Although we'd bet good money that the first image that comes to your mind when someone says "Africa" is of a dry savannah, dotted with elephants or lions and a huge, red, setting sun - we beg to differ. Here in South Africa, we've been continually amazed at just how varied the landscapes are. Of course we are only referring to experiences of one country out of an entire continent, but this place has it all: snowy mountains, sub-tropical coastline, expansive desert plains, verdant mountain forests, and mile after mile of beautiful, untouched white sand beaches. Hopefully from the photos below you'll see that there is much more to South Africa than just the "Big 5" and game parks.
Drakensburg Mountains
We ventured inland some 200kms from Durban to get a closer look at the Drakensburg Mountains - an impressive series of towering mountains that form a natural boundary between one side of the mountain kingdom of Lesotho and South Africa (the Zulu call them Quathlamba - Battlement of Spears). We completed a few hikes in the area and were continually rewarded with vistas of green, lush mountain slopes with waterfalls, flowers, and birds aplenty. A walk we highly recommend is the Amphitheatre Gorge that takes you from open valley through pockets of beautiful forests up thin twisting slot canyons to ultimately end staring up the near vertical 500m walls of the mountain.
Falcon Ridge
While in the area, we took our hostel owner’s advice and attended one of the daily shows at the Falcon Ridge Bird of Prey Center – a lovely way to spend a few hours enjoying the sun and learning more about the age-old sport of falconry and these beautiful birds. The first little guy is a Lanner Falcon who kills its prey by striking them with its feet in high-speed dives. Interestingly, they have evolved a ‘nostril plug’ system that effectively blocks out the air when diving (very handy when you are doing over 250 km/hr) and is visible in the picture. The next is a Long-Crested Eagle, followed by a juvenile Black Eagle (whose eyesight demonstration has to be ‘seen’ to be believed) and finally a really bad-tempered vulture.
Coastal Paradises - Coffee Bay, Hamburg, and Cintsa
The ‘Wild Coast’ south of Durban and north of Port Elizabeth still holds many beautiful and totally un-spoilt beaches, as compared to the extremely popular and built-up ‘Garden Route’ coastline south of Port Elizabeth. To get to many of these beaches (such as Coffee Bay), you must endure 90kms or more of crappy, washed-out gravel roads; however, they are well worth it once you get there as you can walk for miles in either direction and continue to explore dramatic rocky headlands, pristine dunes, and shell-covered beaches for as long as you want. We highly recommend Hamburg (Gaby at Oyster Lodge is super-friendly) or the excellent Buccaneers Backpackers at Cintsa that has amazing ocean/lagoon views from your own private self-contained cottages but at backpacker rates.
Cape St. Francis
Duncan and Cecile (AGAIN) showed us more of their fantastic generosity by letting us stay in their stunning holiday-house, tucked away in a nature reserve along the coastline south of Cape St. Francis. This stop of several days turned into a very lazy vacation within a vacation, as the weather was foul (to say the least) with continual storms and rain for 3 days. This was hardly a concern as we had all the books, food, and drink we needed, plus the sun finally came out on the final day allowing us a chance to get out and explore the rocks and area.
Monkeyland
Moving on from Cape St. Francis, we continued south down the coast and started on the Garden Route proper. This area of the country is very scenic with lovely forests and a line of sharp, little mountains running along the coast. The weather, however, was still hissing and futzing with rain showers, so after taking a few side roads to enjoy the ‘short-range’ scenery, we decided to spend the afternoon at Monkeyland (http://www.monkeyland.co.za/) – a park with primates from all over the world. We recognized quite a few from South America, but the lemurs from Madagascar (very, very loud buggars!), and the White-Handed Gibbon were definitely new. The gibbon also held us in rapt awe as it gracefully flung itself up to 5 meters at a time from tree to tree quickly swinging through our piece of the jungle. The remaining monkeys were the ever present Vervet monkeys – you might remember them and the 'colorful plumage' comment from the Kruger blog?
Robberg Peninsula (Nature and Marine Reserve)
Waking up to a beautiful, clear day (at last), we decided to spend some time outside of the car hiking on Robberg peninsula (near Plettenburg). It was an interesting walk, including sandy beaches, rocky cliffs (with steep dropoffs!), and some dense thicket. The seascapes were beautiful, and although we didn't catch a glimpse of the whales and dolphins that are supposed to frequent this area, we did see many, many seals playing about in the surf below.
