South Africa Day Six:Barrydale to Stanford

Although our room was comfortable enough at the Tradouw Guest House, the temperatures had gone down a lot overnight, and it was freezing when we woke up, though the skies were once again crystal blue and clear. We therefore rushed through our showers to prevent the formation of icicles and then headed to the lounge for breakfast, which was pretty good. Though this was far from being our most luxurious inn of this trip so far, it was easily one of the most convivial, with Denis and Leon, our hosts, proving to be a lot of fun and very hospitable. When we finished eating, Leon took us across the street to a “Medicine Wheel” garden he had planted, and introduced us to “Priscilla, Queen of the Karoo”, their Vietnamese pot belly pig.

We set off from Barrydale heading to our next destination, the town of Stanford, traveling back through the scenic Tradouw Pass and through some lovely mountain roads. We arrived at the Blue Gum Inn in Stanford, our home for the night, by noon. At check in we met their six-month old German Shepherd puppy, Rocky, and learned that we were the only guests for the night, and that they had booked us a table for dinner at the hotel at 7pm.

With no idea what to do we headed out to the coastal town of Gans Bay, stopping briefly at the Klein River Cheese Factory to sample some cheese and buy some provisions for our upcoming trip to the Kruger National Park. Once in Gans Bay we learned that there are not many lunch options there, but we found a place overlooking the harbor for a meal of fish and chips while perusing our maps to figure out what to do for the rest of the day. We hit on the idea of checking out the town of Elgin, which the owner of Stony Brook vineyards said was an up-and-coming wine area where land prices were still reasonable. On the approach to Elgin we stopped at two vineyards, Paul Cluver and Oak Valley, where the white wines, especially the Sauvignon Blanc, were surprisingly good, and where the people were particularly friendly. At Oak Valley they even gave us the name of a realtor who specializes in agricultural properties, so we spent the rest of the afternoon talking with her about the ins and outs of investing there.

We got back to the hotel just in time for our 7pm dinner reservation. Since we’re the only guests, they set up our table in the lounge in front of the fireplace, which was rather cozy. The meal was very nice, too, with some tasty wines accompanying. They had also placed a bottle of local sherry with figs and other snacks in our room, which by the time we got back from dinner had become a bottle of local port, which we sampled while watching some TV.