It was time to embark on a completely new adventure together. So far, all of the countries we had visited this fall Mr. Wander had been to before, but now the next four countries would be new for us both! We flew into Cape Town, South Africa from London, and had a lovely wine tour through three of the regions near Cape Town for a full day. Then we met up with a group of about twenty with two guides on an overlanding adventure starting in Cape Town. We started North along the coast and into Namibia, all the way up to Etosha National Park, East into Botswana, an overnight in the Okavango Delta, and finally finish with Victoria falls in Zimbabwe, 21 days in total, most of which were in tents!
A Taste of Luxury
When we can, we like to use points to pay for the most expensive flights, usually for getting across an ocean or anything over about 5-6 hours. From London it’s an 11 hour flight and I found an amazing deal in points with Virgin Atlantic. We already had points sitting there from when we had tried to use it on a different flight last year, it’s a long story. While I did have to call to get it booked, even she was surprised at such a good deal on points. It was for a lay-flat upper class experience in Virgin Atlantic, which is their top tier option. I would put it fairly comparable to business class on the nicer airlines like Singapore Airlines, which is really my only comparison outside economy.
First we checked in using the short priority line to drop our bags, and then took a particular elevator directly up to the priority security, which was nearly empty. We had a little walk to the Clubhouse Lounge to enjoy some snacks and drinks before the flight. We found ourselves a table where we ordered a few things for a late lunch and a few cocktails.
We had fun chatting about the upcoming travels and making plans, and soon it was time to head to our gate. For some reason they had us wait awhile after scanning boarding passes in a separate room before finally letting us board. They greeted us with champagne or orange juice as we found our seats.
Once we took off, I enjoyed watching several nature documentaries, preparing myself for more safaris! The dinner was lovely and the lights were dimmed for those who wanted to sleep. I eventually took a break from my seat and went back towards the bar area and had a mocktail while a flight attendant converted my seat to a bed. I came back and tried to sleep a bit but my neighbor decided that was the time to work on her computer until 1am with a very bright computer light. Eventually she went to bed and I got a few hours of sleep. I ordered the french toast for breakfast with some tea and before I knew it we were landing in Cape Town.
Since we were in front, we were of the first off the plane and we were able to be one of the first in line at customs, so it was only 15 minutes from the plane parking before we were in the arrivals area. The flight landed nearly an hour early but thankfully our driver knew our flight number and knew that earlier flights get through customs much faster, so by the time we got some cash from the ATM we found him waiting for us. According to our driver, if you land at Cape Town later, you could take over an hour or more as several flights arrive at the same time.
We made it to our hotel in about 20 minutes but it was so early in the morning people were still checking out so we just waited in the cafe area enjoying some cool beverages. At around noon I saw a few people get room keys so I went to ask and they had a room ready for us!
Wine Filled Celebrations
The following day we signed up for a wine tour taking us between three different wine regions/cities around Cape town, Paarl, Franschoek, and Stellenbach. We started with Paarl, which is derived from the Dutch word for pearl, and it was about an hour’s drive from Cape Town.
The driver was great at remembering everyone’s names as we all introduced ourselves and he started sharing things about Cape Town, South Africa, and especially the wine region. The Dutch East India Trading Company first planted wine grapes in the area in 1655 as a way to ward off scurvy for sailors as they resupplied in Cape Town. Chinan Blank was the first wine made in 1659.
The first farm we went to was called Fairview, which started growing cauliflower in 1693, but after 6 years they decided to switch to wine grapes instead. The current owners have had the winery since 1957. They generally harvest between January and March depending on the grape, mostly using manual processes except for pressing and destemming.
We walked around the winery a little bit before getting to a large bar area with another tour where we had our wine tasting. This one was extra fun as it was paired with different cheeses! My favorite was this elderflower syrup they put on the side we could dip any of the cheeses into if we liked, but it made for so many layers of tastes. Taste the wine first, then taste the cheese (without syrup), then taste the wine again, then dip the cheese, and of course more wine. Every time the flavor of the wine changes as you taste the cheese, which always fascinates me.
Our first wine was a Sauvignon blanc paired with a cow’s milk feta. Then a blend named in honor of the owner’s late mother with Chenin Blanc, Voigner, and another I didn’t fully catch that started with an R, paired with a plain goat cheese. Did I mention the farm had their own goats? We visited them after the tasting to get a few pictures.
The third was a Voigner with an onion and chive cream cheese. Our fourth wine is a type that seems unique to this area, a Pinotage which is a cross between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut, which was known as a Hermitage at the time but now that can only describe wines from the proper region of France.
