Garden Route

Sorry for the posting hiatus, I'm a very busy person over here in Africa! The first weekend in October I went on a four day trip with four other Connect girls along the Garden Route, a number of different coastal towns across south-eastern South Africa each being the home of something special. Our stops included Hermanus, Cape Agulhas, Mossel Bay, Knysna, Tsitsikamma, Plettenberg Bay, and Oudtshoorn. This post could last for days, so I'll just give a brief synopsis of each one.

Hermanus

Our trip started out on Friday morning. We went to pick up the rental car, which is a story in and of itself. We had rented an automatic car from Thrifty, and when we showed up all they had was manual transmissions. This was clearly not going to work, and after they attempted to offer us their sole automatic car left - a Mercedes Benz - we FINALLY tracked down some of the last remaining automatic rental cars in Cape Town at Avis. So despite the two hour delay of our trip, we were finally off. By the time we got to Hermanus, about an hour and a half from Cape Town, I was starting to get used to driving on the other side of the car, on the other side of the road...

Hermanus was having their annual Two Oceans Whale Festival, but we got there early enough that it wasn't too crowded yet. They have the best land-based whale watching in the world, and since it was Spring and mating season, the whales are known to come in large numbers and get very close to the coast. The weather was beautiful and we were able to see quite a few Southern Right whales. It was amazing! We ate lunch at this restaurant right on the water, and even saw some baby seals!

Cape Agulhas

After the whale watching, some shopping, and the purchase of an auxiliary cord to complete our road trip with some tunes, we were on our way to Cape Agulhas also known as the southern most point of the continent of Africa. It was something I really wanted to do, because it is really just a desolate, windy place that leaves virtually nothing between Africa and Antarctica. Just another thing checked off the bucket list!

Mossel Bay

It was another 4 hours to Mossel Bay from Cape Agulhas, which would make it our longest driving stent on the trip there. Driving in the dark was definitely the hardest part of driving in South Africa. The N2 has no lights, and is mostly only a one-lane highway, so it looks like the cars on the other side of the road are coming right at you. It was also pretty scary trying to pass all of the semis in the pitch black of night. We finally made it to Mossel Bay only to reach our second road block, which was that our hostel was pretty much non-existent. We were able to get ahold of some of our friends who were staying in Mossel Bay that night as well and book a room at a different hostel about 15 minutes from where we were. It actually ended up working out perfectly because our new hostel was close to where we were going to see the elephants the next day.

Our elephant encounters took place at Botlierskop private game reserve. It was a little elephant family with a mom, dad, and baby...probably one of the cuter things I had ever seen. The baby's name was Chima, which is short for a word that translates into "surprise". They didn't know the mom was pregnant and found Chima one morning when they went out to feed the elephants. Needless to say they were quite surprised. I got to ride the dad, Sam, who was constantly hungry and taking down some trees to eat with his trunk. We saw wildabeest, impalas, horses, turtles, and a number of other animals on our ride. When we got back we were able to feed the elephants. They are so big! It was crazy, and I didn't even care that I had elephant slobber all over my hands. The baby was just like a little kid. He only wanted to eat the apples and would spit out the lettuce and the carrots you tried to feed him. They were some pretty amazing creatures though.

Knysna

Back on the road again, we made it to Knysna where we ate some lunch at the harbor before making our way to our hostel which was on the beach outside of the city. The weather was starting to get pretty crappy, so we called it an early night. The hostel we were staying at was pretty amazing though, we sat and played cards with the owners over quite a few glasses of wine and met some other really cool people from the Netherlands. They also had the cutest dog there named Chuck, which reminded me of Buckwheat.

Tsitsikamma

The next morning it was off from Afro Vibe to Tsitsikamma, where we were due to go on a zipline tour over some waterfalls on the Storms River. It was rainy and gross, but it was still quite a fun time, and I can't imagine not doing it in the rain now. It was also where Stephanie was going to bungee jump of the highest bungee jumping point in the world, Bloukrans Bridge. However, it was so windy that they said they didn't recommend her doing it because she was too small and the wind would whip her around. So, we left feeling about the same as the weather, and headed back towards Plettenberg Bay.

Plettenberg Bay

After getting to our hostel in Plettenberg, we decided to escape the weather and go to a nice resturant called Kitchen. They had amazing food and drinks, and we spent a long night there sharing stories and quite a few laughs. We called it an early night though because four of us were due to be on the beach at 5:30 in the morning to go dolphin kayaking.

We woke up early to drive down to the beach and meet the guy who was taking us kayaking. I don't know what we were thinking it was going to be like but we were definitely in for a surprise. Even writing this, I am still laughing about Giovanni and our experiences. Let's just say that it should have been called "Introduction to Extreme Kayaking". It was not the leisurely, relaxing, sunrise kayak that we had planned. After being bombarded/drenched by the waves of the Indian Ocean , having our underwater camera go overboard, and hearing the screams of Giovanni yelling "20 STROKES, PADDLE, PADDLE, PADDLE!!!!!" we finally made it past the huge waves that were breaking over us and out into the sea. We didn't see any dolphins or whales, but we did see an amazing sunrise, got screamed at by Giovanni that we weren't paddling right, and had an interesting trip back to the shore. Brittany and I were sharing one kayak that pretty much got eaten by a huge wave on our way back in. I emerged from the wave, backwards in the kayak, saw Brittany emerge from the ocean with her oar, and heard Giovanni dying laughing on the beach that that was one of the funniest things he had ever witnessed. After a number of good laughs, finding our water camera had washed up on shore (such a relief since all our shark pictures were on there!) we warmed up with hot showers and tea and didn't stop laughing about Giovanni and Brittany falling out of the kayak for the entire trip home. We grabbed some breakfast and hit the road to Oudtshoorn for our last day on the Garden Route.

Oudtshoorn

The drive to Oudtshoorn was quite beatiful, but also scary because we were driving up around tiny curvy roads through the mountains. For some reason, Oudtsoorn is known for it's high number of ostriches and we were going to the Cango Ostrich Farm there. We got to see baby ostriches, ostriches mid-hatch, got semi-attacked by some ostriches, and got to hysterically laugh while watching Molly and Andrea attempt to ride the ostriches. Brittany even captured a priceless photo of Ostriches literally attacking me to get the food out of my bucket. We were pretty slap-happy by this point, and I let Andrea take a crack at driving for awhile to give myself a break as we made the 5 hour trip back to Cape Town.

All in all it made for a great weekend with lots of funny stories and experiences, and made me realize how much I'm enjoying myself here and how much I truly love South Africa. So yes, I'll be changing my flight to stay for a few more weeks....