it was a good plan... up till now

[extemporanea]

Possible Tactical Errors When Planning A Wine-Route:

1. Plan it for the middle of a Cape heat wave. 38o temperatures. Killing.
2. Plan it for the middle of a Cape heat wave in a car with no working aircon. We survived by rubbing ourselves down with ice cubes, which must have looked supremely dodgy.
3. Plan it for the middle of a heat wave, in the Wellington area, when Paarl Mountain has been on fire for several days. This creates a tendency for winetasters to swirl, sniff, taste and say, judiciously, "Hmmm, bit smoky on the nose." Fortunately Paarl Mountain had mostly burned itself out by the time we arrived, and we were able to detour around the enormous column of smoke. I don't know how those poor firefighters managed to work in the heatwave, it was unspeakable even sitting in a moving car with all the windows open. Apparently not too many actual vineyards were destroyed, but the smoke is going to affect this year's vintage, which I'd imagine will be some combination of disasterous, interesting, or a unique and completely unreplicable vintage each bottle of which will sell for enormous sums. I don't worry about the wine as much as I do about all those conservation areas burned out, nothing left alive. The fynbos will bounce back stronger than ever, but the animals won't.
4. Choose as your first wine farm of the day a place called the Black Pearl. The owner swears blind they predate Johnny Depp by a considerable margin ("Paarl" means "pearl", after all), but even so the trip will inevitably degenerate into a lot of "Arrrrr! 'Tis the Black Pearl!" in appropriate iterations of Geoffrey Rush. Particularly when stv is on board. The farm itself was a real find, though - one phones up to arrange a tasting, which the owner conducts personally on the balcony of his beautifully renovated 70s home (which apparently used to belong to the National Party and have red- or black-painted walls). Damned nice cabernet. Friendly dogs. Charming host. Lovely view.
   
   
   
   
   Also, they have alpacas.
5. Take a day off for the the wine route on a Friday in order to give oneself a long weekend, as a first, faint stab at trying to recover from a month of 11-hour days, then discover that the board schedule checking, which I'm only about a third of the way through, has to be done by Monday. Spend the non-winerouting portion of one's "rest" weekend checking board schedules and plotting the absolute destruction of the faculty admin block by judicious application of gelignite. God, I need a rest.

I have to say, despite the stacked deck ennumerated above, it was a lovely day, and full of lovely wine, lots of which we bought. The Diemersfontein Pinotage is particularly fine. Vanilla and chocolate flavours. They make it into truffles, a box of which I acquired and transported to Cape Town lovingly packed in ice. Not even heatwaves get between me and my chocolate.