored. In the evening we went to Malle Madonna for dinner,
another fabulous meal at very affordable prices. I can really
understand why people like this part of the world. The climate is
good, the people friendly and the lifestyle seems very agreeable.
