South Africa Day 4: Cape Town Wine Tour!

On day 4 we were excited for another beautiful day in Cape Town, this time in the winelands!

We enjoyed the big buffet breakfast again- James declared that South Africa had the greatest breads he'd ever had anywhere. Our hotel made all their pastries in-house and I will say, the croissants looked spectacular. I haven't cheated on my gluten free diet once, but the croissants gave me a slight pause.

We met our lovely guide Anita in the lobby again at 9 am and drove north to Stellenbosch and the Winelands!

Our first stop was Spice Route, a huge winery with lush green hills, vines, and lot of things in addition to just wine!

Because I’m the only wine drinker in the family (and even I’m not that excited about wine at 10 am?), Anita arranged for tea and chocolate tastings for the family to start.

James was obsessed with the smells of all the teas, and, as he does every few years, he decided he was in fact a tea drinker and needed to purchase many varietals. I talked him down to two boxes. I don't like herbal tea (I'm a black only girl; no flavoring) unless I'm sick, but I did love the Rooibus so maybe one of us will actually drink these within the next five years. We tried four teas and each kid liked a different one best. (My fave was the black; no one else thought it should be ranked at all.)

Next up was a chocolate tasting at the same winery. Mine were curated to be gluten free and we all enjoyed our five pieces.

Then I actually sampled a few wines (so good) while Landon and Cora played on the playground and Claire hung out in front of the fire.

It was very cold, I was in heaven. There is nothing I love more than wine + cold + soft sweater + fire. Today's high in Dallas will be 103.

Stop 2 was the stunning Lanzerac Winery. Built in 1692, it's nestled in the rolling hills and mountains of the Western Cape. The woodwork, decor, and windows were all so beautiful throughout.

We had a great lunch in one of the dining rooms.

Then we had an archery lesson! I was certain I was a secret Katniss Everdeen, but while I did pop a target balloon, I could maybe use a few more lessons on hitting the actual target.

James and Landon won our boys v girls target contest, but it was really very almost close.

Next we hopped on e-bikes with a new guide (Anita laughed at me when I asked if she was going to bike with us) and pedaled our way to another stunning winery!

James and the kids had never done e-bikes before and they loved it. The views were just spectacular and it was so nice to move a little on our own (well, on our own with a little help).

Nestled (I know I already used that word, but it's perfect) in green hills and steep mountains, the winery I forgot the name of was SO beautiful. I felt like I was in Switzerland or Germany. Cape Town contains multitudes.

The kids (and James!) sampled rooibus teas and chocolate while I had some seriously good wine.

I mean, Cape Town/this wintery was so, so pretty.

Everyone loved the e-bikes so we opted for a longer pedal over stopping at another winery. It was such a beautiful fun day.

Once back at our hotel we walked to the waterfront for dinner at a place with the Guinness world record for number of milkshakes on the menu (215), did a little shopping, and were in bed by 10.

It was such a great day! And in the morning we'd be heading to Johannesburg to start our first safari!

South Africa Day 3: Cape Town Tour!

I actually got a bunch of travel blogging done this weekend!

Kicking it off with our first morning in Cape Town! After a delicious South African dinner on the waterfront the night before, we all slept like rocks and were up about 7:45 am. The kids had a separate room on the same floor of the hotel and we met in the lobby at 8:30 for breakfast. The hotel breakfast was FANTASTIC - no one loves a good hotel breakfast more than my children (particularly Landon who consumed a truly unbelievable amount of food) - and we looked forward to it each morning we were there.

Our private guide, Anita, met us in the hotel lobby right at 9. She had a Mercedes sprinter van ready for us, so we piled in and took off to explore Cape Point and the entire Cape Town peninsula. Anita was a mixed-race, lifelong Cape Tonian, who grew up under apartheid, and had two grown children in their 20's. She was so knowledgeable and had so many stories, we all really enjoyed learning from her.

The tour lasted all day, we got back about 6 pm. Cape Town is very big -it seemed like more of a county than a city in US-terms - and unbelievably beautiful.

We started traveling along the Atlantic Seaboard via Sea Point, Cloifton and Camps Bay to Hout Bay.

Anita told us that The Kissing Booth was filmed here, and Claire enjoyed hearing all the scenes that were filmed at any particular location.

The weather was cloudy and chilly, but we were happy to be out in anything that didn't feel like the surface of the sun and the rain held off all day so we could explore.

We continued our route via Chapman's Peak, which I had read was one of the world's most beautiful coastal drives and I believe it, to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve at Cape Point.

The Nature Reserve was a fun drive. There are a lot of animals there, many of which we didn't see (like the baboons!), but we did get to see some ostrich drama. This handsome man was found walking along the road, much like the bison in Yellowstone, he did not at all care that we were supposed to be driving in that lane.

