Included in the workshop program and registration fee will be an excursion on Wednesday, March 13. The excursion will consist of visits and tastings at wine farms in the Stellenbosch region. The first winery will be the Raats Winery, which was selected as the Platter’s Winery of the Year 2018. Afterwards, we will visit the Mulderbosch Winery. Transport to these venues, and back to town, will be provided.

The workshop dinner will be held at Jardine in downtown Stellenbosch, on Thursday, March 14.
Some links for the Stellenbosch Winelands:

Ideas for a few extra days:

  • Spend the weekend in Cape Town and explore the city – Table Mountain is certainly a prime target. You could also go to Kirstenbosch Botanical Garden (although the prime bloom will be over then), and even climb Table Mountain from there (although this could be hot and strenuous that time of the year). Cape Town has quite a lot of night life, especially on the weekend.
  • Explore the Stellenbosch surroundings. For this, you should probably get a rental car. There are literally hundreds of wine farms in the surroundings, if you want to go for a tasting. The Paarl Taal Monument (monument to the Afrikaans language) is an interesting cultural experience, and you can go on to the Paarl rock (large granite Boulder). Franschhoeck is another cute town, with lots of gourmet restaurants, boutique shops, and wine farms.
  • Get out to the Cederberg Mountains – a nice mountainous area about 2-3hours north of Cape Town, with nice mountain walks (Wolfberg Cracks, some caves). You could stay at Clanwilliam, or look for a place in the mountain reserve (look for Algeria). The roads are mostly dirt (i.e., unpaved) but Bernd Fisher has driven them in a Polo…
  • Hike the Bosmanskloof Traverse (either as an overnight hike, or as a day-hike), staying in McGregor or Grayton.
  • Go to Calitzdorp for Port tasting, Oudtshoorn for the ostriches (and the very tourist-trappy Cango Caves, a huge limestone cave), and drive some of the “poorts” (ie old Mountain passes), like Swartbergpass into Prince Albert, a quaint Karoo town.
  • Go shark cage diving in Struisbaai.

Except for the Cape Town weekend, most trips will require a rental car. You can get a driver for the wine tasting tour, which is probably a smart idea in the first place…

Safaris

There are no lions running around in Stellenbosch ;-). The closest ones are at the Drakenstein Lion Park, which is basically a retirement home for lions. There are a few private game reserves within two to three hours drive of Stellenbosch (e.g., Sanbona), but they are not cheap. The closest National Parks with substantial wildlife are Mountain Zebra NP and Addo Elephant NP (about 8-10hrs drive from Stellenbosch, but Addo is quite close to Port Elizabeth, which is one hour by plane from Cape Town). If you plan to visit Kruger NP you should probably fly with a stop-over in Johannesburg, and plan on at least four extra days.