Day 6 - Wine Tasting and Cheetahs

My final day in South Africa I decided to spend at the wineries about 30-40 km away from our dock. We took a taxi to the train station that morning to pick up whatever train we could get heading out there, though it turned out we just missed one by a few minutes and the next one wasn't rolling out for another two hours. My fellow intrepid wine taster Heidi and I bought our tickets for the next one and then left the station to walk around the city surrounding it Luckily enough for us it turned out that there happened to be a large street market nearby which provided ample entertainment. We picked up some produce to take with us on the train (South Africa has delicious apples), we browsed through counterfeit movies, rugby jerseys and gypsy pants, then grabbed a quick lunch before hopping on the train.

The train traveled through the city, past the townships and finally the urban landscape gave way to agriculture. We disembarked the train in Stellenboch and walked about another quarter mile to the Speir winery to begin the tasting. We tried wines with hints of citrus, notes of zinfandel, smoky aromas,  full bodies and whatever other jargon  that can be used to describe them but unfortunately it all went over my head. The whites were good, though I couldn't tell the difference and I really wasn't able to get into any of the red wine (it tasted like ash for some reason). Who knows, one of these days when I'm more classy I'll have to head back.

After the tasting it was time for something a little more my speed: petting cheetahs. The winery happened to have a cheetah reserve attached, which for me takes the cake as one of the weirder combinations of the trip. When you stop by and visit you can pay a small fee and enter the cage with the cheetahs and their handlers and spend some quality time with them. I was sad to find out that I had just missed David Hasselhoff, Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift who had came through weeks before

After the cheetahs we split a cab with some other SAS kids we ran into back to the ship. I skyped, I bought a lot of snacks and then boarded for our next stop in Mauritius.