After more than a week of 4:30 and 5:00 a.m. wake-ups, game drives, rain and moving between safari lodges, we flew from Victoria Falls back to Cape Town.
The transition could hardly have been more dramatic.
We were leaving the bush and heading for South Africa's wine country.
Back to Cape Town
The trip back was remarkably easy.
We flew from Victoria Falls to Cape Town, moved quickly through passport control and were met by someone who collected our bags and walked us directly to our driver.
Meanwhile, another driver had retrieved the large suitcases we'd left behind at Welgelegen House before going on safari and transferred them to the car taking us to Franschhoek.
I made a note at the time: We love being greeted at an unfamiliar airport and taken straight to a driver.
After weeks of complicated travel, the whole thing felt effortless.
Then we saw our suitcases.
We were horrified.
For the safari portion of the trip, we'd lived quite comfortably out of small soft-sided bags.
Now, reunited with everything we'd originally packed for an eight-week trip, neither of us could believe how much clothing we'd brought.
Apparently we'd needed to travel halfway around the world to discover how little we actually needed.
La Petite Ferme
The drive from Cape Town to Franschhoek took about 80 minutes through beautiful countryside.
We arrived at La Petite Ferme after 6:00 p.m.
The property was gorgeous.
Our bags were taken to the room, and we hurried to get ready for the 7:30 dinner reservation the hotel had made for us.
Before dinner, we were offered a tasting of some of the estate's lighter red wines and chose the Varietal to drink with our meal.
The grounds were beautiful.
The view from our table was beautiful.
The food was incredible.
And neither of us had brought a phone.
So we have no photographs of that first dinner.
Maybe that's okay.
I wrote that evening: "It's still amazing to think that this is our life."
Sleeping In
The next morning, we woke sometime after 6:00.
That qualified as sleeping in.
After a week of early safari wake-ups, it felt luxurious simply not to have to be somewhere before sunrise.
We were also beginning to realize something surprising about the larger trip.
We'd been away from home for more than six weeks.
We had moved repeatedly—from Barcelona to the ship, through West Africa to Cape Town, then from Cape Town through several safari lodges and now into the Winelands.
And we were doing fine.
We weren't feeling rushed.
We weren't burned out from moving every few days.
We weren't bored when there wasn't much scheduled.
And instead of counting down the days until we could finally go home, I wrote that morning: "Kinda bummed to think that we'll be heading home in only a week."
That surprised us.
A Short Stay
We were only at La Petite Ferme for two nights.
The notes don't preserve a detailed itinerary for our full day in Franschhoek, and I don't want to reconstruct one eight months later simply because we know we were in wine country.
What they do preserve is how the place felt.
Beautiful scenery.
Wonderful food.
Good wine.
A slower pace after safari.
And the growing realization that extended travel suited us much better than we'd known before leaving home.
By the morning we departed, another conversation had begun.
Shirley was becoming pretty sure we should sell the house.
We were comfortable traveling.
We had big plans to do much more of it.
And after living with so little during safari, we were still laughing—and cringing—at the amount of luggage we'd brought with us.
What We'll Remember
We'll remember arriving at La Petite Ferme as the sun was getting lower, after a week of safari camps and early mornings.
We'll remember the beautiful grounds and the view from dinner.
We'll remember the wine tasting before that first meal.
We'll remember not having our phones with us and therefore having no photographs of an evening we both thought was wonderful.
We'll remember sleeping past 6:00 and thinking we'd slept in.
We'll remember being reunited with our enormous suitcases and wondering what on earth we'd been thinking when we packed them.
And we'll remember realizing that after more than six weeks away, we weren't tired of traveling.
We were disappointed that the trip was almost over.
Would We Return?
Yes.
Two nights was barely enough to experience Franschhoek and the surrounding Winelands.
We liked La Petite Ferme, the scenery, the food and the slower pace. And we'd happily return with more time to explore the area.
But this stay also taught us something that had little to do with wine.
Before leaving home in December, eight weeks had sounded like an extraordinarily long trip.
Now we were approaching the end of it.
And neither of us was ready to go home.
On January 28, we packed the ridiculous suitcases once again and drove through the mountains toward the coast.
Our final stop was Hermanus.