Bike riding the Western Cape

We left Capetown and visited the Stellenbosch area, about an hour northeast of Capetown.  Stellenbosch is wine country - the Napa Valley of South Africa.  I hate to be the American tourist who compares everything they see to something “back home,” but today did remind me very much of California.  Our bike ride was in Junkershoek National Preserve.  A junker is a young, unmarried man, and a hoek is a corner.  Young, single man’s corner?  It sounds better in Afrikaans.

First we parked at the Rosebud Flower Shop which was just like the Flower Farm in Loomis - a nursery cum cafe that is a biker hangout on weekends.  We rode to the entrance of Junkershoek on paved roads but the loop in Junkershoek was unpaved rock and gravel.  Absolutely not my type of ride.  I was trying to keep up and wondering why I am still killing myself on these bike rides, when I looked up and realized that I was in Yosemite Valley.  It was gorgeous.  I stopped trying to keep up with the group, and just cruised and enjoyed the scenery.  The tops of the mountains on either side of us were granite but the sides are grass covered slopes, not the dramatic granite faces of Yosemite.  Nonetheless, it was beautiful and it reminded me why I am out here and not on the bus with the other old people.  This is too far to walk and closed to cars.  Biking is the only way to see and appreciate Junkershoek.  Like Yosemite Valley, there are lots of trailheads, and the serious hikers were heading up the mountains on all sides.

After the ride, we went to the Spice Route, an interesting combination of tasting rooms and restaurants, with playgrounds for the kids and live music.  Of course they had tasting rooms for wine and craft beer.  Also, biltong which is sort of like jerky - sort of.  It is cured meat, but it is not thin strips like jerky.  Rather, it is soft cubes of meat.  The South Africans say that they didn’t have the patience to let the meat completely dry out, so that is why they have biltong rather than jerky.  One of our group ordered kudu (a type of antelope) biltong at a restaurant in the Spice Route. I tried a bite and liked it.  Another experience I never expected to have in my life - eating kudu biltong.

 But our group did not go first to the wine or beer or biltong tasting; we make a beeline for chocolate tasting.  Excellent choice.

By the way, everything here is called a "farm," so what we call a winery is a wine farm here. After the Spice Route, we stopped at a goat farm where they have a gourmet grocery and cheese tasting. Among other things at the goat farm we saw a beautiful bird called a sunbird.

So you can eat your way through the Stellenbosch area, and you can visit Loomis, Napa Valley, and Yosemite Valley all in one afternoon.

This is a long weekend because Monday is Heritage Day - a day when they are supposed to celebrated the different parts of the rainbow nation.  But the whites don’t seem anxious to celebrate any other heritage than Dutch, so they celebrate this as National Braai Day.  Braai means barbeque.  They say that “we can all agree on barbeque as our common heritage.” So in the evening, we went back to our guest house and our guides prepared braai for us.

On Monday we were scheduled for a long ride in the van with a short bike ride through a beautiful area, but it rained all day. So we had the long van ride but no bike ride. The highlight of our day was the stop for lunch at the bizarrely named and decorated Diesel and Creme. It is decorated with an odd assortment of items from the 50's and 60's including pictures of James Dean in the ladies bathroom. And, of course, at one end they have installed real windows from a church. The specialty is a unique assortment of milkshakes, but I went with the banana waffle.

On Tuesday, we were to ride the beautiful and dramatic Swartburg Pass. I had my doubts all along whether I would tackle such a hard climb, but the weather today clinched it for me: 45 degrees and windy. I had not expected cold weather, so a month ago when it was 100 degrees in Sacramento and I was packing for this trip, it never occurred to me to bring bike pants and a jacket. That is today's excuse, but it was too hard a climb for me in any weather. Two hours of steep uphill on a gravel road, followed by a twenty minute descent. I really enjoyed the view from the van. The other woman gave it the old college try but joined me in the van after twenty minutes. The guide and the two men rode all the way up ... and down, joined by the other woman. It was a beautiful view from the top.

I did visit the large and impressive Cango Cave this afternoon, and maybe one day, I'll go for a bike ride on this bike trip.

On Wednesday we drove back to the Indian Ocean to the lovely town of Knysna (the k is silent) and I finally got back on the bike for an easy ride through the Harkerville National Forest.  Once again, the highlight of the day may have been the funkily named restaurant that we went to for dinner:  Oysters and Tapas.  Oysters are the specialty in Knysna and they have tapas from around the world, so naturally, I had sushi.

On Thursday we visited Tsitsikamma National Park and the Storm's River mouth.  We did a short hike over a suspension bridge to a secluded beach and lagoon.  Then we were scheduled to ride over Nature's Valley Pass.  It turns out that "pass" is code for "long climb," so the other woman and I stayed in the van and had time to visit the world's highest bridge bungy jump.  They have a viewing area where you can watch people jump and they have a live feed in the cafe so you can watch their faces when they jump.  Unfortunately, we just did not have enough time to give it a go.  Oh, darn.

We joined the climbers on the back side of the pass for a ride into Nature's Valley where there is another lovely beach and lagoon. Later we drove to an outlook over another lovely beach and lagoon to watch a spectacular sunset. Apparently, there are a lot of lovely beaches and lagoons on the coast. Go figure.

On Friday we rode through beautiful rolling farm countryside. There were mostly fields of crops, but also sheep, cows, and the occasional ostrich farm. The ride ended at a pantoon - a ferry boat attached to a cable. Two men "pull" the boat across the water.

The man in blue is pulling a chain hooked over the cable. In front of him, one of the biker's is trying his hand at it.

Saturday was our last day of riding and it was my kind of ride: flat. Again we rode through luscious farmland with crops, sheep, and cows. We stopped for lunch in the small beach town of Struis Bay. Then we continued on a few more miles to Cape Agulhas, the real southernmost point of Africa. It is hard to read the plaque, but that is what it says.

I climbed out on the rocks past everyone else, so for a few brief moments memorialized in this picture, I was the southernmost person in the entire continent of Africa.

And just in case you needed to be warned while you were at Cape Agulhas ...

I broke the fast that night at the (almost) normally named Woodpecker, which the guide said had the best pizza in the Western Cape. An Italian restaurant/pizzeria named Woodpecker. Of course. They had some of the most unusual pizzas I have seen. I split the Elvis which has bacon, bananas, garlic, and avocado. Shockingly, it was really good.

On our last day we drove back to Capetown, making a quick stop at Hermanus for lunch and whale watching and another quick stop at a local cafe whose specialty is ...

I have seen some very interesting things this week, on and off the bike.