Oh dear, how embarrassing! When we finally arrived at our last destination in Riebeek Kasteel - Bar Bar Black Sheep restaurant - we found a heart-shaped blackboard slung over a chair with my name and the time: 12.30pm. Which meant we were nearly two hours late, which is bad even by Cape Town standards.
In our defence, the carefully planned itinerary hadn't said we had to be there by any particular time, and up until then we had been extremely busy tasting wine and eating olives, which are the two main reasons for going to the picturesque Riebeek Valley.
It's only about an hour from Cape Town along the N7 and the other side of Malmesbury, and I'm told many people actually commute daily from there into the big city.
It's not as crazy as it sounds when you consider lots of folk sit for far longer than that over a much shorter distance in rush hour traffic.
Heck, it took me an hour from Table View to town the other day.
Getting to the restaurant so late meant we had missed the lunch time rush, if such a thing exists.
If it does, I don't think it really fits in with the quiet country atmosphere in Riebeek Kasteel.
As it happened, there were a couple of other tables occupied.
We'd only been in the village since that morning, but we already recognised at least one familiar face - the guy from Riebeek Cellars where we had been tasting wine earlier - who greeted us with a friendly wave. Such is the way of small towns.
Everyone is friendly. The group of silver haired men who talked about rugby then motor bikes (at length) and then local gossip, were extremely so.
They spent the rest of the afternoon trying to get us to join them for more drinks and to smoke cigars. What nice fellows!
Bar Bar Black Sheep is owned by Mynhardt Joubert and Anton Espost, who also runs the Wine Kollektive next door where you can taste and buy the wines of half a dozen or so small producers from the region.
We were to go home with a plain, unlabelled bottle of shiraz with a pencilled tag around the neck simply announcing its origin as Farm 1120.
It was hot as it can only be that far inland where there is no cool breeze from the ocean.
You learn to appreciate the south-easter a little bit more when you go on road trips like this.
We'd been beating the effects of acute dehydration all day with wine tastings and giant gin and tonics on the beautifully colonial stoep of the Royal Hotel but we gratefully accepted Mynhardt's offer of jam jars filled with icy, refreshing Pimm's and lemonade and garnished with apples, strawberries, blueberries, cherries, apple slices, mint and cucumber.
Oh my, they were delicious!
We sampled the delights of Mynhardt's menu - I asked him about his background. He shrugged and said "I come from a family that likes to eat."
It's a long way to go for food but we were in raptures over the deep fried courgette flowers (from a little old lady's garden) stuffed with ricotta and a hint of chilli, the baked sardines with chilli and lemon on bakbrood (the grown-up way to have sardines on toast).
Then there was the best-in-the-world (my words, not theirs) West Coast snoek viskoekies (fish cakes) served with soet patat (sweet potato) with ginger and cinnamon.
We had a few other taster portions as well and everything had us murmuring with pleasure and later slumped in our chairs while fending off the flirtations from the next table.
We'd begun the day at Kloovenburg, which is on your right just before you turn left to go to Riebeek Kasteel. There we had a wine tasting followed by an informal olive tasting.
Kloovenburg makes a huge range of olive products from chutneys and oils to cosmetics, and I left clutching several bags full of purchases.
The olives in blueberry dressing are heavenly, as is the olive chutney.
Next we stopped at the Olive Boutique, which is owned and run by Michael and Juliana Meredith.
In quaint country fashion, Juliana looked at me blankly when I introduced myself, then the light came on and she exclaimed: "Oh, it's Thursday!"
What Juliana doesn't know about olives is not worth knowing. She started sourcing olives from local producers and pressing oil when she and her husband moved to the valley and she realised she could only clean the house so many times.
From one oil and two kinds of olives, the Olive Boutique's range has swollen to include many types of olives, oils, tapenades, mustards and cosmetics. Juliana is a firm believe in the health benefits of the olive, and she's only to happy to share her knowledge and her recipe suggestions.
Not for nothing is she the inventor of the annual olive festival in the region, which happens during the first weekend of May.
With another bag of stuff in the boot, we headed into town to the Riebeek Cellars wine shop.
We gave up trying to look for parking the in shade as there are only about three trees on the square and they were all occupied.
We considered, then rejected, the idea of parking on a red line, which was under a tree.
Just because there is no traffic doesn't mean there are no traffic cops, and we found out later that they do pop in from Malmesbury from time to time to check on things.
Riebeek Cellars is a co-op and you can try before you buy - R10 for five tastings. The bottles of wine themselves are just as reasonable, ranging from R22 a bottle to R61.50. I whipped out the debit card again; it was just too good an opportunity to let slip.
Being as hot as it was, we said we'd come back for our wine after lunch.
"Don't forget," said Anina. "But if you do, we do offer a free delivery service to Cape Town."
Us forget wine? "Never!" we cried.
And we didn't.
Riebeek Kasteel is an easy day trip from Cape Town but if you want to stay over, I usually hang my hat at Kasteelberg, which is owned by radio personality Allan Barnard.
It's a real old-fashioned country inn, and very homely, and the rates are reasonable - from R325 pp sharing, including breakfast.
- Call Kloovenburg on 022 448 1635
- The Olive Boutique on 022 448 1368
- Riebeek Cellars on 022 448 1213
- Bar Bar Black Sheep on 022 448 1031
- The Kasteelberg Country Inn on 022 448 1110.