The final two were a blend of Tempranillo, Shiraz and at least one other with a garlic and red chili feta, and a Shiraz which is their specialty, but I must have been so excited for the wine I forgot to note what kind of cheese it was!
We were given a special treat by the woman who was hosting our wine tasting as she was an amazing singer! Not only that, she sang in her native language, which is known as a click language since they use several different types of clicks like individual letters, I’ll get into that more later when we visit a museum but for now just enjoy the music! We didn’t know what she was singing until she suddenly switched to English as she stopped in front of one of the members of our group. It was Happy Birthday! I was so surprised I ended up stopping the recording but what a special experience.
On the way out we went to visit the goats that very likely provided some of the cheese from our tasting. They were enjoying the shade and the view under this lovely tree.
Next it was already time for lunch where we headed to the town of Franschhoek. Along the way we did a quick stop to a statue of Nelson Mendela, just outside the gates to the prison where he spent the last few years of his sentence. Since we didn’t go to any of the museums or tours about Apartheid so I won’t go into too much detail here. We are already planning to visit South Africa again to explore more of the coastline ourselves and spend at least a few weeks.
We arrived at the Franschgoek cellar where you could board the winery tram, which is another option to visit wineries on your own without a car. During lunch we got to know our group a bit more, a family from Texas celebrating one woman’s 60th birthday and a couple on their 30th anniversary. There was another couple that had just gotten engaged on Table Mountain a few days before our tour, so our guide was so great at surprising us all with different extra treats, such as starting out with some sparkling wine. We had mentioned that we started travelling as a honeymoon and despite it being a year ago, our guide wanted us to help celebrate that too!
After a lovely lunch we were brought into the town where we could explore a bit on our own. It was such a relaxing and cute little town, I think when we come back someday we will stay here a bit instead of Cape Town. We found our way to a local cafe and got a flat white and a very delicious masala chai, rivaling those I had in India. So tasty!
The group reunited at the van where we were taken to the second winery called LaBrie. We had 4 wines and the last three were paired with chocolate, delicious! The first was a Voigner and Chardonnay blend aged in stainless steel tanks which usually makes a lighter and refreshing chardonnay, but less buttery. It was followed by a merlot paired with a cranberry flavored chocolate. So I am usually in the camp of any wine is better than no wine but merlot is one of the few exceptions, to me it feels like it sucks out all moisture out of your mouth. It was slightly improved by the chocolate but I was happy to move onto the others.
Next was a Syrah with mint chocolate, which was such an interesting pairing with the mint. Lastly was a Bordeaux style blend with Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Petit Verdot, and Merlot which was very good, and was the boldest red we had so far paired with a macadamia nut chocolate. Maybe it was our tour guide, or because we were all so friendly with our host at this winery, but she gave us a special taste of their Petit Verdot, which was absolutely amazing. One I will have to remember to seek out when it is on a wine list. I managed to get a bonus taste. I was very tempted to buy one of these!
There was one last town to visit, Stellenbosch, which is a college town but also a great place to learn about wine or study to become a sommelier. This is the second oldest town aside from Cape Town and has the second oldest church in all of South Africa.
We went to more of a wine bar and restaurant for our last tasting which was mostly sparkling as it was to be our dessert course of wine-so to speak. The first is the what is known as MCC, or Méthode Cap Classique, meaning it undergoes secondary fermentation in the bottle to produce the carbonation and there is a special time consuming process to remove the yeast sediment before it is corked. Until 1992 it was called Champagne until legally it was no longer allowed to do so as it was not grown in the Champagne region.
Next was a blend of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir made into a sparkling wine, and our last was a sparkling rose. By this time I was enjoying the conversation with the family from Texas and didn’t pay as much attention to the details of the wine. Our guide once again hooked us up with some desserts from the winery for all our respective celebrations which was so sweet, pun intended!
We had a little bit of a drive back to Cape Town but just as we were getting our first views of Table Mountain the sun was setting and it was pretty spectacular, but we couldn’t stop on the freeway. We said our farewells to the family and guide as we were dropped at our hotel. If any of you are reading this, it was so lovely to meet you and help you celebrate your birthday and anniversary! Please say hello or drop an email, would be fun to hear from you.
Introducing Kwagga
We had one more free day where we visited a nearby grocery store to stock up on goodies for our upcoming adventure, for we were going to be overlanding and camping with 20 others through South Africa and three more countries, and we knew there would be long stretches of bus rides.
This was to be our third tour through GAdventures, however it was the first time we had much communication through the group chat so we decided to meet up prior to the initial meeting. A few decided to go to the market so it was just one other couple that met us at the hotel bar and then we went to a nearby pub. They were from Bristol we ended up getting along so well we spent most of our time with them while on the tour so I’ll refer to them as R & M from now on.
