Last Stop Before London.

We're sitting at Cape Town international airport right now, awaiting our flight home to Heathrow, at the end of the third of our major retirement adventures.

We've spent the past 4 days in Franschhoek, in the wine-growing region to the East of Cape Town. As we left Knysna, the weather returned to its usual gloriousness, and we've enjoyed more gorgeous sunshine and blue skies, with temperatures in the low 30s - though reaching 35 by lunchtime today. Franschhoek is another really pretty, very up-market town, if a tad twee and with a distinctly staid feeling about it.



It's rightfully one of the gastronomic as well as wine-lover's highlights of the Eastern Cape, and the lovely, pristine little town is surrounded by a truly lush green valley containing more beautiful vineyards than you can shake a stick at. And the setting is stunning too, with its 360-degree range of beautifully rugged mountains, complete with several clear mountain streams and small waterfalls.

Franschhoek must, however, also be one of the least culturally diverse or ethnically representative towns we've stayed in in the whole of our trip: the only black faces we've seen have been those in service roles (as waiters/waitresses, maids and servants) - we've seen virtually no black people as customers or paying guests in the many shops, museums, hotels or restaurants - nor even just walking about the town window-shopping, as many people do. We asked about this when talking to our breakfast waiter, a Zimbabwean man named Innocent, who looked after us at the lovely little guest-house we were staying in.
 

His 'take' on things here was that Franschhoek is mainly an unofficial 'retirement village' for very or fairly wealthy people - the overwhelming majority of whom in South Africa, despite some progress in the past 20 years, are still from the white population. It would seem that most of the black people who provide the services here live in a township some way out of town; and that, some years ago now, the residents of Franschhoek decided that the little railway station (once the end of the line from Paarl) should be closed down, and the line should terminate at what had been the penultimate stop, a few kilometres before Franschhoek. The ostensible reason given for this decision was that it would further enhance the tranquillity of this already-tranquil town. Whether this was the real reason for the decision or not, the effect has certainly been to restrict the means of transport for the township dwellers, hardly any of whom have their own transport, of course. And neither have we seen any the typically African mini-bus-taxis plying their trade here, even though they are seemingly ubiquitous in the other towns we've visited, careering around (pretty dangerously, it seems, from the horrific traffic accident figures we've read about) collecting mainly black passengers. We learned that most of the black staff in the hotels and restaurants are, generously, 'bussed' into town and home again by specific transport arranged directly by their employers (liveried mini-buses or even pick-up trucks). So, the effect of all these factors, deliberately or otherwise, clearly helps to restrict the number of black people who might otherwise visit the town.

Perhaps we're being unfair on the white population here - we have, after all, only visited for 4 days! - but we both felt a very marked absence of diversity, and a far stronger sense of polite deference towards us from the black people we've met than we've experienced anywhere else.

Nevertheless, we had a lovely few days here, lazing around the pool in the sunshine from time to time; wandering around the wonderfully 'arty' shops and the Saturday morning arts, crafts and foodie market; 

 

visiting the Hugeonot museum to help understand the origins of the French influence in the architecture and vini-culture around the area;

enjoying a wonderful day-long wine-tasting tour by vintage tram, complete with a pre-booked picnic lunch by the riverside at the Couronne vineyard;



and visiting the stunning collection of vintage and classic cars a few miles out of town.

Oh, but going back to our Zimbabwean waiter, Innocent, whom we've mentioned earlier, for just a muinute:  we've noticed here in Franschhoek - mainly from the name-tags which most of the waiters and waitresses seem compelled to wear - an amazing range of perhaps missionary-inspired first names: Patience, Prudence, Faith, Lucky, Happy, Goodness, Charity, Joyous, etc. But things got a bit silly (or rather, we got a bit silly) when we saw the name-tag of one of the waiters we met a couple of times: his name, would you believe it, was 'Tedious'!   Boy, were his parents full of joy and thrilled to see him when he was born!!   Poor bloke - fancy having to go through life with a moniker like that - what must it have done to his sense of self-worth?! But I confess that, when we thought about it later, we found this at once both pitiable and highly comic (I blame the wine-tasting), and, sitting by the poolside back in our guesthouse that evening, we had a daft half-hour coming up with names for any subsequent siblings who might dare to come along.   We started with Superfluous, Odious, Obnoxious, Lugubrious... Anyone else fancy joining in this silly game ...?

Well, we have now only an hour to go till boarding, and we've been reminiscing about the whole of this fascinating trip we're just coming to the end of.   We've had a thoroughly enjoyable, at times exciting, and culturally and politically enlightening time - with so many highlights that we couldn't choose a 'top 3', or even a 'top 10'. We've enjoyed sharing it with you, too, and we look forward to getting home to Merry Cottage, to friends and family - but also to starting to plan the next major adventure, whenever and wherever that might be.   As the words of the song by Robert Earl Keen go - 'The Road Goes on Forever'!





Bye for now. And 'Cheers!'