wacky wine weekend!

so this weekend was the first sponsored event for the interns by the directors.

we'd be traveling out to the south african countryside and visiting various wine estates for "tasting."

we left saturday at like 9am and drove for about 2.5 hours.
i was exhausted, but the beautiful scenery was enough to keep me awake and snapping pictures the whole way. it was the first sunny day i'd seen in cape town. i could actually see the top of table mountain from my apartment that day.

table mountain is really really cool. the top of the mountain is flat, hence the name. but for some reason, even on a perfectly sunny day with no clouds, the top of the mountain is shrouded in clouds that they call "the tablecloth."

http://naimasnook.files.wordpress.com/2009/01/best-view-of-table-mountain.jpg

my apartment is located in the middle of those mountains where all the big buildings are. this whole area is downtown cape town and they call it the CBD, or central business district.

anyway, we got to our first wine estate and we were given passes to taste as much wine as we wanted. invariably, being college kids in a foreign country with the opportunity to have unlimited wine, we "taste-tested" the wines to death.
i had a little bit of almost every wine available, which was well in the 20's. they were also selling this incredible olive oil which i realllyyyy wanted to buy for my mom cuz it was just unreal. unfortunately, i needed to save money as much as possible...the scenery around the area was just unreal.

there were huge vineyards as far as you could see and we were surrounded by mountains and waterfalls.

we left (with a very healthy buzz) to the next wine estate called roodezandt. here, the main attraction was 55% moonshine (110 proof) and wine diving!

i figured it was a rare opportunity so i paid 50 rand (~$5 hehe), changed into the clothes they give you and rode the wine slide down into the pool. unfortunately, it's winter here. and the wine was ice cold. talk about hard nipples. anyway, it was a really good experience and would definitely recommend for anyone to do. wine stings the eyes btw. also got a free bottle of wine for doing it.

showered off, and we left for the next estate called excelsior. here, we got to blend and bottle our own wine for only 40 rand (~$3.50). wine bottling is really easy. you just press down on this lever thing which puts the cork in and then you seal it with that paper stuff around it with a hot hair-dryer looking gun. really cool. we got stickers saying "excelsior wine blended by ______" to make things look official. definitely bringing this back to the states. i think it tastes alright, but im no wine connoisseur.

then, we left for the final estate called arabella. this was an actual wine festival with lots of bands playing and stuff. we each bought another bottle of wine (only $3 :] i love how cheap everything is here) and proceeded to drink heavily. i don't remembered what happened through most of the night since we'd been drinking since 10am. i met a girl from chatham university, which is right next to CMU so that was cool...she dated a beta who graduated. small world!

i almost got pepper-sprayed by a drunk girl who really wanted to pepper spray me and my bud scott. i was actually really shitscared. i took it away from her and convinced her there was no need to spray us. she then slapped me and said relaxxxxxx.
women are dumb :]

had another bottle of wine and we were dancing and stuff and i remember getting on stage. apparently i was yelled at to come down but i didn't, so they just left me there. my memory leaves me then but when i do start remembering again, i'm sitting on the edge of the stage, a whole new band is playing and my phone and camera are gone. i lost my camera. all those pictures (especially the one w/ neve campbell!) are fucking gone. i was real pissed, so i drank another bottle of wine. probably not the best way to go about it. i didn't bother looking for my phone cuz the phones were literally like $2 to rent. we went to bed in tents and woke up the next morning at around 9am.

i had my friend call my phone and turns out some random girl picked it up and she gave it back to me. a lot of kids had puked from drinking too much, but i felt great haha. problem. need to stop drinking so much...not good for me :\

still didn't find my camera, so im going to give the estate a call in a few days and see if it turned up. really hope it does...

all in all, it was an epic weekend. i don't want to drink wine for a long long time.

work starts again tomorrow...hopefully i'll be doin some real stuff this week

a funny comic!
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comics/20090607.gif