Stellenbosch & Villiera Winery

Hey, guess what? We didn’t make it to Table Mountain today as I am the most burnt, I have ever been in my whole life. That is not an understatement, in fact I spent about 30 minutes this morning crying to Leo feeling sorry for myself – why? Because I got burnt. It’s bloody ridiculous!
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However, plan B we decided to check out Stellenbosch and the surrounding wineries. The town of Stellenbosch is surrounded by the vineyards of the Cape Winelands and the mountain nature reserves of Jonkershoek and Simonsberg. 

After picking up the car from Budget – which we 100% recommend as the team were amazing, the car was cheap, and they even upgraded us! Everything ran like clockwork and in 20mins we were out in our little Ford number and heading 45 minutes East to Stellenbosch. The town's oak-shaded streets are lined with cafes, boutiques and art galleries. The architecture is original and has a strong Dutch focus mixed with South African traditional – very unique. Oh, and it’s hot here – like 5 degrees hotter than Cape Town so wear sunscreen and be prepared to sweat.

We had read about Villiera Vineyard and it looked amazing as not only was it a vineyard but also home to a fantastic nature reserve and we booked a 2.5 hour tasting and safari around the property. IT WAS FAB…but more of that later as I want to give special mention to Café Furlough. If you ever find yourself near this place, make sure you add it to your list. Filled with beautiful healthy meals and the best-looking cakes I have seen so far in Africa, it was brilliant. I had a poke bowl and a raw juice and Leo had a brilliant pulled beef burger with sweet potato. DELICIOUS! And even though a little expensive, it was on par with NZ and I was so sad as I am so burnt, we treated ourselves.
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Moving on to the Vineyard, our afternoon cost 250ZAR pp - $25NZD. This included 6 wine tastings, 1 glass of Champagne (or Cap Classique as they call it as they can’t take the name) and a 2 our nature safari. We saw heaps! Springbuck, Giraffe, Bontebok, Black Wildebeest, Burchell's Zebra, common Duiker, Steenbuck, Waterbuck and Grysbok and the best part was we managed to find a chameleon which has been on my list for forever! The 2 hours flew by and I took about 500 photos, but I just loved every second, and for the price it was more than worth it.

Driving back to Cape town was great, the roads here are much better than I expected, I don’t know if I was being uneducated, but they are better than NZ! We just had such a great day and we recommend both this Vineyard (but there are so many others in the neighbourhood) as well as stopping for some lunch/breakfast at Stellenbosch. It’s a brilliant day out and hopefully we will get to Table Mountain in the next few days when I cool down a bit and have completed my skin shed.
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I’ll leave you with that mental image… along with some other cute animals!