Calitzdorp and the "mountain" route (R62) to Cape Town
Following some friends' recommendations, we decided to head inland to Outdtshoorn and Calitzdorp before following the R62 into Cape Town. Outdtshoorn is the place to go in South Africa if you want to see ostriches; they are farmed in this area and inhabit fields around the town for miles in all directions. They are really interesting birds, with huge eyes, alien-looking feet, and a tendency to fluff out their feathers (like a woman holding up her skirts) as they run away from the traffic (highly humorous).
Calitzdorp, we were happy to learn, is famed for its Port wine. The climate there is supposedly similar to Portugal (hot days, cold nights), which allows them to grow some of Portuguese cultivars. We tried as many as we could ;-), and we would recommend a visit to this area as they have both red and white wines as well as port, the people are friendly, the tastings are free, and all of the wines/ports are affordable. Buy yourselves a couple of nice ports to enjoy sometime in the next 20-years to remind you of your trip to South Africa…. how can you go wrong? It was here that had our first official tasting of Pinotage. This is a truly South African vintage – Pinot Noir and Hermitage plants were cross-bred here in the early 1900’s – and we found it to be quite enjoyable. (http://www.pinotage.co.za/) The scenery along the R62 into Cape Town was also quite enjoyable; we would really recommend taking this route either into or out of Cape Town.
Cape Town
We finally arrived in the much-hyped Cape Town at the end of a beautiful day, with just enough time to scoot up to the top of Signal Hill to watch the sunset over the ocean. It’s a good thing we did, as we had dreary winter weather for the next couple of days.
We still tried to make the most of our time there, with a trip down to the Cape of Good Hope Nature Reserve to check out this pretty impressive peninsula. There are multiple capes here - Ben is posing in front of Cape Point (if you look closely you can see we're about the same distance away from each of our homes in the U.S. and Oz- crazy, eh?), the Cape of Good Hope has the rainbow over it, and there are other, unpictured capes. We didn't see much in the way of wildlife (they were probably smart enough to stay out of the rain), but we did come across one little fellow crossing the road, as well as some bird life camped out on the dunes.
Since we didn't get our wildlife fix for the day from the nature reserve, we headed up the coast a bit to Boulders Beach, home to one of the breeding colonies of the African Penguin (or Jackass penguin, called this because of the donkey-like braying sound they make). We were amazed at how many of these guys you could see just by strolling along the boardwalk through the bushes near the beach. They happily made their nests right next to the walkway! We didn't pay the entrance money to go into the beach proper (yes, we're cheap), but we did snap some shots of the beach from the boardwalk - it's easy to see where it got its name from!
Our only other major activity in Cape Town was a trip out to Robben Island. This island has played many roles: once a leper colony, then a military installment, and finally the prison that held Nelson Mandela for 27 years. It was a very informative and enlightening tour (sorry, no pictures). We didn't climb Table Mountain (a sacrilege, we know) due to the weather. However, on the day we left, we had beautiful skies again.... oh well.
Wine Country (Stellenbosch and Franschhoek)
We enjoyed the wine tasting that we did up in Calitzdorp so much that we thought we'd do it again, so we headed out to Stellenbosch, home of the oldest wine estates in the country. There are HUNDREDS of wineries in this region. Luckily, we met up with a lovely UK couple, Jason and Kate, and Kate offered to drive us wine lovers around (thank you Kate!) while we enjoyed all that the area had to offer. Along with the wine tastings (which, unlike Calitzdorp, were definitely not free) the wineries here had extensive grounds and beautiful old buildings that we were sometimes able to tour. The grapevines have taken on lovely winter shades of red and gold that glowed in the sunlight. Good weather, good company, good wine - what more could we ask for?
We managed to pull ourselves away from the wineries for one day of scenic driving and a bit of hiking, so we headed to Franschhoek (literally "French bend"), another wine town near Stellenbosch. We hiked the Mont Rochelle nature conservacy in the Franschhoek pass for some beautiful sunset views. Here we encountered many flowers, including the impressive protea flowers, and a interesting little bird with a very long tail (if you look closely, you can see it's about 3 times the length of its body!)
