The Last Day and flying home

The previous night the Germans had said they would like to try to see the cheetahs in the south of the park, so after some tea and biscuits, we were on the road at 6:10am, barrelling towards the south gate. We knew this road as it was the one that you drive in on.
We did get lucky along the road, and saw a large troop of baboons climbing over the rocks and having some territorial fighting which was quite loud and noisy, and also some kudu.

It was really really cold.

We also a tiny little buck (I forget the name), but it is fully grown at this size...

Once we got near the staging post Alwyn started getting out of the car with the collar tracking aerial, and trying to find where the cheetah brothers were.

The views again were lovely,

but we couldn't seem to find the cheetahs despite a strong signal, when suddenly, there was one of them lying just off the road looking at us like "ummm, I'm here. What, too camouflaged for you??"

Alwyn then announced that we were all going to get out and go for a walk with the cheetahs. SO exciting. Apparently these brothers had been used to humans growing up in another park, and in any case, humans are not really of interest to cheetahs as we look too big to them to be prey. So these were wild cheetahs now living independently, but because of their past, Alwyn thought it should be OK to go out nearer them. He gave us very strict rules - single file, stay bunched up, stop when he said, no sudden movements etc. So off we went!

It was absolutely fantastic to be so near such beautiful wild animals. Although we had already had our cheetah encounter this was very different. SS was in heaven again.

We followed them for about 30 minutes, and then all headed back to the vehicle. All very quiet as everyone was thrilled by what we had done.
Back to Dwyka, where we had breakfast and then packed, and were transferred back to the staging post again and loaded up Sombrero.
We got back on the road towards Stellenbosch. I called my sister to ask her to check in for us online and allocate us seats next to each other on the plane (no internet at Sanbona, and we were on separate tickets so needed to be allocated seats next to each other). She very kindly did this.

We headed along the road to Montagu which actually seemed a very pleasant small town, and then along through Robertson. We passed the Graham Beck winery there which was open, so in we went and for R50 the lovely Byron gave us a tasting.

I loved the Old Road Pinotage and SS was a fan of the Copperstone Cab Sav. No purchases tho' - no room in the bags, and we can get Graham Becks in the UK through Bibendum. Back on the road and through the Hugenot Tunnel which at R23 toll was much more beautiful than the CHhapman's Peak tollroad. Really lovely beautiful scenery. We were heading to Stellenbosch, but passed Vrede and Lust so decided to duck in there as well.

It was a fairly corporate style set up, but SS was in heaven when we went to the tasting room, and they had taken the "young attractive female pourer" to new heights. It was a large room with squishy sofas, and all the girls were about 20, attractive, and wearing bright red low cut slinky maxi dresses. SS was spoiled for choice on where to look. Our pourer was called Antoinette, and SS thought she was great. She had no idea what she was saying most of the time, so I told him to ask her if she knew how many cases Vrede & Lust produced in a year (fairly basic question). Unsurprisingly she didn't know, and he said "oh, she's fine, she's doing a good job". And she was doing a great job. I would love to see their job descriptions however.
We drove past Rupert & Rothschild, which was closed

and then headed over to Stellenbosch to try to find Vergelegen. Our map was terrible, and by the time we finally found it it was closed.

So, we decided to just get to the airport, so we filled the Sombrero and headed off to the airport, past the nasty shanty towns again,

We dropped off Sombrero (YAY - hated that car), and went to check in.
My bag weighed 22.7kg (just under the 23kg!) and SS's was 18.6kg. WE had some juice, and headed through security. There was a nice curio shop where I finally bought my easter eggs (SS let me get 3 of them at R50 each, and he got a small wooden mask). We also bought yet another bottle of wine (De Toren Z), and then headed to the BA lounge. Awful lounge, but it was nice to have somewhere to sit and snack for a few hours until our flight left. Very rushed final day, with a lot packed into it!