Anna's Farm Swellendam

... The waiter says six whales were there this morning, but we are there two hours and don't see any.Marianne has the bouillabaisse, which looks pretty scary to me. I have calamari and Eden has scampi, which is different from how it is at home because the tails are still attached to hold them while you dip them in sauce.<br><br>After lunch we climb the rocks and then we get coffee at a different place.We walk back to the car and decide to take one last look at the bay to see if we can ...

... road through and this ' hole in the wall' is still the only way into the town from the west. During the Boer War the British built a small fort on the rock above the hole presumably to control the comings and goings of the inhabitants of the town, it is still there but is less than impressive. The afternoon of our arrival we went to the museum which was not very interesting and probably not worth the entrance fee but followed that with a visit to the ...

We set off for Montagu and Route 62, calling in at the Olympia Cafe in Kalks Bay for a take-out coffee and a quick look at the harbour and the local fish. Then we hit roadworks for 30km.... Finally arrived in Montagu late afternoon, which is a beautiful little village set in a gorge. We found a very nice place to stay, wandered around a bit and then found a very nice place to eat dinner, in the courtyard of a Cape Dutch mansion under a 100-year-old pear tree.

... the Reserve, following the directions of the person who owned our guest house, since there were no signs to direct you otherwise. But after a while on a road clearly meant for 4X4s and not our little sedan, we made it to the Reserve (we learned from someone we met later that we were very lucky to not have gotten a flat tire). We were immediately stunned by how peaceful (yes, the guide books are right) and incredibly stunning the ...

... out an astonishing # of miles of caves. The first portion - accessible to visitors who pay for the 'standard' tour - is impressive enough - though compared to the caves we visited in Northern Thailand, they are presented in a much more commercial way, understandably given the # of visitors. There is another tour though - the 'Adventure' tour for the more intrepid. NOT ME, said I, right from the start. Given my propensity to claustrophobia, this was not an experience I had on my ...

... zebra and Steve came across the smallest frogs in the world. We thought they were insects but proved not to be and they were all over the grass. When the temperature dropped we headed over to the jacuzzi and opened a bottle of bubbly from the mini bar and had that whilst enjoying the other bubbles! The hotel recommended a few restaurants and we opted for the closest one which was conveniently across the road! It was like ...

After Outdshoorn, we were on out way to the Stellenbosch wine country. We heard about a charming little city on the drive down to Stellenbosch called Swellendam where they had an increasingly popular boutique winery producing exclusively natural fruit liqueurs. The area surrounding the winery was so picturesque with a huge mountain that looked like Yosemite's Half Dome in the background and lush landscaping and colorful flowers and other ...

We went to Bontebok national park and saw Bontebok (funnily enough) and Cape mountain Zebra. I loved it!! The next day we went to De Hoop nature reserve and sat on the 90m high white sand dunes and watched dozens of whales breaching and swimming about in the ocean while we ate lunch and drank wine. Soooooo amazing I can't even describe it!! Probably one of my most favorite memories. It was a lovely wee town too - right in the middle of the mountains.

... could describe moments. It was more of me pulling over every couple of minutes and basking. You guys know a perfect moment? When for just a little while everything is excellent and just as it should be and you wouldn't change a thing, and the whole world is grinning back at you and God is giving you the thumbs up? Yeah, well I've been doing the homeboy handshake with god for the last couple of weeks. Oh and then you know those moments when you come home from work and you drop ...

... the two rooms were not what we had hoped: one was essentially a walk-in closet with twin beds, the other a luxury suite with a hot tub and sauna (for about 500 Rands a night). Neither was what we were looking for. The woman at the house said her friend (sitting at the kitchen table) also had rooms in Sedgefield ('just down the road') and if we followed them we could take a look. Well, 20-30 kilometers later we got to their house. The room was ...