11th June - Of animals, caves and strange-tasting lamb

Left Oudtshoorn and went to the Cango Wildlife Reserve, which was essentially a glorified zoo. It was kinda cool to see the wildcats, crocodiles, pygmy hippos and other creatures though, but still, I probably would have given it a pass if I only knew what it really was.

But at least I got to see this lovely couple at the 'reserve'.

Then we went to an ostrich farm to do more tourist-y things such as touching ostriches, and Claud and I got to take turns riding very briefly on the ostriches. I tried getting out of it by telling our guide at the farm that I'm probably too heavy for the ostrich to lift, but he only said that he'd give me the largest one they had. I guess there was no getting out of that, but well, at least it was quite amusing, those brief moments of hanging on to a mutant bird's wings for dear life, trying to not fall off and embarrass myself further.

Sharing a tender moment with the resident head honcho ostrich Linda, who is apparently decidedly anti-male as she has spurned all advances by her male counterparts, and even hates it if male tourists touch her. Maybe that's why I was sent to give her a hug instead of Rickey, who'd probably have got his eyes poked out.

A mini ostrich-riding adventure.

If you want to know where Old School is, it's here.

After our time at the farm, we headed to the Cango caves. Pretty cool geological formations and rather gorgeous stalactites and stalagmites.



And then, the best and most exciting part of the day was driving through the Swartberg Pass. The view was absolutely spectacular, with precipitous drops if one were to drive off the winding mountain path. The sedimentary rock formations were really something. I would have taken more pictures if we had stopped, but a certain someone was not necessarily very enthusiastic about that idea... "I am not very comfortable..." - grits teeth- Oookay.

The ceaselessly winding path. I would have stuck out my hand to take a better picture, but the road was bumpy and I was afraid I'd just lose a grip of my cellphone and have it meet its fateful end.

Now he looks more relaxed, only because he saw other idiots, erm, I mean tourists like us who decided to take this path.

The really cool valley on the other side of the mountain pass which we drove to.

Arrived safely, albeit a little dusty at Prince Albert, where we checked into this nice little place called the Swartberg Hotel, which was a nice Victorian house with our own little cottage to stay in. Dinner was really quite enjoyable, with some locally produced red wine, a mozarella and tomato salad, a delicious leg of Karoo lamb, and some other Cape Malay dish called Bobotie. Ok, the lamb was great, but I've never heard food described as someone I know. It was definiitely very disturbing to know that it 'tastes like Rickey'. Eew.

A fine evening.

12th June - Meiringspoort Pass, Montagu

Woke up at 8 in the morning and had a delightful breakfast at the Swartberg. The manager is this absolutely lovely guy, and we think that he's probably there with his HLP, and H doesn't stand for the same thing as the H in Rickey and Claud's HLP status. He's probably the campiest guy in real-life whom I've met and still find very endearing. Anyway I liked Prince Albert, and the Swartberg Pass is really quite a worthwhile trip to be made.

We took another pass today, Meiringspoort, instead of that former pass, and got to see a waterfall and drove over a river many times. Bought some really delicious dried fruit somewhere along the way.

At the waterfall

Yummy dried fruit

Drove to Montagu, and in the meantime, I slept for a loooong while in the car. I'm sure by now my friends have realised that I have the amazing ability to sleep in any vehicle, for particularly long stretches of time. It's the only special talent I think. Anyway checked into our next hotel, the Blue Mountain, and went for a walk down Lovers' Lane (gosh, how cheesy), and then went for a short woalk along the Badkloof wandelpad (walking path). It was a rather nice walk, and we even had this great little dog which just followed us on our journey, and led the way. We also enjoyed the company of some dassies, who would probably not say the same, as the one we saw was busy sending warning signals to the rest of his companions lurking amidst the craggy rocks.

Leading the way.

My new-found friend.

13th June

Drove to Stellenbosch, anticipating much consumption of wine, since the area is well known for its wines, and it's supposedly quite scenic. However, we were sorely disappointed, for we had really bad weather most of the day, it was either very misty and rainy, or was simply quite gloomy and overcast, and we didn't manage to try any wines. Stellenbosch really had our mojo and we didn't like it too much, and after lunch, we went back to Cape Town and checked into a hotel near the airport so we can sleep a bit before leaving for Johannesburg the next morning. We went to Bo Kaap again, and this time manage to visit the small museum there. That's about all we did today.

Crap weather.

The only bit of light I saw the entire day.

A large cappuccino at the place we had lunch.

14th June

Arrived in Joburg today, stayed at the Travellers' Inn in Rustenburg. The flight was hilarious, because the air stewardess speaking over the intercom was telling us things like "Welcome to Hawaii. Oops, I mean Johannesburg. -giggles- If you're coming home to Joburg, we hope your car is still parked there when you return. - giggles-", all this while saying it all in a really fake but amusing high-pitched squeal. At least I wasn't bored on the plane.

View from the plane as we near Joburg.

Visited the Voortrekker Monument, and other sites there. Huge monstrosity of a memorial. Pretty much the whitest thing one could ever do in South Africa.


That was it for the day, checked into a comfy B&B, where we continued our beer consumption while watching football. Deutschland hat gewonnen.

15th June

Visited Pilanesburg and Sun City today.

We saw rhinos...

A lonesome giraffe...

And a kudu just bumming around. Actually we saw lots of other antelopish animals, but we had antelope fatigue, and just decided not to take anymore pictures of them.

With that, we've come to the end of the trip. All in all, was a very good trip.