This past weekend I was a seriously lucky girl – I got to tag along for an action packed weekend to Gansbaai and it’s surrounding areas (also known as the Overberg – just FYI) thanks to the lovely people at Cape Town Routes Unlimited (CTRU) – the marketing organisation for Cape Town & the Western Cape.

How did this come about?  Well Bjorn met them at an event a while back and thanks to his charismatic charm, they thought of him when putting together this weekend which was aimed at introducing people to all the amazing places to check out and things to do, without having to travel very far.  Of course me being the bestest, awesomest, most fun girlfriend in the world, I couldn’t exactly be left behind.

Other fabulous folks who came along for the ride were Tanya Nefdt from E News, Fairlady’s Marketing manager Roxanne Cloete, journo and celebrity blogger Clayton Morar and hunky Zane Maqetuka who just came 3rd in Mr SA.

During the 2 1/2 hour drive from Cape Town the gang got some time to get to know each other.  Actually looking back, I think that only took about 5min after which we all felt comfortable enough to let our inner craziness hang out. hehe.  Love it.  I could tell at that point that this was going to be one hell of a weekend.

Our first port of call was a little restaurant called B Blondes in Gansbaai.   It’s a very cute little spot with a bit of a brasserie feel with lots of dark wood furniture and a really nice old school bar.

We immediately jumped into “happy snapping” mode – all in attendance clearly loving the camera.

Zane & Tanya workin’ it

Me with “laugh a minute” Clayton & Roxanne

We even attempted a BIG group shot.  But as you can see, it was quite hard to get all the different strong-willed personalities to all focus at the same time.

From left to right: Glenda from Gansbaai tourism, Nomonde from CTRU, Zane, Tanya, Clayton, Roxanne, me & Bjorn

Now let’s get down to the serious stuff… the food.  Bjorn was the only one smart enough to go for a starter.  I love how small towns don’t do any skimping on servings, here even a starter is a whopper of a meal.  Check out this beef carpaccio:

This is on a big plate people… we all had serious food envy… but I was lucky enough to get a bite and it was delish.

For mains people went for a wide variety of hearty “comfort food” options:

From left to right: Grilled baby chicken, ribs and calamari & hake combo.

More chatting, laughing & wine drinking followed.  We got so brave that at one point we even considered doing some karaoke at a local pub.  Ideas after a few bottles of wine are NEVER good ones.  They seem to be absolutely brilliant at the time, but don’t fool yourselves, they aren’t.   Luckily some sanity prevailed and we decided to rather settle in at our accommodation as the next day promised to be jam-packed.

Then this part is just to brag, but once we had checked in at our accommodation (which I’ll tell you about in my next post) we decided to play some darts.   Seems I’m pretty damn impressive with wine pumping through my veins cause I busted out a bullseye.  Here is the proof:

BOOM! And nooooo, I did not simply place the dart there. I was way too sozzled to think of something that clever. ha!

After that moment of pure awesomeness, I decided to quit while I was ahead and my head hit the pillow… hard.

Now this was a weekend which included a lot of eating.  Therefore I decided to leave my normal eating  / no eating obsessions at home (just this once) and totally overindulge.  I will be showing you a very scientific depiction of how my pot belly progressed over the weekend.  Here are the results after day 1:

Things are still OK at this point… it’s still totally manageable with a bit of extra time in the gym…

More to come on day 2 & 3.

xxx

Oh PS:  You can follow Cape Town Routes Unlimited on Twitter here.   And while you’re at it, you can follow me too! HERE.  (Shameless punt for myself there as well.  Cause hat’s just how I roll…)