The Garden Route

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The Garden Route

I think we left you at Oudtshoorn, the "ostrich capital of the world"!

From there we did a couple of hours drive to the coast and a place called Knysna. This is a really nice little town set on a lagoon. We stayed for a couple of days and really didn't do too much, just wandered around the town and when to a nearby beach at Brenton on Sea. On the beach we met a bloke from Leeds, who has a house there. Anyway, he started the conversation telling us his wife had left him and his business was going down the tubes, so he'd need to sell the South Africa house. We really didn't want to play counseller so made a polite exit.

We also met another interesting character in a pub in Knysna. He was a brit who moved to Zim 51 years ago and is an author. He has written a couple of best sellers apparently. His most famous is one called the cry of the fish eagle and is about the politics of Zim, which he still referred to as Rhodesia! Anyway, the reason we met is because South Africa is experiencing loads of power cuts. Most towns have their power cut off for a least 2 hours 3-4 times a week. Businesses are hit as well, so things are in a real mess! He was in the pub because his power was cut from his farm.

After a couple of relaxing days, we moved on to Jefferys Bay. This is a famous surf place with the best right hand point break in the world. No idea what this means, but the waves seemed to start and then move sideways along to the right, so we're guessing it means that. On the way we stopped at the world's highest bungy site, all 212m. We were both too chicken, as it was way too high up, but we did do a bridge walk out to the jump site! This is pic 1. I've had to number them as it takes so long to put a title in we spend 3 hours on the internet!

Jefferys Bay was a bit of a dump to be honest, but we did have a surf lesson which was cool. We were on the beginners waves but they were still 2 or 3 times the size of the ones in Cornwall. It was great fun and we managed to survive the sharks, although Lynne did see dolphins right near us!

The best part of this trip was a couple of days at Addo Elephant Park. We stayed in a great little place called Lenmore Chalets just outside of the park (mainly cos we turned up and there was no where else to stay). The only problem was that it was on a lake and the gander of geese who called it home used to go mad at about 2am in the morning!

We did a couple of guided drives and got amazingly close to the elephants. We had a particularly close encounter with a massive male. When they are on must, they secrete all this stuff from infront of their ears and continously piss, but apparently are really aggressive. It just so happened that one of these elephants took a liking to our land rover and got literally yards away. We thought it was going to charge us and scarily enough so did the guide, but we're alive! It was a great experience and a real adrenalin rush!

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