Advertisement
Published: April 12th 2010
Plettenberg Bay
This was right on our little private beach.The last two weeks have been such flourish of activity, it’s going to take me quite some time to get it all out! I am down to about 3.5 weeks left in South Africa and will probably be hanging around PE for most of that time, so I am going to break up our Easter Holiday trip in to about 3 or 4 different blogs and work on them periodically over the next three weeks. I’m just gonna start from the beginning and the Garden Route to Cape Town will be the first section of our trip.
Margot’s parents arrived in Port Elizabeth on Friday, the 26th. They did the Addo/Schotia trip, that I have talked much about previously, on Saturday and then we headed out on Sunday the 28th. Sarah, our new roommate who arrived about 3 weeks ago, Becky, Margot and her parents, and I all climbed in the gigantic van they rented and headed west on the N2. Our first night was spent in Plettenberg Bay at the Abalone Beach house. We were a 1 minute walk from our own little private beach and had quite a pleasant stay. We ate wonderful fresh fish for dinner, at
a local joint right on the water. The owner goes fishing every morning, and whatever he catches ends up being the line fish of the day so it was really cool.
The next morning was my sunrise walk with the cheetahs!! Tenikwa Wildlife Center is a rehabilitation and breeding center for the smaller African cats. They have some cheetahs who have been there since they were little and others who were born there, and every morning and evening they take two of them for a walk. I was lucky enough to be the only person that had scheduled that morning and got to walk two of the cheetahs all by myself, well ok with the guides but you know what I mean. My cheetahs were Chester and Zimbeelé (I’m not really sure how you spell her name…) and I started with Zimbe. She was much livelier than Chester, who was just moseying along, and was walking quite briskly and very alert. There is a monkey park right around the corner and apparently she likes to look for monkeys because she is constantly looking around and in the trees. So often the guide had to put himself in between her
and the trees and get her to focus on walking. She was so cute! And big! Chester, however, would stop frequently and just look around. We had to poke and pull him to get him moving again. At one point, we got to this dirt mound, that they love to play on cause they like to be above things and look down, and Zimbe went running around. Chester and I sat on top of the mound and I gave him some water. They are absolutely beautiful and I was loving every minute of it! We just lounged on top of this hill and he let me pet him and they purr SOOOOO loud! It’s amazing! They almost sound like they’re growling it’s so loud, but they just look at you and start purring! It was so sweet. I had no idea, though, that cheetahs were so endangered. Apparently there are only about 1200 left in South Africa. They are hunted but are also threatened by their poor gene pool which was caused by a bottleneck effect. So basically, the populations were so pushed together by hunters and habitat destruction, that now the inbreeding has become a huge problem. You will
see in the pictures, that Zimbe’s spots are actually much closer together than Chester’s and almost make black stripes down her back, this is the effect of poor genetics. There are a few parks in South Africa that are part of breeding programs to try and increase gene populations and the numbers of wild cheetahs. We then started to head back through some more weeds and such, back toward their enclosure. It was so neat just walking with these animals and hanging out. It was probably one of the most favorite things I did for the whole two weeks, I could do it every day!
I was joined by the rest of the group and we then took a little tour of the rest of the cats in the center and were able to go in most enclosures with them all. There were Carcarals, African Wildcats (which look much like a house cat and are where some domesticated cats originated), Servals, and a Jaguar. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to go in the enclosure with the Jaguar because he is still pretty wild, but our guide went in there with him and it was crazy. He was so beautiful! Jaguars
are one of the South African “Big Five” but they are so good at hiding deep in the trees that you normally don’t see them in the wild, only if you’re lucky (or not so lucky and don’t live to tell the tale).
We also saw some really ugly birds…I won’t go in to too much about them, they were not my favorite. And I was attacked by the bird of South Africa, the blue heron…I had to fight it off like a matador with my jacket! They were beautiful, but mean! It was a very eventful morning.
After this, we also went to Monkeyland. Instead of paying for the tour to learn more about monkeys we just decided to sit on the deck and see if we couldn’t see any. Well…no need to pay to go see the monkeys because the rotten things come to you! We sat out on the porch for about an hour or so and saw probably 4 different types of monkeys, all of which were up to no good! There are people that sit outside with spray bottles to keep the monkeys off of the decks because they come in and steal
food, sunglasses, cameras, whatever they can get their grubby little hands on. At one point, Margot’s mom went to the bathroom and she came out and said we had to go in there, there was just this big black monkey, sitting on a box! Sure enough, he was hanging out right outside the kitchen, eating one of the plants!! We took a few pictures and were then shooed away because they had to “spray him away”. It was very funny. While we were taking pictures at one point, one monkey jumped on our table and took Becky’s empty can of Diet Coke and proceeded to take it back up in the trees with him. It was absolutely hilarious because he knew exactly what to do with it, he got to the top of his tree and tipped the can up just like he was drinking out of it. He was obviously pissed that there wasn’t any left cause then he started shaking it! They were very amusing.
