Garden Route Holiday

Two weeks ago I bought a car – a brown 1992 Honda Ballade – and immediately set out on a five-day road trip. Emily A., Jen Hotsko and I hit the road towards the Garden Route, the highway that runs along the Indian Ocean from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth. We left Cape Town just after three in the afternoon, and arrived at our first stopping point, Mossel Bay, about four hours later. We spent the night in a hostel (which is known as a “backpackers” in South Africa) right on the beach that is an old sleeper train. It was our least favorite backpackers of the trip.

We left Mossel Bay the next morning in the direction of Oudtshoorn. Outdtshoorn is about an hour and a half inland (or two hours if Emily A. is driving) from the coast. It is known as the ostrich farming capitol of South Africa – maybe the world. After the drive through the mountains, we arrived in town and found ourselves an ostrich farm. We went on a tour of the farm, which included getting up nice and close to the ostriches. We could feed, sit on, and even ride the ostriches. Most of you will not be surprised to read that I did none of the above. I have a hilarious video of Emily A. riding one, though.

After our ostrich excursion we drove back downtown, where there was an Afrikaaner music and arts festival going on. The festival was enormous, and we thoroughly enjoyed walking around, shopping, and eating our sausage sandwiches made on homemade, fire-grilled bread.

From there we drove about a half an hour to the Cango Caves. The caves are absolutely enormous. The basic tour brought us into the first six chambers, the first two of which are especially impressive. The first chamber is so large that they used to hold concerts there back under the old government. Unfortunately, past tourist have broken off many of the smaller stalactites, so several of the chambers were nearly destroyed. Still, the caves were probably the highlight of the entire trip. Obviously it was difficult to capture their beauty and expansiveness on film.

That night I drove us back through the mountains and rain to the coastal town of Knysna (pronounced “Nye-zna”). On our way to our backpackers there we stumbled across a church holding mass for Holy Thursday. We decided to go in, and about halfway through the service another Rotary Scholar that we had met back during orientation in February stumbled in with his friends. Ben studies history at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, about an hour and a half outside of Port Elizabeth. He just happened to be passing through town on his vacation, too – on his way to Cape Town. What are the chances? After a delicious late dinner at an Italian restaurant on the harbor we met up with him and his friends at the only bar in town.

On Friday morning we had breakfast with Ben and a friend and then took a ferry tour of the harbor. It was a pretty lousy day – cold and misty – so I don’t think we got a full appreciation for the beauty of the landscape.

After our boat ride, Jen, Emily and I hit the road again, and ended up in Plettenburg Bay for lunch. “Plett”, as it is known, is a beautiful beachfront community. The weather was still pretty cold and foggy, though - not great for sightseeing.

Our next stop was at the Bloukrans Bridge in the Tsitsikamma forest. We pulled over to watch maniacs jump off of the world’s highest bungee jump. Needless to say, no one in my group was eager to do anything other than spectate.

From there we continued on, all the way to Port Elizabeth. PE is South Africa’s fourth largest city, after Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban. It’s a very beachy community, right on the coast. After Chinese food for dinner on the boardwalk we spent the night in a brand new backpackers – the first ones to stay in the room.

We woke up very early on Saturday morning and headed inland again towards Addo Elephant Park. Or so we thought. About a half hour down the wrong highway we discovered that we had to turn around. Still, we reached the park with just enough time to have breakfast and make the 9 o’clock safari tour. The two hour tour took us past lots of antelopes, a few zebras, several families of warthogs, some water buffalo, and finally, four elephants hiding in the bush. I decided to let Jen do most of the picture taking on her professional camera. Hopefully she will give those to me soon so that I can upload them as well.

Jen convinced us to drive out to Grahamstown for lunch, to check it out and eat at a restaurant Ben had recommended to us. The drive was quite long, but the food was of course delicious. Grahamstown is a university town about an hour and a half from Port Elizabeth, small and traditional, with a church on every corner. From there, we began our journey back towards Cape Town. After a pit stop in Jeffrey’s Bay to find Emily A. some antihistamine for a nasty allergic reaction she had to the lemon midrange pie she had had for dessert, we found ourselves a backpackers in Storms River Village for the night. We made it a very early night, so we would have plenty of energy for the morning.

On Sunday morning we found ourselves a Xhosa/Afrikaans church for Easter service. There was no English-speaking church in the area, so we decided to make it a cultural excursion. The church was in the Storm's River township, in a one-room tin shack. We had hoped to stand in the back in case we needed to make a quick exit, but when our hosts dicovered our presence, they made us sit right up front. Although I only understood a tiny bit of the Afrikaans, it was a very interesting experience. There was lots and lots of singing, all of which was from memory, I assume because of a fairly poor literacy rate and a lack of funds to buy hymnals. There also was no sermon - instead, each of the six church leaders gave a short talk. The entire service was very bilingual. All of the bible verses were read in both Xhosa and Afrikaans, and the talks were given in whichever language was most comfortable for the speaker. The service wasn't that long - about an hour and a half - and we left pretty quickly after it ended so that we could be on to our next adventure.

After church, Emily and I left Jen for a bit to do a series of ziplines over the Tsitsikamma falls. Although I am not one for extreme sports, the zipline was very cool, and not all that scary. Our guides took some great pictures of us in action.

We ended our Easter with lunch back in Knysna and a long drive back to Cape Town, but the night wouldn't have been complete without one last pit stop at Jon David's apartment for some good southern food that he, Lisa and Ben had prepared.