The next day we had to check out of our room before we were checked into two different rooms with bunks we’d share with some of the group, divided by gender. Once we got in, we went to the top of the hotel to a bar to have a few drinks, continue working on posts, and enjoy the view. A few of the group joined us up there so we were able to get to know a few more before it was time for the welcome meeting.
We had our meeting on our newest friend, Kwagga, the Lando (not a bus!) that would take us through Southern Africa. We also met our guides, Demi who was the CEO (Chief Experience Officer) and Eddie who was our driver. The group each introduced themselves but it is difficult to remember 18 names at once! There were several unique stories though, several were living in countries they were not originally from, so that helped me learn everyone pretty quickly.
After the meeting we were able to get a ride in Kwagga to the restaurant for dinner, where I decided to try a game meat platter and test some local wild animals. I tried Eland, Kudu, Ostrich and Warthog ribs. The two antelope were a bit dry but the Kudu was definitely better. The ostrich was very nice, and the warthog was delicious and similar in taste to pork but the ribs were shaped a bit differently.
When we got back, Mr. Wander had to adjust his room as we had realized that he was put in a room with several women (none of them me). The hotel had messed up the arrangement and thankfully Demi fixed it, so he actually got a room to himself. I almost was going to go up there but I had already unpacked things to be ready for the evening when we got back and was too tired to change it.
We had a somewhat early departure, requiring us to pack our bags and load into the Lando by 7:15 am and then get up to the breakfast on the 25th floor, eat, and be back on Kwagga for an 8am departure. Our first stop was to a beach to take some pictures of table mountain and Robben Island from across the bay.
On our way our guide was introducing us to the history of South Africa and her native language, Africaans. This language is very close to Dutch but does have a mix of some German, French, Milaya, and Khoikhoi. South Africa does have 12 official languages but in school, they only teach English and Africaans, and you actually choose which to do your exams in.
She taught us how to say thank you in Africaans by remembering the phrase, “Buy a Donkey”, but actually spelled “baie dankie”. One of our group from the Netherlands said Africaans sounds like Dutch but with a German accent, and some of the words are used more literally. I suppose it is similar to how some of the phrases differ between the US and the UK as the languages evolved separately over a few hundred years.
We saw a few antelope, especially the Springbok, which is the national animal of South Africa. Their rugby team is also known as the Springboks, and later we will do a springboki shot. Another antelope was one we recognized from Tanzania, the hartebeest, what we had called a cowdeer with Mr. Wander’s family.
KhoiSan Community
!khwa ttu Nature Reserve.
Our next stop introduced us to the KhoiSan people and their history. The San and the Khoi are the original inhabitants of the Southern Africa region, well before the buntu migrations or the European colonizers arrived. The San were hunter-gatherers while the Khoikhoi were herders of sheep and cattle.
The !khwa ttu Nature Reserve includes exhibits sharing information on their way of life and a school to teach the language and culture to maintain the history while living in the modern world. This was our Planeterra project for South Africa. As I have mentioned in other posts, G Adventures has some sort of experience that supports a particular community or project on each of their tours. Here our tour fees and any gift shop purchases, helped pay for the school where locals can come and learn about traditions and the language of the KhoiSan with 1-3 year.
When we arrived we were greeted with a leopard tortoise walking through their courtyard, who is apparently a regular according to the local guide. While you might have heard about the big five of Africa, there is also a small five, which are smaller animals with names containing one of the big five: ant lion, buffalo weaver, rhinoceros beetle, elephant shrew, and the leopard tortoise. There is also an ugly five but we’ll get to that later when we finish that list.
One of the first things the local guide taught us was about the clicks in the language. It was originally just a verbal language but eventually was written down and they use symbols to identify the four different clicks. He introduced four of them to us as we got to try them for ourselves but sometimes they are difficult to tell apart to my untrained ear. A symbol of || is the click in your cheek-like the noise you might make with a wink, a ! is a hard click in the back with your tongue, there is also a soft version of that identified by # (find the other hash tag), and a soft tongue against the front teeth with |.
We wandered into a museum, where they had sounds playing like a thunderstorm and several implements used by the KhoiSan people including clothing, beaded bags, and digging sticks used by the women who actually gathered about 95% of the food consumed by the community. Our guide showed us various sign language used to speak while hunting when an animal was identified, such as those in the picture below.
After the exhibit we headed outside where they introduced us to some natural remedies in the form of tea. It included roobios and a few other plans that you can drink when you have a cold or flu but is generally immune system boosting. Then we had a few minutes to browse the gift shop before heading back to the lando.
