The Alternative Beach House

Trip Start Oct 16, 2007
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Trip End May 09, 2008


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Where I stayed
Buffels Bay
(Cape Town hotels)

Flag of South Africa  ,
Sunday, November 11, 2007

Buffalo Bay (or Buffels Bay) was our next hostel.  It was an alternative beach house, a little worn down but had some character.  Check out the pic for our room, a little shack on the beach.  The kitchen was a little nasty to cook in, but there were some interesting people here traveling through.  They also light a bonfire in the middle of the living room every night, which was nice as you could see the beach from the living room.  The staff was really nice and tried to help us secure lodgings in Cape Town, as we heard from people along the way that places were pretty booked. They called 4 or 5 places for us and they were all booked!   We finally booked a place in the Woodstock neighborhood, an "OK" neighborhood from a safety standpoint from what couple people told us, but it is "undergoing some changes".   We'll see what happens when we get to Cape Town what it's really like.
 
The next day we drove to Wilderness, a small, quaint town good for hiking and taking canoe trips, or just hanging out.  We didn't have much time here as we had a lot of driving to do to get to our next hostel in Montagu, an estimated 6 or so hours of driving Welcome to our beach shack at Buffel's Bay
Welcome to our beach shack at Buffel's Bay
 .  We just stopped for some pancakes and headed on. 
 
After a quick grocery and petrol stop in George, we left the Garden Route and headed up Route 62 for some different scenery.  The scenery was quite different - very mountainous.  Frank says the mountains here reminded him of the Alps back in Europe.  Our first stop on the R62 was a town called Oudtshoorn, the "ostrich capital" of the world.  Most people come here as a base camp to check out the Cango Caves, but since we had a way to go to get to Montagu, we just stopped for lunch and had ourselves an ostrich bobotie.  Bobotie is a traditional S.A. meal, slightly sweetened curried ground meat.  Next time we'll get ostrich kebabs or steak, as we couldn't tell the difference between the ground ostrich and ground beef!
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