 |
| The Garden Route |
| This VW kombi van sums up a lot about the garden route. It has a very "Australian" feeling - surf, sand, sea, barbeques, beers, and babes. I saw this van again in Cape Town many weeks later, supporting the feeling that whoever you meet once you will probably meet again. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| The first post office in Southern Africa was established at Mossel Bay in the year 1500 when Portugese sailor Pedro de Ataide left an important letter inside a shoe and placed it under this milkwood tree. The practice caught on and was used by sailors travelling east to pass messages to those going west (and vise versa). Now there is a large shoe-shaped mailbox under the tree. |
| View of the beach at Mossel Bay outside our B&B |
| Our "room" in the Santos Express was really just a semi-converted railway compartment. |
| On the way to Mossel Bay we stopped at a service station where I found this ostrich in transit. |
| At Mossel Bay we stayed at the Santos Express B&B which is an old railway train sitting by the beach. |
| We went by taxi to the city of George and from there to Knysna on board the famous Outeniqua Choo Tjoe steam train. |
| The train leaves George and soon after emerges upon the coast near the town of "Wilderness". |
| The Wilderness coastline has some gorgeous scenery and is a popular holiday spot. |
| Black township just outside of George. |
| A relaxing evening sunset by the pool at Highfields Backpackers |
| Hilltop views of Plettenberg Bay |
| Something I will always remember about the Garden Route are the many flocks of birds swirling around in the sky in formation. They are dark on top and white on the bottom, so as they turn and their wings catch the sunlight they seem to illuminate with a metalic sparkle. |
| Plettenberg Bay is a very popular tourist destination along the Garden Route, with huge stretches of beautiful beaches and a much more relaxed feeling than George or Knysna. |
| One of my favourite activities at Plettenberg Bay was walking around the peninsula at the Robberg Nature Reserve, which is seen here in the distance. |
| A sandy spit joins the peninsula with a formation called simply "The Island". It was here that I stripped off my clothes and fell into the sea at the end of the long hot trek. |
| In Plettenberg Bay I stayed at Albergo Backpackers, which is a fantastic place run by a fun and helpful Dutch couple. They seem to have thought of just about everything a backpacker could want. |
| Many beautiful views of rugged coastline and deep tourquoise sea along the walk. You can complete the circuit in 2 hours, but I took 5. |
| Believe it or not, those tiny black specks are seals. There is a huge colony of them on one side of the peninsula, and they can be seen from the top of a very high cliff. I thought it was a kelpbed, until I started to hear thousands of croaking sounds as I got closer. I never saw so many seals before. |
| On the "micro" scale of life forms, I saw many of these small lizards moving amoung the rocks and warming themselves in the sun. |
| These Cormorants lack the oily feathers of many seabirds which would keep them relatively dry after diving for prey. So instead they must stand with their wings open to the wind to dry off. |
| This is the African Black Oystercatcher which were on the end of the Robberg peninsula. I have seen them in other areas and they seem to exist exclusively as pairs. They made sharp chirping sounds to warn each other of danger as I was making these pictures. |
| After a long hot thirsty day of walking, the best place to be is around the "braai" (Afrikaans for "barbeque") at Albergo Backpackers. |
| The Bloukrans Bungi near Storms River is the worlds highest commercial bungi site. The bridge is 216 metres high, and the jump is about 160 metres. |
 |
| Jeffreys Bay is one of the most famous surf breaks in the world. So of course when I was there the weather was crap and the surf was totally flat. This seems to happen to me a lot, like both times I went to Bells Beach on the south coast of Australia. |
| The last place I went along this route was Port Elizabeth. It's a fairly big mostly industrial city with good beaches and surf, and a distinct attempt at creating a holiday feeling. Still I found it to be quite uncomfortable due to the black-white division, with many security gates and racial tensions which invade so much of this coast. But it was fun to watch the kite surfing. |
| In Port Elizabeth I stayed a couple nights at Kings Beach Backpackers, and although it is a cool-looking place I really didn't enjoy it much. Being a big rough-feeling city in between the white-dominated Garden Route and the mostly black "Transkei" I felt the division and distrust between black and white reached a peak here. After dark all the doors were replaced with heavy security bars and I felt totally trapped inside. I enjoyed continuing east much more to find the "real Africa" which is 99% black and I look forward to the days when South Africa can possibly acheive some sort of inter-racial harmony. |
 |
| Anyway, Kings Beach backpackers had walls covered with memories of good times, and there was a HUGE spider on the ceiling. It's appropriate that now I continue to the Transkei or as the tourist industry calls it, the "Wild Coast". |
| Another great experience I had while staying at Plettenberg Bay was to visit a place called "Monkeyland", which is a sanctuary for monkeys which have been rescued from unhealthy and unnatural environments in zoos and private homes. I have created a web page dedicated to these and other monkeys, so click here or at the bottom of this page to see it. |
 |