Out of Africa 2 Cape Town & Western Cape

Our last blog ended with us descending Table Mountain and ending up with very sore legs that persisted for a few days.    Before we left Cape Town we also visited the Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens,  an awesome spread of beautiful  plantings on the lower slopes of Table Mountain,  with the mountain itself as a backdrop.  The spring flowers were beautiful,  especially the hedges of Bird of Paradise in orange and yellow. We also visited the V and A Waterfront, an upmarket shopping mall on part of the old harbour. We thought about going to Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned,   but the grey, stormy weather and rough seas put paid to that idea.

We also visited Green Market Square, an area that used to be a handmade craft market,  but is now just immigrant Nigerian and Somali traders selling the ususal tourist junk.

Leaving Cape Town the next day we drove along the coast via the stunning  Chapman's Peak Drive that clings to the ciffs as it winds its way along the coast to Cape of Good Hope and the Cape Point Lighthouse. We took the funicular railway most of the way up to the lighthouse. The wind was very cold and blowing a gale,  interspersed with showers of horizontal rain. The area is wildly beautiful with heathlands,  craggy rocks and peaks,  and pounding surf on the shore. 

Cape of Good Hope

We also stopped at The  Boulders, an African Penguin Sanctuary where we watched the release of some rehabilitated penguins back into the wild.

We spent the next few days making our way north up the spectacular west coast of South Africa.  It is an area of numerous mountain ranges, often marching right to the shore in steep cliffs and crevasses, interspersed with white sand beaches. We stayed with lovely people we contacted through airbnb.   After many stops at beautiful places on the coast including Hermanus, Mossel Bay and the very unaptly named suburb of Wilderness, we ended up in Knysna (pronounced Nys nah). This is a beautiful tranquil bay with magnificent rock cliffs forming the heads either side of a narrow channel to the ocean. We stayed here three days and visited the awesome Storms River Mouth to the north where we hiked to the river mouth and up a very steep climb to a lookout.

Knysna

Storms Bay

We also took a cruise to Knysna Heads and hiked down through the Featherbed Reserve to a tasty lunch at a Featherbed Restaurant looking out at the lagoons and the heads.

We drove back to Cape Town via the inland route to Outdshoorn.  We did the tourist thing and visited the Cango Caves and an Ostrich farm.  Bill took a ride on an Ostrich, but it was so quick, there is no photographic evidence. Did you know that Ostrich is the second toughest leather in the world (after Kangaroo)? We crossed many mountain ranges interspersed with fertile valleys and endless green and well managed farms.  We became connoisseurs of mountain passes  and river valleys through the ranges.   The highway engineering here is truly amazing with excellent quality roads twisting and climbing through rocky gorges and divides.  The roads of all types from expressways to gravel are of excellent quality and all in good repair.

We made our way back to Cape Town through the wine regions and pretty towns of Franschhoek and Stellenbosch.   We sampled some wine in the Robertson area, had an excellent lunch in Franschhoek, and did a walking tour of the museums and heritage Cape Architecture in Stellenbosch.

Stellenbosch

Afrikaans is spoken  widely here,  although most people speak excellent English as well. We were occasionally flummoxed by town street signs with English on one side and a different Afrikaans name on the other.  And a grocery store aisle with signs for versnaperings,  grondboontijes,  verromers,  skyties,  sjampanje,  langlewe sap,  stroopdrank and doos wyn had me worried about what we were going to eat.    But food is very  cheap here in restaurants and supermarkets,  and there are lots of ready to eat meals in the supermarkets so we have eaten well.

Most of all,  the South Africans we met have been wonderful.  We can't fault their kindness,  generosity and helpfulness. They are true tourist ambassadors for their country and have willingly offered food and drink,  rides,  use of a car,  help with washing our (very dirty) rental car--we can't resist a gravel road:  nothing was too hard.   Their only failing is they can't help showing their disappointment that you didn't spend your entire South African vacation in their part of the country that is obviously the best possible place to be.

