 Vineyard in Somerset West, South Africa.  Statue at the entrance of Erinvale Resort and Spa. Somerset West, South Africa One of the amazing things about working for a medical device company is the opportunity for travel. Between working for BD, Baxter, Cardinal Health, and CareFusion (soon to be BD- more on that later) I have not only been lucky enough to visit almost all 50 US states, I am also ticking off countries. Most recently I flew all the way to Cape Town, South Africa for a training. I stayed at Erinvale Resort and Spa, located in Somerset West which is about an hour and a bit out of Cape Town, depending on traffic. It is beautiful! Corey and I have friends in Cape Town which really made my short stay extra sweet. I arrived on Saturday and although I was a bit slow from the flying and time changes Graham and Sev came and picked me up for a wine country tour. As it turns out, Somerset West is quite near by the Stellenbosch region. If you have had South African wine, it's likely been from this area. There are many, many wineries and we visited 3 as I had to be back for a meeting at dinnertime. The first winery was Fairview where we did a wine and cheese tasting. Two of my favourite things... Next we headed to Morgenhof Winery. The grounds at all the wineries were incredible. Peacocks seem to be all over the place, even at Erinvale Resort. Again, yummy wine... no food this stop. The skies were a blue as could be. Next we headed to our final stop. Blaauwklippen. Here we feasted on some platters that went really well with... you guessed it, WINE! The tastings cost about 25 SA Rand each and a decent bottle of wine averages about 80-100 Rand. Currency exchange was at about 8.5/1 in my favour. Can't beat that! Considering you can easily pay $20 a glass for a decent wine in Singapore, South Africa is a super bargain. At Blaauwklippen we shared some meat, cheese, pate, and pickle platters. All of this happens to go really well with more WINE! We focused on reds most of the day and the local varietal is Pinotage. I have to say it was a fav of mine and a bottle even made it all the way back to our little house in Phuket. Corey got to taste South Africa and we toasted Graham and Sev from the patio that once was theirs.  Platters at Blaauwklippen Winery. Went very well with the Pinotage. No rest for the wicked! Later Saturday evening I was lucky enough to have dinner at the local business manager's home- with his wife, kids, and one of my colleagues. They put on a BRAII for us! This is the Afrikaaner word for bar-b-que. Since the weather in Cape Town is unpredictable, our host has set up a very functional fireplace/indoor braii. The evenings were chilly, even though it is summer, and the warmth from the fire was perfect. They live up on a hill in Somerset West and we watched the sunset in the distance over The Strand. Our last night as a group we went to dinner down the road behind Erinvale. It was a wonderful walk through Lourensford Vineyard where we then had amazing food, wine and more laughs. The first picture in this blog was also taken there. My flight schedule allowed me to have one extra evening in Cape Town proper. I caught a ride into town with a lovely co-worker where Graham and Sev met me for dinner and a walk around the Victoria Harbour area. The Volvo Ocean Race boats were in town for their first lay over. It was very fun to see the crews putting gear into place. The town and harbour were hopping because of the event. Overall I had a lovely time in South Africa and my only regret was that I couldn't squeeze in a trip to see the Williams and all the additions to their home in Kenya, as well as possibly stop by and see Julius and the kids. Maybe next time... I do need to go back to actually see Table Mountain. It was shrouded by clouds for most of my stay. My trip was short, and I only saw a small part of South Africa but I would certainly return for more. (? wine)
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