We arrived in the Cape on New Year’s Day. Leaving Swellendam we stopped by Robertson to see the house in which my wife’s grandmother grew up. A nice bit of family nostalgia. We then decided to swing by Franschhoek for a quick visit… on the way we passed by the Theewaterskloof Dam: one of the main reservoirs supplying the Cape.
It was depressingly empty: the Cape has been suffering a multi-year drought, to the point that they currently have level 6 water restrictions in place.
To get to Franschhoek we headed across the lovely Franschhoek Pass.
Franschhoek is a gorgeous little town I stumbled across in 1996 during my first visit to the region. It was exactly the wrong place to visit on January 1st, though: the town was absolutely heaving with people. We quickly decided to drive onwards to Stellenbosch, which proved to be virtually empty: it’s fundamentally a University town and so gets nice and quiet when the students are home for the summer.
After a late lunch we had enough…