Rainbow's End

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Geo: -33.916, 18.4222

It was yet another beautiful, clear and cloudless morning, and K and I began the day with a hike up and through the fields of protea flowers and grapes above the guest lodge. It was a true postcard setting, and there were workers already in the fields cutting flowers for shipment.

Before we left for the day, we visited the vineyard caretakers home, which is located below the main guest lodge. We'd learned that a couple of weeks earlier, an orphaned baby Steenbok (a type of antelope) had managed to squeeze through the gate and wandered into the breakfast room. It was no bigger than a puppy when it arrived, and the caretaker took him home and was nursing him. The caretaker has two dogs, who had evidently adopted the steenbok. The girls were able to hold and cuddle the baby deer, while the dogs paced around anxiously (and jealously) at their feet.

At our first winery for the day, we met with the vintner, even though they were in the height of their harvest. We got to watch as grapes were unloaded from the fields, sorted, and pressed. In our all our visits to dozens of wineries all over the place, this was the first time we got to see the actual processing of grapes.

Our final visit for the day was kept a surprise until the very end. Jeff gave me some basic directions to enter in the GPS, which we followed until we turned off the paved road. He called his contact and told him we were arriving, as he had to meet us and let us onto the property. We made another two turns, each time onto less-developed dirt roads until we reached the literal end of the road at a place called Rainbow's End. It's a relatively small family-owned vineyard. Here, too, we saw the vintner and a group of workers in the midst of harvest and processing. Our tasting was on the back porch of the family patriarch's home, which was well over a 100 years old and overlooked the end of a valley. Clouds and rained rolled in for the first time of our trip, but it was still warm and the porch was protected, so we drank and watched the storm roll through the valley. As if on cue, as we started to walk back out, the clouds broke and we saw a rainbow form across the valley head.

With our respective wine carriers now properly stocked with bottles from the last couple of days, we made the drive back to Cape Town, ultimately checking back in to our original hotel on St. George's Square.

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