Our three days of indulgence in the Cape Winelands flashed by like an ’80s movie montage, all postcard-perfect backdrops, long laughs, rental cars, and red teeth.

During our three-day splash here in this, the biggest wine-producing region of South Africa, we managed to squeeze in stops at 25 different vineyards and taste some 120 wines while scooting around between Stellenbosch, neighboring Franschoek and Paarl, as well as, a few days later, the Constantia Wine Route in the suburbs of Cape Town.

Half the fun was never knowing what to expect at each vineyard. A handful of recommendations (Delheim, Fairview, Delaire) came from new friends we made in Johannesburg and Cape Town, and we loosely followed some of the tips in our trusty Lonely Planet and Time Out guidebooks. Mostly, though, we just picked names out of a hat (or, more specifically, randomly chose ones listed on the free wine maps) and left it to chance.

Would it be corporate or boutiquey? Would the tastings be free, or cost 10, 20, maybe 30 rand? How aggressively would the staff push the wine, and would they be easygoing, knowledgeable about the products, or clearly full of shit? Would it be packed with tourists, or would we have the tasting room all to ourselves? How did I get stuck driving and spitting again while she gets to sit back and imbibe?

The autumnal mountainous scenery and clear, cobalt-blue skies were intoxicating. We met so many great people making good wines and working hard to make them even better. The menus at restaurants like the Delaire Graff Estate’s Indochine and Kleine Zalze’s Terroir were inspired, and “el vino did flow” at night in downtown Stellenbosch at bars like Vinehuis and Jan Caats. We really had such an amazing time.

Here are just a few quick notes and snapshots from along the way.

Though KWV’s tasting room in Paarl was one of the slicker, more corporate ones we visited (along with Ernie Els Wine in Stellenbosch), the friendly staff, surprisingly laidback vibe, and accessible everyday wines belied its bigwig status as one of South Africa’s biggest global wine exporters. Our tasting offered a choice of five wines from an expansive menu that included 40 different wines, liqueurs, and brandies to choose from; the 2006 Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon and 2007 Cathedral Cellar Shiraz stood out.

We had one “best meal ever!” after another during our wine-tasting tour, but a hedonistic lunch at the Delaire Graff Estate’s Indochine restaurant, dramatically perched on the Helshoogte Mountain Pass between Stellenbosch and Franschoek, was a highlight. It began with a melt-in-your-mouth, pepper-seared tuna starter, above, which came drizzled with zig-zags of olive tapenade and was served with a side of quail eggs, watercress, and tomatoes. I washed it down with a glass (and generous pour) of Delaire’s crisp, grassy 2009 Sauvignon Blanc Coastal Cuvee. My main, seared salmon trout with crispy potato rounds and an avocado remoulade, was brilliant.

Our afternoon cruising the Constantia Wine Route, which runs along the backside of Table Mountain in the suburbs of Cape Town, began with a stop at Groot Constantia, where the first grapes in South Africa were planted back in the 1650s.

From there it was on to the stunning Constantia Uitsig, pictured above, for a tasting led by one of the bubbliest, most-enthusiastic winery employees you’re likely to meet. Uitsig is best known for their whites, so no surprise that the 2009 Unwooded Chardonnay, 2009 Sauvignon Blanc, and 2008 Constania White were highlights. The Muscavet D’ Alexandrie, the first cultivar ever planted in the country and made from Uitsig’s oldest vines, was the best of the bunch and, at 285 rand a bottle, it was also the priciest.

In addition to the tasting room and, of course, the vines, this sprawling estate also houses three award-winning restaurants, a spa, and hotel. Along the service road between the tasting room and the hotel are well-marked vines with signs that indicate each grape type and when the vines were first planted (the earliest, at least from what I saw, were in 1984).

Like many vineyards in the area, Uitsig was forced to harvest their grapes at different times this year–some earlier than usual, some later. They expect a high-quality harvest in 2010, but less quantity than normal. Based on this and other conversations I had with other wine producers, it sounds like there’s going to be some interesting, boom-or-bust blends coming out of the Cape Winelands as a whole from this year’s crop.

