We made a few more journeys to wine country, the highlights were one place with a chocolate and grape juice tasting for kids...the winery is Lanzerac...Charlie and Katie gave it a thumbs up.
Our next stop was a wine that we like at our favorite Pretoria restaurant, we learn that the owner of the winery also owns the Pretoria restaurant.
The lawn and the view were beautiful, here are the girls enjoying the view.
They sell giant bottles that people buy for special occasions, like weddings...
The cellar tour, this is where all the wine is stored, Greg is trying to contemplate how many bottles he could drink before we have to leave...
Lucky us, we have friends also down visiting Cape Town and we get to catch up with them and their extended family for a great dinner and enjoy their view of the other side of False Bay.
Crazy view, huh?
View was even better with the lights at night!
On another day we go back to the winery with the duck parade. Charlie is delighted they have a cricket setup and we get to play while we wait for the ducks.
Getting ready to hit a 6! (Like a homerun)
We meet up with some other friends, everyone likes this little guy, he reminds us of when Charlie was small!
Kelly filmed this and had it go slow motion in the middle so you can really watch them go!
Our friends arrived home from England and we were all delighted to catch up with them. The kids came up with the idea to go to one of those "Safe Room" places where they lock you in a room and you have one hour to solve the mystery and escape out of the room. We decided we should play family vs. family...here we are hearing the rules and thinking about which family will win.
Oh yeah, Charlie decided to join the other family and later regretted his choice...we narrowly escaped from our room just before time expired, our buddies (and Charlie) didn't make it out before the buzzer.
Cool view of the kids with Table Mountain and cable car in the distance.
We rang in the New Year with a champagne toast on our friends' beautiful deck overlooking the bay. Kids were happy to be up so late, a wonderful start to 2017...spending it with friends. Sadly the next morning we had to start our long drive back.
Charlie saying goodbye to two of his good friends. We had a very sad boy on the way home. He cried because he said it would be a long time before he had a dog of his own again...
Our drive took us through the Great Karoo desert, was many many hours without seeing much. We were rushing to get to our place for the night..in this forgotten town called Phillopolis. We grabbed some quick dinner and while we were waiting saw these 3 kids all go by on a bike!
Our stopover town was really in the middle of nowhere...here is the MAIN Street! No traffic to worry about!
Here's an old covered wagon...
It was a stormy night luckily because it brought the temperatures down a bit (no A/C in our place). The temperature in the desert during the day was at 42C (107 F) on the car dashboard!
We made it back to Pretoria, having listened to another entire audiobook to kill the ride, this time our book was
The Cardturner (by Louis Sachar), which was all about the game of bridge and a teenage boy that helps his blind uncle by turning his cards. The main character drew us all in and a good story made the 15 hour trip much more enjoyable.
We were sad to be back in our house, it seemed so dark inside after our friends' beautiful, white beach house it was strange to look out the window and see walls where the blue sea should have been! We probably won't get the chance to go back to Cape Town again before we leave South Africa, but our entire family is all in agreement that it is at the top of our list of favorite places, we feel very lucky to have spent two weeks in such a great place!
