Like all good things in life, safaris must come to an end. After an extremely long day of travel that involved 17+ hours, 2 countries, 3 flights (stopover #2 of 10 in the JoBurg airport), 1 car rental and a 1 hour drive – in the pouring rain, at night, on the other side of the road – we made it to our hostel on South Africa’s coast in Durban. It was New Year’s Eve and Ted and I were pumped to go out and party! Yeah? No. We were asleep by 11:15pm. In our defense, the hostel bar closed at 10:45, and the nearest bar was miles away – too far to wander in the un-walkable night streets of South Africa, and too much of a pain to wait for a cab. We woke up at midnight to the sound of fireworks and dogs barking and wished each other a happy 2011!
The next day we hit the road driving west to check out the famous Garden Route with the goal of being in Cape Town on January 5th to meet up with the Graces. The Garden Route is a scenic coastal drive that has been compared to California’s Highway 1 – lots of lookouts, beautiful beaches, coastal National Parks, cute vacation towns and plenty of tourist attractions ranging from snake museums to butterfly gardens to bungee jumps.
Jeffrey's Bay, Garden Route
Tsitsikama National Park
Tsitsikama National Park
We had quite a lot of ground to cover so most of our sight-seeing was from the car. However, we were able to stay 2 nights in the cute, little town of Knysna and overlap with Dave and Jesse, the American couple we met in South America (who are also doing an around the world trip). They happened to be in South Africa coming from Cape Town and we were headed to Cape Town so we decided to meet up in the middle. We had a blast eating seafood, exploring ocean-front cliffs, sitting on the beach, and hearing what they’d been up to since we’d last seen them. We even brazed the freezing cold Atlantic Ocean one day just so that we could say we swam in it. We’re hoping to pull off another meet-up in Asia – we’ll see if we can make that work.
Knysna Heads
Beach day, cold water, cold beer
Knysna
Mmmmm...Oysters!