Peace of Africa

I had a pretty rough autumn, workwise and otherwise. Therefore I am delighted to find peace during these three weeks of holiday in Africa. Sun, sleep, friends and paragliding does wonders for me.

I left Sweden 1 December and flew via Dubai. Having to spend more than eight hours overnight at the airport waiting for the connecting flight to Cape Town, I took a cab downtown. Very quiet and somewhat boring, but I didn’t see much.

Cape Town is one of my favourite cities, so it was nice to be back again. Just hanged around for two days, enjoying the sun and the city while waiting for the other Swedish paraglider pilots to arrive. Sunday lunch we picked up a rental car and drove to Porterville, three-four hour drives North West of Cape Town. Here, we are nine Swedish pilots attending a one-week training camp to improve our competition flying. The second week will partake in an International paragliding competition.

Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t played ball. Arriving in sizzling 37°C heat Sunday afternoon we had a short evening flight. Monday was too windy so we went wine tasting and dining (always a pleasure) at Fairview and Nederburg.

Tuesday was flyable, just about, so we took off from Klipdas at Porterville and flew South. I landed at Saron after 29 kilometers, some of the other pilots made it into the Tulbagh valley another 15 kilometers. What a lovely feeling to be in the air again! When I landed I was greeted by a whole bunch of little kids that came running from the nearest farm. Although they probably saw paragliders before they were still big-eyed when I a descended soundlessy from the sky only to fold up my flying machine into a neat backpack and walk away. What a wondrous sport this is.

Wednesdat was cold and windy so we drove towards Stellenbosch and had lunch at tasty 96 Winery Road. The wines at Waterford and Dornier were disappointing but Stellenzicht was a very positive surprise with an agreeable Chardonnay and some lovely Shiraz.

Yesterday I woke up early and took a refreshing walk out on the countryside. It is such a beautiful landscape here. Peaceful. Said hello to two kids on a bike and a few pigs along the road.

In a sidecar motorbike through the winelands

We had the most fabulous day in the winelands around Paarl and Stellenbosch today, driving around with a sidecar motorbike from Cape Sidecars Adventures. Anders Ohlsson did the driving and I did the wine tasting.
The bike was a vintage sidecar from 1968, produced in China on blueprints that trace their origin to BMW military sidecars from the late 30's. Really cool. To make it even cooler, the helmets we had used to for Chinese fighter jet pilots.

We started with some truly great wines at Nederburg (winery of the year), continued with lunch and more wines at my old favourite Muratie and finished with Hartenbergs excellent Shiraz.

Nederburg

Lovely lunch at Muratie.

A great shiraz.

Rain in the semi desert

Believe it or not, but yesterday it was raining in Porterville - during the dry season in what can almost be described as a semi desert. Unheard of. We blame our fellow Swedish pilot on the trip, Jenny Persson, who is an undercover rain goddess.

To try to please the gods we went wine tasting again, covering six wineries and 32 wines. Meerlust was first out, followed by a brilliant lunch (gemsbok!) at the restaurant 96 Winery Road. Then Ken Forrester, Uva Mira, Hidden Valley, Ernie Els and Peter Franke.

In the end it didn't help, today it is raining even more. What's going on with the weather in the world?

At Meerlust

Meerlust

An excellent wine we had at 96 Winery Road

Beautiful hemsbok fillet at 96 Winery Road

Two great wines at Ken Forrester

Uva Mira's lovely terrace

At Ernie Els

At Peter Falke