For lunch they ordered a local type of sandwich called roosterkoek, which is a slow roasted sandwich cooked over coals and filled with feta cheese, caramelized onions and tomatoes. It was warm and delicious! She also shared some biltong pieces which is cured meat, I think ours was just beef this time.
After a bit more driving we arrived to our first campsite. We were introduced to our tent and learned how to put it up. It isn’t too different from our normal tent except that it is canvas which is a first time using a canvas tent. They had mats for us that were in containers on top of the lando so it was a team effort to pass them down onto the tarp. Today, my team was on packing duty so I helped get everyone’s bags unloaded from the back with three other women. Mr. Wander and I helped a few of those with a tent to themselves get their tent up and then it was time for a wine tasting put on by the camp. Not everyone opted for the wine tasting, some went to the pool or just relaxed after the long day.
There were 6 wines and he let us pour a decent amount of each one, up to the line on the glass! Plus he provided cheese and crackers for us as well. There was a Chenin blanc, Pinotage, Shiraz, a Sweet Rose, Vin doux sparkling wine but made with CO2 instead of freezing and turning process, and lastly an African vermooth infused with Roobios and an herb named buchu.
For dinner Demi cooked us Bubuti, whicih is onions, carrots, beef mince curry using milk soaked into bread and squeezed out to thicken. Milk and egg is put on top as well and served with shaved coconut, raisins, and salsa. I really loved this dish and was thankful she shared recipes with us to make at home. Or in our case, at the home of whomever would like house guests who pay in a homemade meal or two (wink wink).
That evening we had our first family meeting where Demi and Eddie share our itinerary for the next day, times for waking up or reminding us of costs and what would be available along the route for purchasing drinks, snacks, or getting cash from an ATM. We got bad news this evening though, because both Eddie and Demi were waiting for a renewal on their work visas for Namibia. There was a strike with the offices that process these in Namibia so things were taking longer than usual. Demi still had 9 days left on her prior visa but Eddie would not be allowed to work across the border, so the company arranged for a different driver to meet us the next morning.
We sat around the fire for awhile and enjoyed hot chocolate, coffee and tea. I snuck up to take a quick shower and then we turned in for the night.
Kayaking Along the Border
The following morning we started out early with a few hours drive. We stopped for what we learned as “bushy-bushy”, which meant a bathroom stop. Sometimes they wouldn’t be able to stop at somewhere with facilities so you literally use a bush. In more desert places without bushes they said we might need to do “lando-lando” meaning men on one side, women on the other, and everyone gets the job done.
This stop was also where we ended up meeting the transports from both Namibia with our new driver, and Cape Town to pick up Eddie. We briefly met Altus before he jumped behind the wheel and we were off towards the border.
At our shop stop we were on our own to find some lunch which we just picked up things from the grocery store. Demi picked up a dessert to share with all of us called a koeksister (SP), which is a fried dough drenched in syrup. It was brought to South Africa by immigrant workers, which did remind us of an Indian dessert.
The rest of the afternoon Altus drove us right up to the Namibian border and we turned along it for about 10 minutes to our campsite for the evening on the Orange River. We didn’t have much time to set up the tents, Mr. Wander helped unload the luggage, change, and board the vehicle that took us to our start point for those who wanted to kayak! The kayaks were self-bailing inflatable kayaks that were perhaps not the most comfortable and quite hard to paddle as the bailing chute really slows you down.
The spot for kayaking was very beautiful, there was a cliff on one side that made you feel so small, and several people and especially kids were so friendly and always waving as we went by. Our guide for this part is apparently the daughter of the owners of the camp, and it was the job our guide, Demi had before she started to work at GAdventures. We also found out that she had spent her summer in Minnesota on a gap year, guiding at camps for young women or girl scouts and exploring on her own through the Boundary Waters and Superior Hiking Trail! So crazy we were probably not that far from her while we were camping with family!
After we returned we ponied up to the bar for a few drinks before it was time for dinner. Altus had a lovely introduction by grilling some of the best tasting stakes I have ever had, but maybe things just taste better grilled over a campfire. This is seriously impressive to make enough steaks for 22 people and I heard several others talking about this days later about how good the steaks were! After I helped clean up dishes with my team I took a shower and enjoyed some time by the fire with Mr. Wander and then we had one of the coldest nights of the whole trip!
Next Time
It was finally time to cross the border into Namibia and head into the desert. The group climbed up a dune and saw a petrified forest, and watched the sunset in a gorgeous canyon. We were all ready for a few nights in an actual bed in Swakopmund, and I had a new travel experience, visiting a doctor while abroad (nothing too serious, so don’t worry!). Until next time, totsiens!
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