Home » South Africa » South African Adventure 1999: Part 7: Exploring Cape Town and its surrounding areas

From our base in Cape Town we visited a wine farm in Stellenbosch, a Cheetah conservation centre, Cape Point and shopped at the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. Then the Drifters tour was over and we were on our own. We moved over to St. John's Backpacker Lodge and continued exploring Cape Town on our own, in particular visiting Robben Island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for a long time.

South African Adventure 1999: Part 7: Exploring Cape Town and its surrounding areas

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 20:19:06

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Day 19 - July 15

We woke up at 0730. Tomorrow would be the final day of the Drifters tour, which meant that a new place to stay tomorrow night was needed. Of course it would have been possible to keep staying here at Drifters, but it was pretty expensive at 240R a night so, we rather wanted to find somewhere cheaper.

Fortunately, we had the "Africa - The South" edition of the Lonely Planet travel guide at hand. We checked the section on accommodation in Cape Town and found a place called the St. John's Backpacker Lodge which seemed quite promising. Lonely Planet described it as "one of the best bargains in Cape Town", and since it was located right up the street, this sounded like a place for us.

After quickly eating breakfast, we walked up to St. John's to see if they had any available rooms. We spoke to a guy in the reception who was called Erroll and seemed to be running the place. He was very friendly and helpful, so we decided to reserve a double room. Although without private bath, it seemed quite cheap at 120R.

Rejoining the others at the Inn, we all drove the short distance to a wine farm near Stellenbosch. It was raining quite heavily, but fortunately the tour was inside the buildings. We were shown around and given lots of information about wine production. The highlight, however, came after the tour when we got to taste lots of different types of wines. My conclusion was that white wines were better than red wines, and the cheapest wine turned out to be by far the best one. However, I can't quite see why there is all this fuzz about wines, as in my opinion, soft drinks like Coke, Sprite, strawberry milkshake and apple juice are far superior. Most people in the world seem to disagree with me, though.

After the winetasting, we left the farm and drove into the city of Stellenbosch. The agenda said that we should explore the city, but since the rain was really pouring down now, ...