As the last full day of our vineyard-hopping extravaganza wound down, we settled into Chamonix just before closing time late Sunday afternoon. Located up a hill near the end of a residential street shooting off from downtown Franschoek, this small tasting room is a cozy, converted 18th-century blacksmith shop, the kind of place where you could hole up for a long, cold winter by the fireplace, surrounded by jugs of cheap wine, pouring glass after glass and eating wedge after wedge of cheese until you pass out.

Known for their chardonnay and pinot noir, Chamonix’s wines didn’t overwhelm; in fact, outside of the 2007 Greywacke Pinotage we felt they were just decent. But three months later, as I look back on the hour or so we spent there, it doesn’t matter that the wine was just okay, just like it wouldn’t have really mattered if it was the opposite. Either way, I’d still always remember being there, at that time in my life, with my best friend, smiling, laughing, hopping back in the Honda Jazz, and asking each other if our teeth were red.

All photos © 2010 Brian Spencer and cannot be used or reprinted without permission.

The old man and old woman sitting next to me were having a fight.

Or so I surmised. I was on a flight from Shenzhen to Beijing. I was in the aisle seat and the old Chinese couple, in neat but well-worn clothing, occupied center and window.

It was generalized pandemonium upon boarding, with the flight attendants running to and fro, and business men talking simultaneously into three or four cell phones, and what seemed like a lot of unnecessary shouting. The flight attendants were uncommonly short – I saw one giving another a boost in order to shut the overheads.

Soon after take-off, the couple started speaking to one another in harsh tones. Although I understand no Chinese, this did not seem a case of one scolding the other –  judging from the self-righteous tone they both employed, they equally believed they were in the right.

However, when the food arrived, the fight was abandoned. They tucked into the food, including something glutinous and fluorescent pink which I tentatively poked at with my fork for a while. When they were done, the woman rummaged in the seat pocket, pulled out the barf bag and neatly packaged up the leftovers.  She opened her newspaper with satisfaction, her left elbow hovering in the space about three inches from my seat belt, and although I squirmed and coughed pointedly, none of my subtle hints encouraged her to retreat to her own space. I lived with her elbow until she finished the paper and handed it to her husband.

Later, I realized that they weren’t having a fight at all.

Chinese is a tonal language, and Cantonese in particular can sound quite harsh to the Western ear. It can sound like fighting even when someone’s actually saying, hey, what did you hear about the weather in Beijing? I was ready to categorize what I heard from my seatmates as fighting, though, because I needed to put things into categories that I understood at that particular moment.

I’d spent a number of days in Hong Kong, but had taken the ferry to Shenzhen to fly to Beijing since the fare was cheaper. Although Hong Kong is now officially part of the People’s Republic, I did not feel like I was actually in China until I disembarked in Shenzhen, and headed for the quite modern airport that was certainly not international. There were aquariums filled with beautiful tropical fish, but I could not find a western style toilet seat, nor could I buy a snack, since I only had Hong Kong dollars and not People’s Republic RMB, and the vendors did not take credit cards and I could not find an ATM.

Anyway, as that China Southern flight took off for Beijing, I thought to myself something that I often think when I’m entering into a place that feels hard to parse: “You’re really in it now.”

What I really should tell myself in such instances: treat any conclusion you draw right now as highly suspect.

A few weeks ago, I was sitting on the ground at JFK airport, in the first row of economy seats on a Royal Air Maroc flight to Casablanca. We were delayed for some time, and the in-flight crew were non-communicative as to what was causing the delay. Royal Air Maroc essentially operates without a functioning website, so there were no updates I could call up on my BlackBerry. But I was sufficiently distracted by watching some of the hubbub as my fellow passengers tried to find their seats.

