Of wines and wineries

If you are in the Western Cape region, you do not have any excuse for not being to at least one of the wine estates in the region. South Africa produces some of the best wines in the entire world and a wine estate tour along with wine testing is a must do if you are around Cape Town. South Africa's romance with wine dates back to 1659 when Jan van Riebeeck produced the first bottle of wine. Well, there are laws and rules governing production, marketing and selling of wines but, we can concentration only on the consumption part of it!

While a complete Wine Tour of the Western Cape would be incomplete without a visit to Stellenbosch, Franschhooek, Worchester and Constantia combined, in the interest of time, just a trip to Constantia should leave you happy, but fo course wanting to more! We did not have much time for an extensive trip as we had only about half a day. And so Constantia being the closest to where we were during the first part of that part windy part rainy Saturday winter morning, we decided to cover the Groot Constantia, Constantia Glen and Steenberg estates. 

Constantia can boast of being the oldest wine-growing region in the country, with the Groot Constantia being the oldest wine estate in South Africa. In it's 333rd year of producing signature wine, Groot Constantia welcomed us with open arms. At ZAR50 you can taste 5 wines as per your choice and what wine they are!!!! Choose from among the best from the elaborate and exquisite wine menu and titilate your senses.   

Our next stop was the Constantia Glen. Another beautiful estate with plush rolling vineyards all around. As pictureque as Groot Constantia, Glen offers a view of the Table Mountains Range close by, being closest to Cape Town. Constantia wine produces only 4 types of wines - Constantia Glen TWO, Constantia Glen THREE, Constantia Glen FIVE, and a special Sauvignon Blanc. You have to try all four with a cheese platter, as we did...and the rest is bliss!

We had our dinner at the Steenberg Farm and it was already dark by the time we reached there and so we couldn't really look around. Not to forget, we were tired as hell and rather cold, thanks to the rains! Steenberg Farm offers a huge list of fine wines classified into the Sparkling Range, Fleet Range, Estate Range, Flagship Range, and Icon that has the Steenberg Vintage wine. 

To sum it all up, do not miss Gouverneurs Reserve White, Sauvignon Blanc/Semillion, Blanc de Noir, Merlot, Pinotage, Shiraz and Grand Constance from Groot Constatia; Constantia Glen TWO and Constantia Glen Sauvignon from Constantia Glen; and Steenberg Chardonnay, Steenberg Ruby Rose, Steenberg Semillion and Steenberg Magna Carta from Steenberg Farm.

Just a word of advice following a rather funny but uncalled for incident - try not to step into a black shiny path while at the Steenberg Farm...it is possibly a beautifully maintained waterbody that might not exactly be a welcome thought on a cold and rainy night.

The African Safari

Having grown up on "Chander Pahaar", how can I not romanticise about Africa? Alright, it is South Africa, but it is the continent that matters and so since I am in the continent right now, how could I go back without doing a Safari. Ok, it is not Kruger, but it is a game safari for heaven's sake! 

The Aquila Game Reserve is a two-hour drive from Cape Town along the Karoo Mountains in the most picturesque Renosterveld and Mountain Fynbos landscape close to the Touws River. This private game reserve is a resort with multiple options, doing a day safari being just one of them and with a high probability of meeting the big 5 - Lion, Leopard, Rhinoceros (both black and white species), Elephant, and Cape buffalo! Well, I was short of time and hence, a day safari is all I could manage and what a day it turned out to be! And no, I did not get to see all the 5 but whatever I saw was a "first" for me!
 

How do I write about it? A safari is hardly an experience to put into words, but yes, having done the same back home at the Corbett National Park, the one difference that I could very easily decipher was the distinct difference in the landscape. The region is a part of a semi-desert natural region with stretches of the Savannah grasslands. This meant lesser tall trees and more bushes or shrubs. Strange how the giraffes survive here without being able to stretch their necks further up! Well, as we realized and as the guide shared, they stretch their long legs to bend their necks down, resulting very slowly to shorter heights. 

