Month: July 2013

Up early for a walk on the beach and watch the sunrise. The weather was good enough for me to have a dip after the walk. I stumbled across my first biltong shop and couldn’t resist, great travel food. We had an easy drive down to Plett Bay, the roads in this part are speedways over big rolling hills. The usual, what ever you can get away with. We found a lovely B&B on the hill overlooking the ocean called Rus en Raas, he was of French decent and she was dutch. Carreen couldn’t do enough for us and came up with the best breakfast the next morning. We had enough time to unload the car and head back up the road to walk with the Cheetahs at Tenikwa Wildlife Reserve. It is a sanctuary and rehab centre for injured & abandoned animals, most of which are cats. We were shown around the various camps as they call them before heading out for a 2 hour sunset walk with 2 guides and 2 cheetahs. Of the big 5 to see in Africa, the cheetah is usually the hardest as they are not daytime hunters and can see up to 3km and travel at 110kph. Every now and then on the walk they just flop to the ground for a rest which gives you plenty of time to pat them, which they love. They are very gentle creatures if your not on the menu. They purred like a kitten, which we were told was contentment as with all cats. We gave one of the workers a lift back into town and had a drink up town before back to the accom. We had dinner just down the hill at The Fat Fish restaurant which was superb. Ros had sole and I Line fish which is basically fish of the day. It was a white flesh salmon caught in the southern ocean. The waitress was English and when she could not migrate to Australia, she settled for South Africa. Pity she was the most efficient waitress I have ever seen.

 

A great breakfast, a quick walk in the 39 steps arboretum park and we headed off down the mountain toward Alice then onto Cookhouse were we fuelled up again and passing by Port Elizabeth arriving Jeffreys Bay about 3pm. It was more fast straight roads where we saw Ostrich inn the paddocks and a very pretty red plant called Aloe, which I think is related to our Aloe Vera. We finally found the iconic surf spot where they were on the final stages of the Billabong Pro Surf Comp. As we were driving in we saw Occy driving out. He was eliminated earlier that day. We found a beautiful Guesthouse right on the beach just up the road from all the action. It was a real find. Being a guesthouse, they had this beautiful lounge and self serve bar upstairs overlooking the beach, it was a nice way to finish a day on the road. The manager organised a so called Taxi to take us to dinner at a seafood restaurant called Kitchen Windows which was right on the beach. The cab ended up being a clapped out early model Datsun with a very friendly and talkative Armenian surfer. The food was fantastic washed down with a local wine. Dinner over and the taxi was summoned and off we went back home in the same wild and funny way.

Rained overnight enough to clean the rental and give us a crisp clear morning. We watched large speed boats with about 15 guys on board trying to get out over the treacherous bar to go and catch sardines. There must have been 20 boats. Breakfast here are very substantial and keep you going all day. The waiter Solomon was sponsored by the owner in return for working in the restaurant. He counsels street kids by day for the local community. We fuelled up and headed west back up to the plateau and through Umtata (near Nelson Mandella’s birth place). We travelled the inland road to Hogsback via Cathcart. The countryside consists of massive rolling treeless hills, dotted periodically with clusters of brightly painted little buildings not much bigger than a garage. They nearly always had a rondavel which is the traditional building of the local people. The roads were very straight in good condition and 120km limit. By the way they drive over here, I think that was the minimum speed not the max. I was sitting on 140 most of the time and I was being passed like I was nailed to the fence. The GPS which we know as Gladys, advised from the outset that there would be an unpaved road, so we thought that would not be too much a problem, until we started out on it. Unfortunately she doesn’t know the difference between road and track. The surface was so rough with a lot of sharp rocks I thought the low profile tyres on the car would take a hammering. I wasn’t worrying about 1 puncture it was 2. After the last 40 rough and scenic kms we arrived at Hogsback. A sleepy little art & craft English style village. It has many walks and water falls in the area. It was very cold and windy and looked like it could snow, which they do have through winter. We stayed overnight at the Arminel Hotel, an English stlye complete with thatched roof. No Wi Fi. They had a fireplace in the bar which would been very welcoming if the fire was actually burning instead of smoking the joint out.