What I was hearing, I realized, was an accent that sounded…Jamaican. Huh, Jamaican, I thought, how weird. Then I noticed that some of the passengers had dreadlocks, and certainly seemed to plausibly be from Jamaica.

What was happening here?

I considered the possibility that Moroccan simply sounded Jamaican to my ears, but that didn’t seem right. Or could there be some heretofore unknown connection between Morocco and Jamaica? I imagined writing about that, breaking the story, with some delight.  Then, I noticed that there were a number of teenagers rushing forward into First Class and then back again, all a-giggle and waving iPhones triumphantly. I peeked forward, and saw the flight crew posing for pictures with one of the First Class passengers. One of the teenagers settled herself into the seat across the aisle from me,  so I tapped her on the shoulder and asked who it was that was causing such a fuss. “Sean Paul,” she said, with a blushing smile. “Excuse me?” “Sean Paul,” she said firmly. I thanked her and used my BlackBerry to ascertain who this person was. A big whoop Jamaican reggae star, in case you also don’t know.

That explained a lot.

I often imagine what would happen if I didn’t find out that Sean Paul was aboard that flight, if I had decided to simply believe that I’d uncovered a new era of Jamaicans taking their holidays in Morocco…I could have told that story over drinks in Marrakesh, regaled people with “…and you’ll never believe!” when I returned to New York.

Also, it would have tempting, had I been writing a story about the Shenzhen airport from the airport, to advise ladies who would prefer not to deal with a squatter to hold it in until they boarded the plane –  but I happened to spot a western-style toilet seat lurking behind an ajar door on a bathroom flagged with a handicapped sign and so I overwrote my first observation, that there were no toilet seats to be found in Shenzhen airport, with better information.

The problem with traveling in a place that’s unfamiliar is that we’re so often entirely clueless about what’s actually happening – but we don’t realize how lost we are.

Of course, it’s a human tendency to interpret our observations of the current moment through the lens of our past experience, a lens whose glass was milled through experiences formed by our own culture. I don’t think this is a problem, necessarily, I think it’s something we have to do in order to function. The problem only comes when we cling to our initial interpretations tightly, when we’re unaware that we’re squinting through a distorting lens.

I think of that old Chinese couple often —  in fact, that’s one of the stories when I’m describing my confusion during what was my first trip to China – isn’t it funny that they were just having a conversation, and I thought they were having a spat?

But here’s the thing I realize now: they could have been fighting. After all, I don’t speak Chinese.

I really have no idea.

Eight months ago I woke up to a cup of coffee, as usual, and opened an email that informed me that I’d won a dream vacation, which was not so usual, at least in the sense that it was a legitimate email and wasn’t sent by Spam Bot 3000.

For the next four months my girlfriend and I mapped out that dream vacation. Honestly, we were almost in a state of bashful embarrassment about the whole thing; we’d been chosen, 1 out of 20,000 odd entries, to do something most people will only, well, dream of having the opportunity to do. How do you tell colleagues, friends, even family that you won a blank travel check for $10,000, no strings attached (except for the taxes), without sounding like a total schmuck?

Most people are of course happy for you. But when a coworker has two weeks of vacation all year, and can’t afford to go too far from home, I don’t find it especially comfortable breaking the news that I’ll be off to Sri Lanka, then to the Maldives, then to South Africa, and that I’ll see them when I get back in five weeks.

Or when your sister is scrimping and scrounging to save up for a down payment on a condo, so that she can move her family out of her mother-in-law’s house and into their own home, and a long vacation is exactly what she needs but the last thing that she can afford, calling her up and saying “Hey sis, guess what? I won a dream vacation, isn’t that swell?” is awkward at best, no matter how you frame it or tiptoe around it.

Which isn’t to say those four months were filled with guilt, of course.

The magic of possibility was intoxicating; the freedom to spin the globe, close my eyes, and put my finger down on a random spot and actually go there—I used to do this regularly as a starry-eyed kid—was almost overwhelming.