We have returned our little rental VW Polo to Cape Town and embarked on the Shosholoza Meyl train from Cape Town to Johannesburg.  Our cramped sleeper cabin with purple leatherette upholstry looks like something out of the 1950's but it is running to time so far. Look out for our next installment.

Train travel is tiring

Hello blog followers. Some of you may know that we are on trip through Africa.   We haven't published for the first two weeks as many of the places we were staying had marginal and/or very expensive  internet.  But now we are in Cape Town SA and back in the electronic world.

We flew out of Brisbane on 29 August.   Our trip did not get off to a flying start as Virgin cancelled our flight to Perth,  apparently due to a shortage of cabin crew!! Not very impressive.  The later flight that they put us on missed our  connection to Johannesburg, so we spent an unscheduled night in Perth. We arrived at our eventual destination,  Nairobi Kenya,  a day late.  Luckily, we had planned to be in Nairobi a day before our Safari started,  so we did not miss that  but we did miss out on looking around Nairobi.

Our Kenya Safari started by driving out of Nairobi,  across the Great Rift Valley,  and into the Masai Mara. Mara Simba Lodge greeted us with elephants at the front gate,  and crocodile and hippos in the river behind the lodge.   On our first evening game drive we were overwhelmed by the numbers and variety of game that we saw,  including lions, wildebeest, gazelles, warthogs,  zebra, cape buffalo, giraffe, and a rare black rhino.  And all in just two hours!!

Our time in Kenya  continued in this vein in all of of the parks that we visited.   In Lake Nakuru NP we saw wonderful bird life including large groups of flamingos and beautiful crested  cranes. In Lake Naivasha NP we took a boat cruise and got up close to a mother and  baby hippo,  as well as seeing fish eagles.   Both of these lakes are in a string of water  bodies that run down the Great Rift Valley.

Our last National Park in Kenya was Amboseli, located at the base of Mount Kilimanjaro.   Unfortunately,  during our whole stay there the mountain was shrouded  in clouds and we never got to see it. We did see more interesting birds including Ostrich,  Kori Bustards and Secretary Birds.   Our main interest this trip was wildlife and Kenya was awesome.

The second week of our Safari took us into Tanzania,  and out to the Serengeti Desert. The sky in the Serengeti never ends.  The vistas are vast and empty.   Animals were not as concentrated as in the Masai Mara,  but we did see vast herds of wildebeest and zebra stretching to the horizon on their annual migration.  We also saw our first leopards, a mother cheetah and cub, and prides of lions. At one point a grumpy elephant charged us,  but luckily he was  not as fast as a Land Cruiser.

We also visted Ngorongoro  Crater,  an incredible circular plain surrounded mountain ranges.   Our hotel was high on the crater edge and we  could gaze down into it from our rooms. We spent a beautiful day down in the crater,  where we had breakfast beside a pool full of hippos.   We later watched anothef huge group of hippos take mud baths and roll over to coat themselves with mud.   An upside down hippo,  kicking his feet in the air, is a never to be forgotten sight.

In between game drives,  we managed a few other activities,  including an early morning  ballon flight and visit to a Masai village in Kenya,  and guided nature walks and Swahili  lessons in Tanzania. (The most useful words of Swahili we learned were "hakuna metata"--"no problem")

We have left Safari life behind for the immediate future,  and are now in Cape Town SA.  We are staying at a beautiful bed and breakfast house in Geen Point,  on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and the stadium built for the 2010 world cup.   Today we took the cable car up through the  clouds to Table Mountain,  then walked to the highest point at Maclear's Beacon.   We later walked down the mountain via Platteklip Gorge,  a spectacular 2 hour walk that left us with jelly legs and and aching knees. A local member of one of the mountaineering clubs took pity on us and offered us a ride back to our accommodation.   We gratefully accepted,  and shared a beer with him at a pub on the way home.

We are staying in Cape Town for 2 more days,  then picking up a rental car and heading up the east  coast.   Stay tuned for more adventures.