Well me and Sarah have gone on holiday again! I say this like our last South African Holiday wasn't over 18 months ago...
This time we've gone to Wild Spirit backpackers in Natures Valley, only just down the road from where we went last time. It is beautifully serene and laid back with seemingly nothing around for miles. We aim to go on lots of walks as well as maybe a kayak and Sarah wants to go on a horse ride...last time I was on a horse I was about 8/9 on the Scilly Isles and the horse was called Nettle. I didn't like nettles.
ANYWAY! We had the usual hectic travel here, both complaining that neither of us could drive. We had to get an 8 hour bus at 6.30am from Cape Town which all went smoothly. We knew what our stop in Plettenberg Bay looked like after spending 4 hours waiting there last trip! But I'd never been to Wild Spirit before and Sarah's only ever driven there with other people, so once in Plett, we hadn't a clue. We wandered into Plett to get a mini-bus taxi, an idea the nervous control freak inside me wasn't particularly happy with but hey, as it turned out all the taxi's we needed had stopped running what with it being a Saturday. So we ended up getting a private taxi into the middle of nowhere then the backpackers shuttle the last leg. I've reminded myself how much I'm NOT a fan of travelling, but now we're here, everything is lovely and calm and peaceful...plus there's a Kudu potjie dinner followed by a drum circle round the fire so I'm happy now!
Also, one of the resident cats seems to be living in our dorm and we have bats in the walls!
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| The drive to the backpackers! |
Sunday 24/8/2014
It's our first full day here and it's been fantastically chill. I had a massive headache last night so I went to bed a lot earlier than everyone else-around 10.30pm, but I still got to have some of that awesome potjie and take part in the drum circle.
Today we went on a fairly relaxed walk into the pine forest in search of Sun Rock. We didn't find it, but the walk was really nice and I got a wonderful vegetable pasty from the local farm shop.
In the evening, Sarah and I did some crafting with the craft man. Sarah made a really cool dream catcher complete with beads and feathers. I got to make a ring! It looks like looping 8s-actually I'll post a picture, easier to show than describe.
And supper was roast beef with potato wedges, home-made hummus, cous cous and salad, mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm!
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| At the farm shop. The problem with being on a 2 person holiday is that all the pictures are selfies of both of us, or just one of us on our own. |
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| The gorge we walked round on our search for Sun Rock |
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| The locals |
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| The ring I made! |
Today we went on a MASSIVE hike. It wasn't actually that big, only 4-5 hours but it felt epic! We had to do it backwards to avoid the tide, which we thought was fine until we got to the very end, but I'll get to that.
We were dropped off in Tsitsikamma National Park to go and wander down a narrow path surrounded by high walls of fynbos and carpenter beetles buzzing overhead. All was fine and great, it was very hot but the fynbos was so high, the path was in shade. The path changed pretty quickly into forest and the route got quite steep and rocky. Shoes we'd taken off at the beginning had to be put back on. Once we'd found the right path (after only 1 or 2 wrong turns) and made it out of the relatively dark forest, it felt like we'd been birthed out onto a beach. All of a sudden the forest ended and we were wandering, squint-eyed, on the incredibly bright, hot sand under the sun.
After a beautifully endless walk down almost the entire length of the beach, sans shoes, which was completely empty save the sea snails, we had a quick jaunt up the R102 (a fairly main road) next to a lagoon before we popped our shoes back on and plunged back into the bowels of the forest. This time we were following a dry river bed almost all the way until we couldn't and had to clamber up an almost vertical bank.
From there things seemed to go from great to ghastly, all of a sudden it felt like we were climbing the hard slopes of Table Mountain. It was a string of endless steps some of which were as high as my knees. We'd get to a bit that was slightly more level, and every time our hopes would rise in the thought the damn steps had ended until we rounded the next bend only to see them continue. Yoh, it was exhausting!
Once we finally got to the top, it was a pretty straightforward trip back to the road. From there we were told it would be fantastically easy to hitch back to the backpackers but after being rejected by 5 cars, we called Wild Spirit and got them to fetch us.
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| Fynbos path |
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| Blissfully unaware of the horrors to come! |
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| A birds eye view of the beach we walked along. |
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| More selfies, from cliff tops! |
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| Another HUGE local. |
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| The beautiful lagoon...also where we went kayaking. |
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| "Quick, take a picture, this isn't so hard!" |
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| The view from the top of 'mount pain' |
Today was the day for the kayak. We got a shuttle down to the lagoon and pulled out 2 of the backpackers canoes. We happily paddled as far inland as we could, with the wind and tide behind us. When we got to a road bridge supported on a bank of rocks blocking our way, Sarah hopped out of her canoe to see if there was water on the other side. I decided this was an ideal time to see whether it was feasible to paddle with 2 canoes tied together. It is! I cheerfully floated away from the bank with Sarah's canoe, leaving her stranded with her oar. I thought it was hysterical...Sarah, not so much! Other than that it was a fairly uneventful trip, we saw lots of birds and even 2 bush bok who stayed round of about 5 minutes!
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