Birthday Lunch at Ernie Els

To the impeccable Ernie Els winery for Joan's birthday lunch. A bottle of Ernie Else 'Signature' 2013 superb and expensive Bordeaux blend.

We both chose:

Chicken Poke bowl 

Satay marinated chicken with glass noodles, crushed cashew nuts, edamame beans, red cabbage, carrots, cucumber and avocado. 

Which was unfortunately a better read than a meal.

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Visit to Meerendal

Visited Meerendal today as guests of winemaker Lisa Goodwin and CWM Bennie Howard. Full report at www.pinotage.org

This 6 ha vineyard of unirrigated bushvine Pinotage was planted in 1955 and is the third oldest. 'As The Heritage Block' it was the country's first registered 'single block' under the Wine of Origin system.


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Arrival in Cape

I was sitting in the middle so my first view of the Cape was as we descended to land and I could see mountains through the windows.

Landed on time at 11:00 and were quickly through immigration and for the first time not stopped by customs. 

All was going well as there wasn't the usual long queue at Avis, but for some reason they didn't have our car. We had to wait for an hour while they went to get it. Because of water restrictions the car had not been washed.

Our water limit is 87 litres, going down to 50 litres on 1 February.

A salad and still warm rotisserie chicken was waiting for us. Jill had phoned Woolworths in the morning and asked what times they were cooking batches of chickens and they asked her when she wanted it. So she went to collect it when the plane landed and it had just finished cooking.   

And this was in the fridge:

Criccieth

Criccieth Castle dominates the town

To Criccieth to see Alice the Panto, the latest show by The Starlight Players. Dan was Stage Manager and we had an enjoyable dinner at Dylan’s with Krissie and Dan when we arrived.

Dan, Krissie, Peter, Joan at Dylan's, Criccieth

Caerwylan, our regular hotel, closes during January, so we went self-catering and rented an apartment in Marine Terrace. 

It was well appointed and we had an uninterrupted view of the sea.

The show had a large cast and was performed with the usual Starlight Players gusto, and Kate Dunn was brilliant as The Queen ‘Off with their Heads’ of Hearts

On the way back we visited Caroline, Elliott and Amy and saw low clouds obscure the hills and then it started snowing. There was snow lying on the high pass between Bala and Tanat Valley,  sleet and snow falling, then after Shrewsbury brilliant sunshine till dusk.

Cyprus

Boxing Day, fly to Limassol, Cyprus with Saga flying with BA. Silver Card gets us into business class lounge with lunch and wines.

 

Sunset seen from plane

Our accommodation is Elias Beach Hotel, on a fully inclusive basis. Buffet meals are good but included wine is pretty basic...

We have a seaview room and are upgraded to a superior room with a separate seating area.

We take one of the two included excursions and visit an olive farm and mill. It's harvest time and growers bring their olives to be pressed. 

Olives are sucked through base of hopper to the destemmer

First the olives are emptied into a hopper to be destemmed. After all the material other than olives have been removed, the olives are washed and weighed - growers pay by weight of olives that are pressed.

Then they are pressed under these revolving stone wheels. The oil goes to numbered tanks and the growers fill the containers they have brought with them. 

Apart from the oil not needing fermenting and thus being ready as soon as pressed, the process is otherwise  the same as winemaking.

There's a beach walk  into the outskirts of Limassol, the centre is five kilometres from the hotel. A bus runs there every 10 minutes.

Hotel from its jetty

 Juicy oranges on the buffet

Gala dinner on New Years Eve and a countdown to 2018

And we returned home on 2 January 2018 

Sunset from beach.