on to Stellenbosch

I know I just made a superlative claim about Cape Town, and how many superlatives can one blog handle... but if there were a beauty contest for towns, I really think Stellenbosch, South Africa, would win. It has verdant valleys of neat rows of grape vines beneath towering mountains, it has picturesque white Cape Dutch architecture, it has trees and flowers and blue skies, and like a beauty contest contestant it is almost too beautiful to be real. I am trying not to dwell on the possibility that we might actually get to live in this town (if Joel does a PhD there), because it might not happen and I don't want to set myself up for disappointment, if we end up in some other town that is perfectly nice but yet can't compete with Stellenbosch. I am trying not to dwell on the possibility of living there. I didn't say I was succeeding.

On the way to Stellenbosch from Cape Town, we took a long detour down to Cape Point, a cape that separates the Atlantic from the Indian Ocean. The drive along the coast was spectacular, with the fancy neighborhoods perched on cliffs in Cape Town's outskirts giving way to wild, rugged, and mostly empty coast.

another bad through the windshield picture- but what a road!

I'm mad about fynbos, the weird and gorgeous flowers that grow only in this part of the world  

The early sea explorers erected tall white monuments like this, to help them navigate. This is a reproduction.

 Now, let's get to Stellenbosch.

We tried to visit a winery, but it was inexplicably closed. We still got to enjoy the gorgeous grounds and views.

We visited the lovely Stellenbosch Botanical Gardens.

give a boy a stick and a pond and he will amuse himself for a very long time

the ethereal purple blossoms of the jacaranda tree can be spotted all over this part of Africa in the spring 

We ended up at a posh winery/hotel/spa, for dinner and a sunset.