CAPE PENINSULA and CAPE WINELANDS, South Africa, October 4, 2005 — Wine farms redux.

Sue missed going with us yesterday so she is going to take me out today.

We've made Franschhoek our destination. First stop is Spier Winery. It has a bit of a Disneyland aspect including a 'pet the cheetahs' attraction, a craft market, a restaurant in the trees, gift shops, etc. But we just do the tasting. Actually just me since Sue is driving.

They have some nice wines. But I just taste and

don't buy any bottles.

We stopped at another winery for lunch, Boschendal. I had bobotie, a local speciality meat casserole. Last time it seemed that everyone who had me over was serving bobotie. Braiis have been the standard this time. So I was glad to get a bobotie fix.

We arrived in Franschhoek and took in the quaintness of it. There is a Huguenot museum here but I saw it last time so we pass on that. We do a bit of shopping. Of course, there are other wineries around, but truthfully...you can only taste so much in one day.

Sue has a secondhand bookstore she likes and I find a couple of books there, very cheap for my reading needs for the rest of the trip. One is a biography from the WWII era and the other is Elie Wiesel's Night which I've been intending to read since Ballet Austin did the Holocaust and Humanity project.

We headed home along the beach road again with Sue telling me stories about places and things. Hearing people's stories is such a vital part of learning about them. A story about her father narrowly escaping death in a train accident somewhere in a remote area that is probably currently a part of Zambia is particularly fascinating. He was on his way to marry her mother. The front part of the train derailed killing most of the people. He wasn't in his compartment in this part of the train because he'd been in the dining car and stopped to talk to people on his way back. Stories like that always make me think: on that simple conversation depends the life of the person who is driving me down this road in Africa.