In the end, somewhat randomly, we stretched those contest dollars as far as we could, and booked an open-jaw ticket inbound to Colombo, Sri Lanka, and outbound from Cape Town, South Africa. In between, five weeks of travel that took us to fantastical places we thought we might never see, places where we met the kind of warm-hearted—and, oftentimes, bizarro—people that always help make traveling such a transformational experience; people like Kumar in Kandy, Mrs. Fonseka in Colombo, Natasha in Johannesburg, and Vanessa and Marco in Kruger, by way of California. People we’ll never forget.

We left three months ago; two months ago we came home to Brooklyn, a hundred or so pages filled in our journals, thousands of pictures crammed onto memory cards, countless memories ping-ponging around in heads still spinning from good fortune and good times on the road.

In those days and weeks immediately following our return, it felt like it was all just a dream: were we really just walking through the African bush tracking elephants and rhinos? Did we really ride in the same train on the same track on the same route between Galle and Colombo that Paul Theroux described in a particularly moving chapter of The Great Railway Bazaar?

As time continues to relentlessly separate us from the newness of that adventure, these feelings of incredulity become only more exasperated. Inevitably, exacting details of our two days in Nuwara Eliya, our rooftop dinners in Galle, our blank-slate days in Goyambokka melt into broad brushstrokes and highlight reels. Tightly though we cling to these memories, the hands of time pound on them, pound on them, pound on them, wearing them down like ocean waters on a block of granite, chipping away, washing away, rounding sharp edges into blunt curves.

That’s why we treasure our travel journals as much as we treasure anything.

On those pages, the words are locked in defiance of time’s passage; they don’t age, they don’t blur. That’s one of the most important lessons I’ve learned over the past few years, to write, write, write. I wish I’d kept more detailed and dedicated journals since I became fully, happily, consumed by the allure of life abroad, and of aimless travel, some years ago now. As painful as it sometimes is, and as tired as I oftentimes am, I must write something, anything, every day in that journal; technically, I should be writing something everyday period, traveling or not, but that’s another story on another topic.

I’ve shoe-gazed here about my stroke of dream-vacation luck before; I might very well write about it again. I’ll continue to consult that journal, and to the best of my ability continue to recreate those experiences in this space and, editors willing, elsewhere.

There’s a certain pressure that comes with that job, one that does, admittedly, get the best of me at times. It’s more than the brainstorming and the pitching and the querying and the outlining and trying to deliver a strong piece: it’s the pressure of doing the places, the people, and the memories the justice they so deserve.

That’s my only real prescription for success. And, really, that’s every writer’s only real measure for success, isn’t it?

Bad dining experiences are a good thing, or at least they can be, from a certain point of view.

Located at the lovely Vineyard Hotel & Spa in the shadow of Table Mountain, Myoga is the third restaurant opened under the direction of award-winning chef Mike Bassett, who’s enjoyed considerable success in Cape Town with Ginja and Shoga. With a menu that focuses on “contemporary, global cuisine that entices the mind, excites the eye, and tantalises the taste buds to new extremes”, Myoga has certainly followed in its sister restaurants’ footsteps in racking up the accolades since opening late in 2007.

Conde Nast named it one of the Top 100 New Restaurants in the World, saying Bassett’s “global brand of cooking continues to wow” and calling the service “helpful and informed.” Fodor’s effused that Myoga “has all the makings of an über-hip, foodie hot spot, minus the hipsters”, while Food24 loved the “clean Asian flavors with classical undertones”, while calling the reasonably priced six-course tasting menu “the deal of the season, and perhaps the century.”

When Dinner Disappoints

We were lucky to score a same-day reservation for 8:30pm on a Friday night, and when we arrived the 100-seat dining room was absolutely heaving. Here in Cape Town’s affluent Newlands suburb, the crowd was evenly balanced between the obviously wealthy and the obviously on their way to being wealthy, with sweaters tied around every other neck and wine glasses indiscriminately filled and refilled like tap water.

