Location: Noordhoek, Cape Town, South Africa
This update covers The Karoo, our brief journey on the Garden Route, cage diving with great white sharks near Hermanus, a few wonderful days gorging ourselves on good food and wine in the winelands and a couple of places north of Cape Town that have yet to be discovered by the masses.
After Lesotho and the Drakensberg we went south west towards the Karoo, the name of a massive region that covers almost a third of the country. We stayed in a small old style Dutch town of Graaff-Reinet, very picturesque in the centre but, as with many towns, it had an a large township on the outskirts, to provide all the necessary cheap labour for all those people for whom cleaning and ironing is an appalling thought. The surrounding area is a massive expanse of very little. Very few settlements, very little vegetation, almost no water. A harsh and inhospitable place, but somewhere where you really can get away from everything. It is also baking hot, so the walking we did really was more walking rather than hiking, a little half-hearted. Though you only need to go a short distance from the town to be far removed from anyone else, so we didn't miss anything by not struggling on in the heat of the day.
Tsitsikamma National Park
On the south coast, to the eastern end of the Garden Route is a very dramatic stretch of coastline that reminded me a bit of parts of the Californian coast south of San Francisco: rugged and rocky, with white-tipped waves crashing all around. There is a 5-day trek that can be done, but the first couple of hours is accessible for day-trippers, so we were able to see a bit of the coastal path. Not far from here is the world's highest bungy jump (about 210m), but we both gave it a miss.
The Overberg
We passed along the Garden Route fairly quickly, partly because it was Easter and it was proving difficult to find somewhere to stay, and because the other place we had wanted to go to, Oudtshoorn, was booked out for a festival of Afrikaaner culture (whatever that may involve, over and above some hard core bible worship, reaffirmation of a belief of their chosen status in God's eyes (sounds familiar??) and perhaps some plaintive cries of how much better things were when they ruled SA).
The mountains a little north of the south coast are the Overberg, and we were able to have a couple of good days walking, nothing too strenuous, but the views from the higher parts are great. Swellendam was a lovely, quiet town, and we had a little cottage to ourselves, with fine views over the hills opposite.
More vineyards
Having been to vineyards in many of the countries we have been to so far we were not going to miss the opportunity to go in South Africa. Many people know of Stellenbosch and Paarl but Robertson is another large wine producing region and we spent a day taking in a few estates and sampling a few bottles. MacGregor is one of the best preserved 19th century towns and has a sleepy feel, as it time has just passed it by completely.
We did also go back to Franschhoek, where we had a wonderful couple of days in 2000 and, again, had a great time on this visit. The town promotes itself as SA’s food capital and there are a number of fantastic restaurants here. So it was a couple of days of eating extremely well and taking 3 hours over lunch. Sadly the town seems to have been a little more discovered (by Brits in particular) during the last 5 years and it had grown a lot, losing some of its charm.
Great White Sharks!
There are only a few places in the world where you can get close to one of earth's most well adaptedly predators, great white sharks. Having suffered a bad press ever since Jaws! there are not quite under threat, but numbers have declined massively over the last 30 years. This is certainly something that many people would be reluctant to do, especially the day after a British surfer got part of his leg nibbled by a 4m great white in Noordhoek (where we are staying now). But we were not to be deterred, (although the prospect of another bout of heavy sea-sickness did make Phillippa a little wary).
Apparently there has been some press in the UK lately about a number of attacks (we did see the Yorkshire bloke who was nipped on the foot on the TV news here). But we were not to be deterred, after all they give you a cage! A little south of Hermanus, near to the southern most point of Africa, there are a couple of small islands where there are large seal colonies, a shark larder if you like. So this is one of the best places to see great whites in the world.
After waiting around for a while the first shark appeared and Phillippa and I were straight into the cage first. The water is cold, about 16C, and even with a wetsuit the chill does eventually start to get into your core. But after about 15 minutes the first shark appeared whilst we were in the cage and could watch it under the water. I nearly missed it, and with visibility of about 5-6m it was not much more than a shadow as it disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. A little later a second one emerged from the gloom behind us but that too was a fleeting glimpse. Whilst we were out of the water there were a number of other occasions when a shark approached the boat. It is actually better to see them from above the surface, especially when the water is so murky.
It was a good afternoon out, but somehow was not quite as exciting as I had hoped it would be, but that is the way it often is when dealing with such unpredictable wildlife.
Paternoster
There is a small, quiet, unspoilt fishing town north from Cape Town that has, as yet, not been inundated with hoards of tourists, and we had a great few days here, doing very little. We got hold of some very cheap crayfish straight from the local fleet that had just come back in, and the bloke whose holiday flat we rented cooked them for us. The beach was deserted, even at the weekend, it was such a massive expanse of wide golden sand. The sunsets here were possibly better than anywhere else we have been, and that is something. So, of course, that led to a whole load more sunset photos. The benefits of digital can sometimes become a curse too!
The Cederberg Mountains
A little inland from Paternoster is another range of mountains that are ideal for walking, so that is what we did. Some of the scenery is similar to the Drakensberg, though less grand. There are many sites that have cave painting here and we saw quite a few on one walk in particular.
Then back to Cape Town, where the severe drought has been broken by a huge thunderstorm on the one day when we wanted to get all our stuff washed and dried before going to Namibia. Still, we managed to dry it all out in the oevn, os no problem in the end!
Not long left now…
We will be back in the UK early on Sat 7 May and hopefully will be landing to a country that has a new Prime Minister. And, no, I don’t mean Gordon Brown.