Blogs from Mossel Bay, Western Cape, South Africa, Africa - page 4

Day 3 (Thursday 23-Apr-09, NJJ) Left our fab' hostel to head down to the not-so-sunny Cape L'Agulhas, the most southern point of Africa where Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet, took photos. Back to Struisbaai for brekkie at Bella Luna - delicious omelettes (Nat had feta, onion, sundried toms & peppers mmm mmm mmm). In car at 11am just as rain started. Stopped once for 'The Bear' to take over the driving and fill up petrol tank. Checked into Santos Express Train Lodge on beachfront, actual train converted to accommodation (we slept in the cabin that night). Weather shit - heavy rain. Decided to drive further along Garden Route to explore, got as far as George then came straight back, nothing of interest. Felt lost due to rain and lack of sunshine but surprisingly did not feel ... read more

The evening of Gary's 40th saw the guesthouse put 4 candles on a cheesecake and the owner bring out his guitar to sing happy birthday...badly. An impromptu speech to a random bunch of strangers from New Zealand, Canada, London and Manchester was called for by the guesthouse owners - how embarrassing! The next day we drove down to Port Agulhas - the Southern Tip. For a while Jill and Gary were the 2 southernmost people on the huge continent of Africa, the next bit of land south is Antarctica! Needless to say a couple of German tourists came along and annexed the area within 10 minutes. A 3 hour drive along the coast took us to Mossell Bay our next stop. Mossell Bay is just starting off as a tourist destination and you can see why ... read more

Mossel Bay was our next destination, where we stayed at Mossel Bay Backpackers. This was one of the nicest places we stayed at, and I just loved the way it was decorated. Everything was pretty blue, and the bedrooms all were named - we stayed in The Shark Cage haha. And I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that the toilet seat had a picture of a dolphin painted on it. They were also incredibly generous with their internet, which I am eternally grateful for. On our first afternoon, we walked along the rocky beach, spotting tons of cool shells, starfish, and sea snails. We were entertained for awhile watching a group of really good surfers out in the water. Also saw a bride and groom getting pictures take out on the rocks - very cute. The next ... read more

Pick the hire car up for our 5 day venture east along the coast. A little Opel Corsa that is very forgiving of the “speedy gonzales” driving! Our first stop is Mossel Bay after 4.5 hours and we’re not really sure why it’s called the Garden Route as we head there. Nice enough with low mountains framing rolling farmland - parts remind us a bit of the Lake District without the lakes; we could equally be in Wales or in the German or Austrian Tyrol - but not really very gardeny! Think we probably needed to detour from the main road a bit. At Mossel Bay we take the wrong turn and end up driving through the township. Huge, and like so many has some really lovely houses and some really basic shacks. At least this ... read more

After checking out of our hostel and picking up our hire car, we headed down to the V&A Waterfront where we had some lunch and bought a pair of binoculars which we hoped would come in handy for our rhino hunt. So far, although probably eight times larger than a leopard they’d proved surprisingly more harder to find. Soon we were on our way and heading east on the N2 in the first of many vehicles we’ll be hiring throughout the year. Secretly, I was hoping that this little hatchback (budget permitting) would be the smallest we‘d have to squeeze into. Our first stop if you remember from the previous blog would be the coastal town of Hermanus. The name is now shortened and used to be a bit more of a mouthful, being formerly known ... read more