The safari took about 3 hours and we travelled through various parts of the reserve area encountering Hippos, Ostriches, Rhinos, Elephants, Giraffes, Elands, Zebras, Wildebeests, Springboks, and or couse Lions. And no, I had never seen an untamed free lion from this close, EVER! 

And God, it was cold! I mean, yes I know it is winter but how the hell does it get soooooooooo cold! So, if you ever plan a winter visit to South Africa with a safari planned to any of the reserves, be prepared! The wind can kill! 

The best part was something I noticed on my way out. Incidentally, they randomly put up flags from various countries along with the South African flag and for some strange reason, the Indian tricolour was fluttering that day! Well, once an Indian, always an Indian. And to think this was the weekend before Independence Day! The little joys of life!

Johannesburg – An introduction to South Africa

Well, here I am, and it has already been a week! Seems liek yesterday when I was rushing to complete my handovers and pack my bags! And what a week it has been in this beautiful and intriguing country!

We are a group of IBMers selected for the month long Corporate Service Corps assignment in Cape Town, South Africa, officially known as CSC#ZA20! So, we all finally met in person on Saturday morning after three months of having met each other virtually! And as it is generally the case with every deployment group, it was like "hey, long time! How have you been?" It was like meeting people not for the first time, but just after a while! We have a most amazing team and we cover 4 out of the 7 continents (Well, Africa, because we are already there, Antartica, because ...well, I am not sure if IBM has an office there!). One Autralia or New Zealander, and we could have them all! And what is most fascinating is that we bring together a cumulutaive of over 170 years of experience, as Sydney, IBM South Africa's Corporate Citizenship Manager pointed out at the kick off with the stakeholders.
 

You can’t be in Johannesburg and not go to the Apartheid Museum and Soweto! So, before catching our flight for Cape Town on the evening of 12^th August, we all went there for a trip and what a trip it was! On our way, we crossed the Calabash FNB Stadium, renovated for the 2010 Soccer World cup. Interestingly the stadium is shaped like a Calabash bowl used widely among the local people of Gauteng to brew local beer. It even has the froth right on top! 

The Apartheid Musuem is a must do for anyone who visits South Africa! Every exhibit and every structure out there tells a tale of the journey of a race and the struggle an entire nation went through to eliminate racial discrimination. There has been and will always be societal discrimination in every society because we civilized people essentially form our own cohorts based on a lot of economic and social conditions. But to turn an entire population into second or even third-class citizens based on their ethnicity and skin colour, is sheer CRIME!

South Africa, like many other colonized countries, managed to put years and years of sacrifice and protests to be able to change the condition. And the Apartheid Museum is a storehouse of all of those protests and a race’s unputdownable effort to prove their true claim to the country! Led by one man, a country managed to emerge from the darkness of an oppressed, exploited colony to one of the most thriving economies in the sub-continent! Ah! Madib’ omde (Xhosa for Hail! The tall Madiba!)

The next phase of our day tour took us to Soweto (another must visit if you are in Jo’burg). Established in the 1880’s with thousands of people from around the world and South Africa, flocking to the new town offering labour and money to add to the “Gold” industry, more than 50% of the population in Soweto is black, mostly living in multi-racial shanty towns around what had been the actual “GOLD” mines! Located in the Gauteng (most appropriately meaning “place of gold”) province, Soweto could be projected as the face of New South Africa, caught between prosperity and squalor on one hand and poverty and misery on the other hand. Known widely for the Soweto Uprising in 1976 when the community rose against the government’s policy to enforce education in Afrikaans instead of the native tongue. And it is right here in Soweto, on the Vilakazi Street that you come across the houses of Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. It is known to be the only street that has been home to two Nobel Laureates.

It is not really easy to stop talking about either Mandela or Soweto when you come to know more about the history and the society here in South Africa. But I can only write this much for the interest to sustain!