Anita told us how the male ostriches will chase the lady ostriches to try to impress them, and if they catch up, they do a special dance to impress her. If she is impressed, they form a mated pair.

This guy was chasing two single ladies across the bush, but when he caught up to them, another larger male approached from the opposite direction and our bachelor turned around and ran the other way like he had always meant to do that. We also saw Dassi and Red Hartebeests (which our guide was VERY excited about!)- it was a fun preview of our safari days!

We got our picture at the Cape of Good Hope, which is not actually the southernmost of the African continent, but it's close to it and it's pretty!

We took a cable car up the mountain for some great views.

This one is now Landon's phone background, so apparently it spoke to him.

Anita told us she's heard people say Cape Town looks like Iceland and it was so true - stark, gorgeous, striking... we thought it was like a mix of Iceland + California coast.

We continued on to Simon's Town and Boulders Beach where we got to see PENGUINS!!

Boulders Beach has a growing colony of the very endangered African Penguin and they were so cute and so fun to see.

There were fluffy chonky babies and handsome adults and we watched them for quite a while.

We had a late lunch at The Harbour House, which was delicious and had great views.

A couple of seals played in the water out front and one was flirting pretty hard with Landon.

We were supposed to end the day with Table Mountain but it was closed for repairs for a couple days (we just happened to arrive in time for their annual maintenance), so that was too bad, but honestly we had seen so much and it was already 5 pm and we didn't feel disappointed

It started pouring once we arrived back at the hotel, so we ate dinner at the lobby restaurant and tucked ourselves back in bed, excited about tomorrow!

South Africa and Back Again

I started typing this while we were flying home from Doha, a 16 hour flight, which came after a 3 hour layover after a 9 hour flight from Johannesburg to Doha, which was after a 4.5 hour drive from Madikwe Game Reserve to Johannesburg. So the travel was pretty brutal (35 hours total!) but oh my god this was the greatest trip we’ve ever taken. Probably the greatest trip we’ll ever take.

I loved every minute and feel so incredibly lucky we got to experience all that we did, all together.

On the reality side, I have 700 unread work emails, dozens of unread personal texts, at least 200 unread messages in various GroupMe and Remind chat threads- oh and Cora got into the Gifted and Talented public magnet school we were really hoping for, which is AWESOME, except we found out yesterday and school starts Tuesday and she’s currently missing orientation and doesn’t have a schedule and we’ve never actually seen the school and I don’t know what the uniforms are or the bell schedule and I missed all the parent meetings because I didn’t know we’d be going there. Also, you know, I have all those work emails and a shit ton of presentations and deadlines and travel coming up.

But, South Africa? Absolutely fucking magical. Utterly extraordinary. I’ve never ever loved a trip more.

I’m really hoping to do a recap of each day, because I want to remember every moment, but I couldn’t even manage my daily Facebook posts while in Africa and that’s when I was ignoring my phone, home, laptop—and really all reality—entirely. So just in case it takes me a while to post each day, I’m going to throw a few of my favorite pictures here and give an overall recap.

I started planning this trip over a year ago. An African safari has been a lifelong dream and a dear friend and former partner at my old firm took her teenage kids to Eastern Africa last year, and then an associate took a similar trip for his honeymoon and their stories and pictures were top of mind as I started thinking about our 2025 adventure. James and my 20th wedding anniversary is September 3rd this year and Landon turned 18 this summer and is starting his senior year of high school, so it felt like there was a lot to celebrate.

James and I had discussed the fact that we didn’t want a couples’ trip for our big anniversary. Our time with our kids is our favorite and we’re so very aware that it’s growing increasingly short. And with Landon graduating next summer and swimming in college, we knew he might need to leave early to start training with his college team and we’d likely be moving him across the country and his summer season was going to be important, so I didn’t want to count on a big graduation trip next summer. Odds are, we’ll all go together to move him to California or some other coast, and that will be our family trip. Plus, by then I won’t be able to be in denial about how much his college tuition will cost, so this summer was better all around.

I worked with my friend Kaleigh with The Shameless Tourist and as always, she and her team knocked it out of the park. I gave her the dates (basically leaving the day after James and Landon’s championship meet and coming back right before school starts, threading a tight scheduling needle!), a budget, and just told her we wanted to do whatever we should do, indulge a little on lodging, avoid crowds and groups, and see as many animals as possible. I did zero other research, except to look up the average temperature of each location when we were going, and I truly can't imagine a better itinerary.

Days 1 & 2: Travel to South Africa. Fly to Doha, Qatar (15 hours). Five hour layover in Doha. Fly to Cape Town, South Africa (9 hours). Personal meet and greet at airport, private van to hotel: The Commodore, in the V&A Waterfront where we could walk to restaurants and shops. We had two separate rooms and the hotel put a third bed in the kids' room, so that was great.

Day 3: Tour Cape Town. Private guide/driver.