We were seated at a small candlelit two-top, near one of the tables with playful, oversized chairs that could have been plucked from the set of a Tim Burton flick. Decorated in the common trappings of so many contemporary fusion restaurants—think metallic silver ceiling fans, subdued orange lighting, vintage tables and chairs—Myoga has a distinctly New York feel to it, right down to the bloated, overpriced wine list that’s long on bottles and somewhat short on glasses (especially reds).

Priced at just 150 Rand, the winter tasting menu seemed like an excellent option for sampling a variety of food; for an additional R135, it could be paired with a selection of wines chosen by sommelier Carl Habel. We passed on the wine and, in the absence of any recommendations from our aloof, always-preoccupied server, instead chose glasses from vineyards we’d visited during our three-day stay in Stellenbosch, before later finishing with a bottle of rosé which, at 115 Rand, was the most affordable one available.

With three options to choose from for each course, we appreciated the diversity but feared that tasking the kitchen with preparing 18 different dishes well might prove overly ambitious, and unfortunately, on this night at least, we were right.

It wasn’t just that one or two platters were off; they all were. Nothing stood out as bold or inventive, everything (except the dessert) needed salt, and though we were as patient as possible given the crowded house, no meal should be involuntarily dragged on for 2 ½ – 3 hours.

The first course— lasciviously dubbed the “Mouth Tickler”—was a comically small, bite-sized pastry tart made with Healy’s cheddar. Served on a tiny, white porcelain altar and complimented with two micro dots of berry sauce, I half expected a little cartoon mouse to pop up with a miniature knife and fork and pull it off my plate.

While our server busied himself with the rich couples seated directly behind us (couples who by the end of the meal were sloppy drunk and fashioning turbins out of their napkins), we waited, without apology, for 35 – 40 minutes for the second course, a watery, tasteless potato and leek soup with puzzlingly mismatched chunks of teriyaki salmon.

Next was a bland, mealy plate of baked spinach and ricotta dumplings with mushroom ragout and roasted olives… or at least that’s how it was described. I saw the mushrooms, and I saw the spinach, but somehow didn’t taste either of them—just dough. The passion fruit sorbet, served in a tall shot glass, was a welcomed cleanser after these misses.

The main course, described as as “herb and mustard crusted white fish, with Mediterranean steamed potatoes, charred leaks, and asparagus”, shouldn’t have left the kitchen. The fish was overcooked and rubbery, while the “crust” was more like a terrine and slid right off the meat, like a gelatinous glob of goo, when I dug in. The potatoes were undercooked, and again, the mustard sauce was flavorless and sorely in need of salt. I asked our disinterested server, whom we had to ask twice for more water, about the fish:

“Can you remind me what sauce is on the fish again?”

“It’s a crust.”

“Are you sure? Because the sauce…”

“It’s a crust.”

And That was That

We polished off our tasty, if uninspired final courses—mine was a milk chocolate pot de crème with a caramel foam—then asked for the bill and waited another 15 minutes for it to come. Our server ended up getting a slightly bigger tip than he deserved, because after nearly 3 hours I didn’t care to wait any longer for him to bring back the change.

Obviously, our experience wasn’t a great one, but that doesn’t mean it wasn’t a memorable, educational one. The food and service were both unacceptable, but they sparked a lengthy discussion afterwards as we tried to make some sense of what just happened at this, one of the trendiest and most popular restaurants in Cape Town. Was Myoga skating by on Bassett’s good reputation alone? Maybe, or hey, maybe it was just a bad night while the boss was on vacation.

It gave us a reference point to compare and contrast our experiences at other four- to five-star restaurants in the area, like Terroir, Delaire Graff Estate, and the Table Bay Hotel’s Atlantic Grill. We left all of those places gushing about the food, the ambiance, and the service, and sitting through the polar opposite at Myoga allowed us to see the other side of the coin, and helped us better define what, exactly, constitutes a well-executed meal at a high-end eatery… and what doesn’t.

