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One more dirt road across a mountain pass…
…dodging falling bits of scrap metal…
…brought us to Plettenberg Bay, where we stayed in a holiday flat with an okay view:
Plett also has stuff that has been washed away by floods. Except this time it’s a restaurant car park and the restaurant will likely be next. But not before we got a chance to have breakfast – ON THE EDGE.
Oudtshoorn was the first bigger town we came across. We visited the Cango Caves, where I sensibly (and chicken-ly) did the Standard Tour, while Helgart and Siobhan did the Adventure Tour, which I knew was a bad idea when I saw that the narrowest point is THIS narrow:
Thanks, I’ll pass and just look at the pretty stalactites and -mites without putting my claustrophobia to the test. (PS: tourists are weird)
Then we went to an ostrich farm, which is as cool as it sounds. The ostriches have a pretty one-track mind, so you can get them to do anything for food.
You could have a LOLspeak field day captioning the facial expressions these crazy birds make, if you were so inclined.
The B+B we stayed in was lovely and friendly above and beyond the call of duty. And it came with its own flood catastrophe-prone river, a Golden Gate style bridge and cutesie garden.
As others have observed before me, Cape Town and surrounds isn’t Africa as we like to imagine it. These road trip pictures are more Route 66 than most would expect, right? Much as I complained about the rain and clouds, they made for some spectacular pictures.
And just just when we were really feeling the wholesome ruggedness of life on the open road, there’s this:
To be fair, I think the „Sex“ was added by a prankster, but when a „pump station“ named „Ronnie’s Sex Shop“ pops up in the middle of nowhere, it’s still pretty funny.
The scenic Cape Route involves driving along windy mountain roads. Shockingly, the South African approach to road maintenance is somewhat more slack than what we are accustomed to in Germany or, well, pretty much any other place I have ever been to. Every now and again, a road is closed for unspecified reasons, the signs are widely ignored, the closed roads are well frequented and, as we found out, some of them have been closed for over a year. No one seems to be too bothered about actually repairing them, because if it ain’t so broke you can’t drive on it any more, why fix it?
For your troubles, you get views like this…
…and fun obstacle courses like this
This happened more than once
Cape Town welcomed me with open skies and truly godawful weather. As I set off on a road trip along Cape Route 62 and the Garden Route with my aunt and cousin, it rained for 3 days straight. So we enjoyed this lovely view of the wineries:
Did I mention it was winter in Africa. Note the snow atop the mountains and the flooded river which almost prevented us from returning to our B+B after dinner. Fun!
Nevertheless, the first night in McGregor set the tone for a week of beautiful scenery, great food, amazing hospitality and… snuggling up to heaters with a cup of cocoa.
Windhoek to Capetown. Spot the difference. Hint: a change in weather.
The lovely Wild Dogs (and bitches)
…and the one who isn’t in the picture
…one of our highly competent guides. He’s a cool dude…
or a Kudu, depending on who you ask
I did a bit of work, thanks to great WiFi-coverage (no, seriously)
Themed prayer days at this church – come ask God for Financial Growth on Monday, for Marriage+Family on Thursday and for „Impossible Things“ on Saturday. Intriguing!
Beautiful desert plants. Nothing funny about that.
Charmingly stating the obvious
Airport signs leave no question unanswered
Instant beer powder. I have no idea how that’s supposed to work, but this lady in the queue in front of me was buying a LOT of it
German bakery…
…and German tourists
Get your hair did
No elephants no pay!
Toilet breaks on this trip were few and far between, and largely came unannounced (information was available on a need-to-know basis and apparently we largely didn’t need to know where we were going, what we were doing and when or where we would be stopping). Between that and a bus full of girls drinking large amounts of water due to the heat, toilets became objects of great fascination. Especially when they looked like these fine specimens:
bonus feature: outdoor shower!
On the last day of the safari, we went sandboarding – IN THE 90s! Please enjoy the delightful cheesiness oozing from this video. I have a version of it filmed on the day we were boarding the dunes, but I couldn’t be bothered uploading it, so observe other people eat sand:
Awesome Van Halen/Techno soundtrack aside, it was huge fun, hugely exhausting and resulted in huge amounts of sand everywhere. Which was grrreat for the 4-hour bus trip home.
Swakopmund is where Windhoekers summer. It’s very German.
We had Kaffee and Kuchen, a lovely African Mama served us Käsesahnetorte in perfect German and we generally enjoyed the bizarre Afro-Germanness of the place.
Then we rounded things off with a lovely meal and some pole dancing on the last night of the safari.
