T' Garden Route feat. Springbok
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
71
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Cape Point / Hermanus / Mossel Bay,
South Africa
Thursday, October 19, 2006
So did thousands of other people. Table Mountain had been shut for the past few days due to the bad weather conditions. After queuing for about an hour we were at the top, via a cable car (there was no way I was doing the 3 hour hike up there, whether we had time or not), admiring a spectacular view over the city.
We lost Ruth somewhere up the top but luckily found her just as we were about to leave, when she greeted us with: "Fuck it, I'm coming with you!", much to our delight. She'd been planning to do the whole of the Garden Route with us but hadn't been able to change her flight and decided she'd come with us for the first day.
We rushed back to the hostel as we were already over an hour late to collect our rental car. I hadn't asked a great deal of questions about the car except for the price and had no idea what to expect. We were shocked when we were delivered a brand new VW Citi Chico, which soon became known as The Smurf, due to the blinding bright blue colour of it. After laughing at our car (they were all jealous), BJ, Mel, Morgs, Jules, Michelle, Dustin and Claire waved us off and we sped off towards Cape Point. We had no real idea where we were going and a lack of a decent map didn't help, but we didn't care too much, we were too busy enjoying the freedom of the smurf.
We ended up at Boulders Beach, near Simonstown, to see the African (aka Jackass) penguins. They were so cute and so amazing I didn't want to leave. Sadly the penguin appreciation didn't overwhelm the others so much as me and we were soon on our way. But not before we saw some penguin peyow peyow. If you're reading this Morgs, I took some video footage for you!
We decided to stay the night in Hermanus, and on our way Ruth was wowed by the astonishing scenery: "It's so beautiful, it's like being abroad!", at which point we reminded her that she was abroad, since her hometown is in Northern England.
We buy a feast of food at the supermarket along with lots of booze and start what will soon become a habit of having cheese and wine before dinner.
We had our own dorm room at the hostel, complete with balcony, so we enjoyed our appetisers in style. After 3 bottles of wine we were pissed before dinner, so it took us a while to prepare our feast, and I ended up burning my hand. I think we pissed the other hostel guests off as we were being quite loud while making dinner and they were trying to watch TV.
Brent and I were very tired after dinner (and the alcohol) but Ruth and Bart were hyped up and continued dancing on the matresses we'd laid on the floor and bursting into fits of laughter.
Ruth was rather hungover the following morning.
After a quick drive to the beach where we spotted about 7 whales but failed to take a decent picture of them as they were too far away, we dropped Ruth back off at the hostel and said a very sad goodbye complete with tears.
We started driving towards our next overnight stop at Mossel Bay but decided to take advantage of having a car by stopping only 10 minutes outside of Hermanus at a winery in the most stunning setting, surrounded by hills and set next to a big dam. We had an interesting talk with the manager who's originally from Zimbabwe and was kicked off the 1.1 million pound vineyard she owned there and now has nothing. The whole Zimbabwe thing is really sad, especially when you hear everyone's individual stories.
On our way along the coast we passed an empty bus. Where I'm from, they usually have signs at the front saying something like 'Not in service', but no, not here. This one said 'Engaged'. I wondered whether congratulations were in order for the bus, and who it was engaged to...?
We arrived at Mossel Bay in the afternoon. Mossel Bay was quite warm but the hostel receptionist certainly wasn't. She didn't seem to like us one bit. Well she was ok with me, just not Brent or Bart. We decided maybe she was gay.
We took Smurfy to the sea but it was too cold for any of us to put more than our little toe in the water so we continued on a scenic drive through the town. At a viewpoint we saw these weird wombat-type things called Dassies. Bart seemed to know an awful lot about them and be extremely excited to see them, more so than he was when we saw a leopard. Apparently they're the closest relative to an elephant. Hard to believe (I'm still not sure that I do) but it's meant to be something to do with their skeletal structure or genetics. I think it's crap but I can't be bothered to google it.