The Great Karoo
After bidding farewell and good luck to Kate and Jason (who are leaving on a 9-month Land Rover self-drive trip of Africa... go team!), we headed inland to Nieu Bethesda, a small town in the Karoo (which is a mountainous desert region of South Africa). This cute town is home to the Owl House (http://www.owlhouse.co.za/), the former home of Helen Martins, a woman un-trained in art who decided to enhance her world and express herself through concrete sculpture and crushed glass. While there, we enjoyed some lovely local goat cheeses and beer under the watchful eye of this bearded elder.
Also in the Karoo, we visited the Camdeboo National Park, which has excellent views over Graaff-Reinet (the nearest big town to Nieu Bethesda) and the Valley of Desolation. They also have a bit of a wildlife viewing area where we saw lots of grazers: blesbuck (red with white faces), kudu (massive spiraling horns), springbok (Southern Africa's only gazelle - tan and white with black "tear" streaks), eland (Africa's largest antelope, tan with shortish horns), gemsbok (long straight horns and super black and white faces), and wildebeest. We spotted a couple of secretary birds, which look like grey chickens when they're resting on the ground, but when upright show off their full meter-tall majesty (the theory is that they're named for the resemblence between their feather crest and quill pens that olden-day secretaries tucked behind their ear. They will happily kill and eat snakes) . We saw a few other birds, as well as some wildebeest. One of the cutest animals we saw was the rock dassie (or rock hyrax) peeking out from some boulders on the side of the road (if you look closely, you can see two). The females act as sentries looking out for prey such as eagles, which attack out of the sun. Because of this, the dassies have evolved a membrane in their eyes that allows them to look directly into the sun!
Hogsback
Nestled in the Amatola Mountains, this tiny village has much to offer. First, there are the stunning views out over the valley of the three hogs (flat-topped mountains from right to left, Hog 1, Hog 2, and Hog 3). Then there's the chance to see some Samango monkeys (rare, as they are confined to some few evergreen forests). We managed to see quite a few, but man, are they hard to photograph! If you are a waterfall enthusiast, this is the place for you. There are many hikes throughout the region that take in the multitude of waterfalls that populate the forest. And if that wasn't enough, there's some amazing bird life here with Cape Parrots (only 350 left in the world and no photographs for us), Knysa lorries (again no photos), and this cute little guy - all in the garden of our backpackers (we stayed at Away with the Fairies, which was fantastic as we had a two-bedroom cottage to ourselves with a fireplace and free wood!).
Some sights of South Africa
In this blog (and the one before), we've shown you the landscapes, plants, and animals of the places we've visited here in South Africa. However, we've never really shown you what we see on the way to and from these tourist destinations. We've spent a lot of time on the road here in South Africa, and we want to share with you some of the day-to-day things that we experience while driving here (but we'll spare you horror stories about the locals' lack of respect for driving laws - no one cares.... including the police, it would seem).
1) Settlements/Townships - we're not really sure of the terminology, but these are the groupings of poorer housing that generally appear on the city outskirts. They can range from a jumbled mishmash of corrugated steel walls and roofs sliding down the side of a hill to the more uniform goverment (we think) housing. Not all life outside of the cities is like this, there are farms and local villages. In KwaZulu-Natal province (where Durban is), there are many rondavels - round huts with thatched roofs - which we think are Zulu (we were told that the Zulu's believe devil(s) hide in corners.... hence the round construction).
2) Local Transport - this mainly consists of walking. There is not any road - from freeway to local gravel road - nor any time of the day that is free from pedestrian traffic. As a driver, you constantly have to be aware of people or groups of people on the shoulders or spilling out onto the road, as well as feel guilty for not picking up the hundreds of hitchikers you pass every day. If the locals aren't walking, they take the minibus taxis which cram more people into them than we ever thought possible. If we haven't said it enough, we are SO grateful to Duncan and Cecile for loaning us a car!!
Tomorrow we head off on a 22-day overland tour into Namibia (maybe we’ll see Brangelina), Botswana, and Zimbabwe - our last hurrah as we fly to Australia after this trip. That being said, we won't be posting any blogs for at least a month, but we'll surely have plenty of photos and stories ready to go then! Catch you later!
