Fairview

Today is sunday, it's the first free day we've had in the week that we've been here. Some people slept in after the trip yesterday, I didn't want to do that. I can sleep when I'm back in Arlington, and besides, I don't want to mess up my sleep schedule. There weren't too many other people up at 8 for breakfast this morning! When I woke up it was cold and rainy. I had to walk to the ATM at the mall this morning to take out some cash, (it's about two minutes walk away). As soon as I got there it started pouring!


I had really wanted to hike up Stellenbosch Mountain, I know some other guys did too, but it's just too muddy and rainy today for anything like that. Later in the morning the rain stopped and the sun started to come out, but it was still to wet to do anything like that. Instead, some of our South Africans organized a tour of a nearby vineyard and cheese farm, Fairview. It's one of the oldest ones in Africa, founded by the governor of the Cape in 1693, and operated by the French Huguenots. It is one of the most visited sites in the Cape winelands, and is hugely popular with the locals. We couldn't use the school shuttle bus today, so we had to hire a taxi. Taxi's in South Africa aren't what we picture when we think of them in America. They are small busses, with notoriously crazy drivers. It was an experience! The taxi drove us about half an hour outside of Stellenbosch into the countryside. The farm itself is on the foothills of Paarl Mountain. Fairview is especially famous for their goats. One of the main attractions on the farm is the goat tower where the goats live. At fairview they make a ton of different types of goat cheese, and we got to try some samples!

This is the famous goat tower!

One of the goats that lives on the farm.

It had stopped raining, but it was still really dark and cold. We were up in the mountains, and the clouds were really low.

A typical South African taxi. It picked us up outside our dorm and drove us to Fairview and back.