The South African Sojourn - Day 7: Mountains, Vineyards, Cape Town

Ever since I was treated to breathtaking Greek scenery during our 3 Day tour of ancient Greece, I have made a mental note of ensuring the same in all our travels in foreign destinations. In my mind the cross country bus ride is a great way to take in the country side which usually eludes the casual tourist. To that respect South Africa only reinforced my decision from my travels in Greece. The ride from JoBurg to Cape Town is a long one and fortunately from us goes past the Drakensburg mountains which are a sight for sore eyes and some beautiful wineries. Snow capped peaks and acres of wineries were constant landscape features as we approached Cape Town. The clear highlight though was the first clear sighting of the "mother city" as Cape Town is affectionately known in South Africa. CT was the first permanent European settlement in South Africa and was only overtaken in size by Johannesburg on the onset of the Gold Rush. The first sighting of the Table Mountain got us very excited, the sight seemed familiar through the cricket telecasts during test matches played at Newlands but this was the real thing, we were almost pinching ourselves as we approached.

At Cape Town we checked in at the Courtyard Hotel, a refurbished dutch property and a heritage hotel. Although the location is a little bit outside the waterfront, the imposing ambiance makes the same completely worthwhile. One of my highlights was the complementary high tea served in the evenings which we sampled on arrival. Lightly seared sea food and meat croquet's hardly ever tasted so good.

After having a quick bite we decided to immediately take in a bit of the city and proceeded to the Victoria and Alfred waterfront to take in the "Capetonian" sunset. We were pretty much mesmerised on one hand and swamped by footy madness on the other.

The English were in town and boy - are they loud or what? The V&A water front also had a fan zone which we would see a lot more of over the next couple of days at Cape Town. We spent the late afternoon lazing along the water front and watching the shades of the beautiful table mountain change with the setting sun. A clear recommendation to all travelling to Cape Town would be to set aside two clear days at Cape Town to lazily watch the setting of the sun as one experience just leaves the eyes wanting more.

The special day was rendered even more so by capping it with a truly Africal dinner at Karibu which serves authentic South African game cuisine. The specials included Ostrich Pie, Springbok Potjie, Bobotie and some fried Snook.

The Ostrich pie was somewhere between chicken and mutton in terms of texture and very good, if slightly on the drier side. The fish was snook which was served in a batter fry to us was quite tasty. The highlights though was the bobotie and the potjie. The Bobotie is a typically South African preparation with meat curry which is capped off with a film of fried egg. The egg sort of wraps the dish and the net effect is fantastic. Potjie is a clear dutch influence and effectively means cooking meat in a pot over fire. What made the taste special was the fact that the curry was of Springbok - the South African deer and the softness and the flavour of the meat made us quite envious of the South African lions.

Karibu serves all these dishes in an all you can eat format and we ate to our stomachs and hearts content while looking over the last remnants of the Capetonian sunset. After the meal we returned to our hotel, tired and very happy. We were praying for some good weather for the following day as we had the visit to the table mountain lined up, which was dependent on good weather (table mountain cable car being shut during cloudy and rainy conditions).