We need to eat bad food at gourmet restaurants, and suffer through poor table service, and just generally be disappointed from time to time. We need to ride the culinary pendulum in both directions, because otherwise there’s no constant for comparison, only variables.

A tagine is not made of copper.

It was an understandable mistake to make before I’d traveled in Morocco, really.  A traditional tagine is made of a ruddy clay. If you squint and are a little drunk, you might be excused for describing a tagine as “coppery” –  if the domed top is glazed and very, very shiny.

That’s actually a good overall description of how my mind imagines a place before I travel to it: a destination as seen through the eyes of drunk, squinting.  Now that I’ve been home from Morocco for a week, my preconceptions (and misconceptions) have been swept away by actual experience.

On the other hand, let’s not pretend that actual experience eliminates the role of imagination. For now that I’m back home, I find myself once again imagining Morocco, by way of my memories.

Memory feels solid, but it is in fact fragile. It’s not nearly as robust as imagination, which routinely edits our memories of events. For example, we tend to remember ourselves as the central character in any circumstance, regardless of our actual importance at the time.  We often incorporate bits and pieces from similar events we’ve experienced, or events we’ve heard about, or the reactions of the people with whom we share our memories with after the fact.  Imagination can even turn memories into total fabrications.

I’ve touched on some of this before, but if this intrigues you as much as it does me, you will want to read about the memory research of psychologist Elizabeth Loftus. Slate ran a terrific series on her not that long ago; there’s a more terse summary in this profile in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. There’s also a chilling article about memory manipulation and Tiananmen Square.

As a nonfiction writer, unreliable memories are a professional concern; when I travel I take copious notes and routinely shoot more than 100 photos a day. But I’m deliberately not looking at any of my memory aids just now — I won’t insert the photos into this post until I’m done writing — so I can rely entirely on my imaginative memory of Morocco.

It’s different than the picture I described before traveling, that Route 66 postcard. Now it’s a series of dreamlike shadowy impressions.

I remember the intricate pattern etched into the pavement on the streets near the mosque, and then walking near to the plaza Djemma el Fna, on a Saturday night among a group of veiled women and men in jellabas. I remember wondering whether the bus that had just wooshed up had been in service during the day, since I hadn’t registered the sight of commuter buses among the petit cabs and horses and motorbikes earlier that day. I remember the gray light inside the bus, although it was probably just the window tint.

I remember eating lunch high in the Atlas Mountains, and looking up at the peaks around me soaring higher still, and realizing that if I squinted I could make out entire Berber villages up there, and people climbing up snaking, pebble and boulder-strewn roads to get home.

I remember the smell of rosewater on my hands and the taste of dates and almond milk. Also the smell of layers and layers of horse urine on a day that was over 100 degrees, and a wall of searing cobalt blue. And how, in my room at night,  I did not like to look out over Marrakech , because the orange glow of high-pressure sodium street lights were the same as any city anywhere. It was only by day that I could see through the palm leaves that all the buildings in the city were in the shape of cubes — either fashioned out of red clay or painted to look like they had been.

Ah, and so there’s a clue about the story imagination would like to shape from my Morocco memories.  I want an exotic story to tell; so my memory did not as readily bring up the many European women wearing tank tops and shorts against advice (and, in my view, respect), that were among the crowd near the mosque that Saturday night; nor the flushed Scottish woman who eagerly complained to me about the heat.

I did not at first remember how oppressed I felt on the long flight back home by the announcement in Arabic, which I understand not at all, and then French, which I understand some, and eventually in indifferently translated and often incomprehensible English.

I stared at the overhead sign that had Arabic script on one side, and the word Exit on the other, for hours.  But no matter how long I looked at those curving letters, I could not resolve the shapes into language.

I do know that I will eventually resolve my Morocco memories into meaning.

But I do not kid myself: my imagination will leave its fingerprints all over that process.