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Published: January 24th 2018
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The key word is keys, mucho keys, in Cape Town I had six in my RBN'B in Hermanus only 3 and in Mossel Bay 3 and a remote, here you lock yourself in and the bastards out.
Signs of "Armed response" is on basically every door and house, a very strange feeling for a Swede, but we'll probably end up that way sooner or later.
Anyway I got my bike, my little red BMW, slightly bigger than my Vietnamese moped and got out of CT to Hermanus, I was in Hermanus some 20 years ago and nothing's the same, big surprise huh?
A lovely couple helped me find an overpriced B&B, next to a restaurant with not vey good food, not my lucky day.
Driving on the left side of the road takes some concentration, and a new bike in a new scene some more so the first day was a shortie.
The ride along the coast is very nice, nice scenry but the head wind was brutal and when hit from the side you go slowly, piano piano que va lontano.
A decent breakfast and a long, sometimes hot, 34,5 C, got me to
Mossel Bay, the weather's strange, yesterday 17 C and today was hot.
The route was mostly inland and the countryside was nice very very dry but not flat, undulating hills and mostly farm country, town with names from the old world, i went through Heidelberg, an old German university town teleported to South Africa, English, German and Dutch, the former conquerors of Africa.
I've read a many of the Wilbur Smith books, all taking place down here and there are names and places that I remember from them, the place is sort of familiar, very much sort of.
One thing is good here, the food and the beer and lets not forget the wine, vineyards are a dime a dozen and prices are 30 % of Swedish prices so I don't look at prices I just order what I want.
One thing really pisses me off, big time, I paid very good money for the best gloves money could buy and after a couple of day the liner comes out of the glove when I take it off.
You pay an arm an a leg for something that's supposed to be THE BEST and it
fucking falls apart after a couple of days use.
So I sit there like an idiot trying to get my fingers into the corresponding holes and push the shit back in, glove come on and off the whole time, taking a pic, a piss, whatever.
Somehow when I book rooms with Booking. com they're alway uphill so I had a bone jarring walk down to Mossel Bay's main drag, Mossel Baai, Afrikans spelling, is not very active on a Sunday afternoon, but equipped with the seasoned travellers snout I soon found a place of purveyance, of the fermented kind.
Well I had a couple of brew and found a nice restaurant, a cab back home and bedtime.
So I left Mossel Bay with a very good dinner under my belt, some fish pilau, and some Sauvignon Blanc.
I also got some new gloves, the must have been made out of Humming bid scrotum leather and treated with the tears of maidens, but when you have to you have to.
The next destination was Oudtshoorn, across a mountain range, through Robinson pass, probably lovely view but I didn't anything, the fog up in
the pass was so heavy that I rode in first gear following the white stripe in the middle of the black.
Oudtshoorn is the capital of the ostrich and there are ostrich farms all over the place and that's about it.
I found a nice B&B got a shitty lunch and a nice dinner with more Sauvignon.
The place where I stay has just opened and I'm the only guest, there's a little tray with cookies and sherry, very posh and they have a handyman who cuts the grass with a pair of garden scissors, on his knees.
Today was the first gravel day, I went up and a cross the famous(?) Swartberg Pass over to a quint little pace where I'd hate to live, then doubled back to Oudtshoorn with the plan of actually planning a couple of days ahead.
I had a fabulous sandwich for lunch, the wine was not chilled and no ice cubes in my wine, so I stuck to water.
Mooching about and drinking the sherry and eating the cookies made it into evening, evening= dinner and I wanted to have it in Mamash, the place with the super
sandwich.
They'd put Sauvignon into the fridge for me and the owner puts out an tonne of charm and she can cook, oh yes she can cook.
So I had one very dead but very tasty fish , I gave her enough compliments to last her for a few days and her dad who was there as well and listened me praising his daughter looked like a very happy camper and offered to drive home. Back to the B&B I went, hoping that the bedbugs wouldn't bite and they didn't.
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