Day 4: Cape Town wineries. Same guide (loved her!) and e-bike tour through wineries in the afternoon.

Day 5: Travel/Marakele Safari. Fly from Cape Town to Johannesburg (2 hours), drive to Marakele National Park (90 mins?) and stay at Marataba Safari Lodge. First game drive that afternoon!

Day 6: Marataba. Morning and evening game drives each day!

Day 7: Marataba.

Day 8: Travel/Madikwe Safari. Fly from Marakele National Park to Madikwe Game Reserve (20 mins flight + 45 min drive) to stay at Mateya Safari Lodge. Game drive that afternoon!

Day 9: Mateya. Morning and evening game drives each day!

Day 10: Mateya

Days 11 & 12: Travel Home. Drive to Johannesburg (4 hours). Fly to Doha (9 hours). Fly to Dallas (16 hours). Jump on work calls and then pass out at 6 pm.

I'm using this to dump all general thoughts, so here are a few more:

~ Go in the summer! It's their winter and the weather was perfect. It's a little wet in Cape Town, but it's dry season in the national parks and game reserves. We had bright blue skies and gorgeous clear weather every day. There were NO bugs, the snakes are generally hibernating, all the baby animals are EVERYWHERE, it's mating season so you get to see some fun animal flirting and mating dances, and it's COLD, which is such a welcome change from the hell of Dallas in summer. We never needed the sunscreen or bug spray I packed and my fuzzy Vince cashmere sweater was my #1 worn item. It was so so so perfect. Our guides told us a lot of horror stories about their summers, with the heavy rains, crazy bugs, and jeeps getting stuck in giant puddles and much of the reserve being blocked by overflowing rivers.

~ Packing. Everything is so casual. I brought one dress I never wore and sneakers and sandals I never wore either. My beloved super light, zip-up Skechers hiking boots that I got for Egypt were the hero item I wore every single day (and they're on sale! I bought Claire a pair before our trip and she wore them every day too), along with fleece leggings or warm pants, a tank, sweater, vest, and puffer jacket. I could have used gloves and a warm hat, but we had blankets and warm water bottles in the jeep. We ate our meals straight from our safari game drives, so everything was super casual, and we pretty much passed out in bed immediately after that.

~ Meals. Speaking of food, it was so great! We loved everything we had in Cape Town (and gluten free was no problem! I even got a gluten-free crust at a pizza place one night) and the food at the safari lodges was all incredible. We'd get light snacks before our sunrise game drive, a big breakfast when we returned, lunch (that I usually skipped) about 2 hours later, high tea (with snacks!) a couple hours after that, then a big dinner when we returned from the sunset game drive. Oh and we also stopped for drinks and snacks midway through each am and pm game drive. It was amazing.

~ Weather. As noted above, it was cold! In the 30's in the mornings and evenings and then 50's or 60's during the day. I brought a skirt and some short-sleeve shirts I definitely never wore. Even at the height of midafternoon, long sleeves and pants were fine. It was so, so nice. (High in Dallas today = 102).

~ Money. I ordered some Rand (local currency) from our bank before we left (about $100 USD worth) and that was great to have for tips, but otherwise absolutely everywhere took credit cards or Apple pay. In fact, that was the preferred payment method. Once we got to the safari lodges we never spent any money at all since all food was included and there weren't any shops to visit (which was fine, because there really wasn't time between drives, eating, more eating, and sleeping). At both lodges we stayed in, you tipped when you departed, so you charged it on your credit card and told them how to allocate it. While the trip was expensive, I paid for it many months ago so this month's credit card bill is actually our lowest in a couple years. Turns out you don't spend much money when you don't have to buy groceries and don't have access to the internet to shop online.

It was just the perfect trip.

I've promised Landon he won't have to miss any swimming his senior year, and he'll have recruiting trips and other swim things throughout most of it, so for the first time in many years I don't have a single other trip planned for the future. We blew it all out on this one and I have no regrets. James and I had our own room/lodge at each stop on our itinerary, so we got lots of romantic alone time, which was lovely. The kids were also AMAZING and we had so, so much fun with them. At our last lodge we were the only guests (it only holds a maximum of 10 guests anyway, but it was pretty amazing to have the whole magnificent place to ourselves! Beyonce and Jay-Z stayed there you guys!!), we were eating a lovely dinner in the fancy dining room and were laughing and talking together and when I stepped out to use the restroom, the manager happened to be outside the door and she said, "I just have to say, you are such a lovely family... you just seem to really enjoy each other." and WE DO. And they just loved the trip so much too. The game drives were long and the travel was longer and there was no wifi the vast majority of the time, but man, they could not have been better or more fun traveling companions.

It's now Saturday and I slept for 12 hours last night, went through all my work emails, AND ran some errands with the girls and got many necessary school things, so I'm feeling much better about life. Hopefully I can write some travel posts today too!