Spring Break Part 4...Wine Tour and Beaches and Cape Point

So the last days of my trip were definitely the best. Thursday we went on a wine tour in the vineyards of Stellonbosh. An area that rivals Northern California and France the world's best wines. We started off the day at a vineyard where we learned HOW to taste wine, how to smell wine and how to tell how old wine is. I acted very grown up but pretty much giggled the whole time. It is great to be able to drink legally. At the first vineyard we tasted wine and some really good soft cheeses made right there. Everything was delicious, i was tipsy by 10am. We went from vineyard to vineyard (4 in all) all very modern and learned how to make red wine and white wine. We even went down below and saw where they store everything. We tasted chocolate and laughed a lot. The day was fantastic, including the well deserved nap on the way home. P.S. Wine descriptions are very silly.













That night since we were definitely too tired to go out we met some people in our backpackers who were in Cape Town to run the Two Oceans Marathon on Saturday. Of course we hit it off right away and hung out with them all night talking about running. The next day we all went to this beautiful beach together and played Frisbee and took sprints into the FREEZING Atlantic ocean.









The next day we hiked to the most Southern tip of Africa called Cape Point. The cool part about this place is that it is where the Atlantic Ocean meets the Indian Ocean and since they are such drastic temperature differences. The craziest part is that when we got there a baboon jumped into a car and read some of our Cosmo magazine before running away with a cookie wrapper.

Ok so the next day was my favorite. Did you know that South Africa has a huge colony of African penguins? I didn't! But they are friggen adorable. We drove to see the penguins in a little beach town called Simon's Town were colonies of African penguins were nesting. The cute thing about all the penguins is that they are monogamous so they were all in pairs. We even saw some awesome penguin sex. One of the cool parts is that they weren't like roped off really or anything and you could get really close to them, but you couldn't touch. The best part was the beach that most of them lived on called Boulder Beach. I swear, it should be one of the wonders of the world, it was beautiful. The beach was covered with huge boulders, but in between was really soft sand. If you hiked past some of them you got into the most beautiful area with penguins in the water right next to where you were walking. You can see below my awesome Ariel from the little mermaid interpretation. What do you think?
The next day was our last in Cape Town and we went to visit Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela spent most of his life with the rest of the political prisoners during Apartheid. I had read his autobiography prior to coming and it was really cool to see the place in real life. We took a ferry over to the island and they explained a lot of it's history. Before it was a maximum security prison it was a place where they sent people with leprosy. We saw the graves and then we went into the prison where we got a tour from an ex-political prisoner. He was there for seven years in the communal cell area. And then we got to see Nelson Mandela's cell. It was all very overwhelming as i realized how most of the events that they were talking about did not happen very long ago. It was surreal, but i am glad i went. Visiting the island really showed how far South Africa has come in such a short amount of time.


After that it was about time for our trip to end. We went out to celebrate by eating Thai food on the water, my favorite. We drove to the airport and flew out at 6.30 this morning. Haven't slept in two days i think i should stop rambling and go to bed. Overall, super successfull Spring Break 09.