From here we ate again in Plett, before heading for Knysna, and enjoyed yet another of South Africa’s lovely markets. They are everywhere and they are bad news! Everywhere we go, we
all seem to find more things we just can’t seem to live without! Margot got her tarot cards read and I had to talk myself out of some cute shoes, these places are big trouble.
That evening we spent in Knysna. This is probably one of the most beautiful and quiet seaside towns and was very enjoyable. We ate dinner at a Portuguese restaurant and spent the night in a nice little backpackers place. I really wanted to go on a dolphin and whale watching boat the next morning, but after picking the other girls up in their “Rastafarian community”, we didn’t have much time until their elephant appointment. We were able to make our way to the Knysna Heads though, and took beautiful pictures of the ocean and these pretty little rocks and cliffside structures.
That evening, the girls and parents had made reservations to ride elephants. They had a good time but I was actually happy that I decided to do what I did, instead. After a short video about the elephants at the Knysna Elephant Park we rode out to the group of elephants hanging out in the field. They obviously know what happens when
this tractor pulls up because all of the elephants began lining up behind a long rail, ready to be fed. You pay for a bucket of fruits and are able to feed the elephants. There was a youngster who was causing trouble and started to come around the rail, the guides quickly got him back where he was supposed to go, only for him to charge back around as soon as they turned their heads. He made me laugh and I commented on how “naughty” he was (they like that word here) and the guide told me to go ahead and give him something. Well, this guy obviously thought he was starving because as soon as I gave him the first apple he was all over me. I guess he had been mud wrestling just before we got there because his trunk was covered in mud and he continued to accost me for my food until I’d fed him my entire bucket!! My jacket was covered in mud from where he’d rubbed his trunk all over me trying to get food! After everyone’s food was gone we got to walk along with the elephants as they went back to eating
the trees and bushes that they normally eat. I made acquaintances with the matriarch of the group and she was wonderful. She was huge and so beautiful! I got to touch her skin and check out her ears. The skin feels so thick but it’s actually only about an inch, and so rough. The backs of their ears, though, are soft and filled with veins. She obliged me in taking all kinds of pictures with and of her and I had a great time. If you haven’t noticed, I’m quite a sucker for the animal activities, I could work at any one of these places and be so content to play with these animals every day!!
From there, we headed to George but it was simply to sleep. We arrived pretty late, took some showers, and hit the sack. The next morning, the girls had scheduled their shark diving in Mossel Bay, so we headed there early the next morning. There are a great number of Great White sharks in South Africa, in addition to many other species of sharks. It is not unusual to see them from the boardwalk in PE and the lifeguards have commented on how
they’ve seen them swimming underneath them during trials and competitions and such. So, shark diving is quite big here. The girls said they saw about 8 different Great Whites and had a really good time. I’ll come back and do it some day when I can afford it, but I believe I’ll go in Gaansbaai. Here, there are two islands, one full of seals, and the other penguins, and the area in between the two is referred to as “Shark Ally”. This would definitely be the best place to go I think!!
While they were shark diving, I wandered around Mossel Bay with Margot’s parents. We were going to take a boat trip to Seal Island (one of many such named islands in the country) but the boat was broken down, just my luck. So we hit yet another craft market and perused the local museum. The really awesome time to be in Mossel Bay, though, is during August and September when the whales come there for mating season. The locals were telling us that you could just sit on the docks and at the restaurants and just watch all of them, that they come right in to the
shore and it’s awesome. Yet another thing to put on the list.
That night we ate at a wonderful little restaurant and I enjoyed some more ostrich, which I have come to love since I’ve been here. And the next morning we had brunch at a nice little café and taught them about mimosas! They sold champagne and orange juice so we just bought the whole bottle and shared. All the things these people haven’t experienced yet!!
From Mossel Bay it was off to Cape Town and whole separate blog of adventures. We spent the next 4 days there so I’ll continue with it later.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 13; qc: 49; dbt: 0.0472s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
