Home World Diaries South Africa Cape Town 2008 Week 7 Part 2
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station, so we decided to go further and come back the next day. Instead we stopped at a nice Bay near to the city Plettenberg Bay.
After that we had the idea to find a bed for the night and so we programmed our navigation system to lead us to the nearest B&B; half expecting that this will be quite expensive. As we reached the B&B we'd found a four star one, which looked really luxury. Nevertheless, we asked and got a nice flat for a reasonable price - not to compare with Great Britian for example, where we had a lot of worse once for twice the price.
This evening we went into the town to get some food. We found a Mozambique restaurant. Despite the delicious food and the friendliness of the waiter we recognized that the waiter had to be quite sportive as they squat down every time they spoke to the guests, who where sitting at the table.
Well, we were tired in the evening and decided not to visit any party this day.
Saturday Continued (Garden Route Travel)
This day we went from Port Elizabeth via Mosel Bay, Tzitzsikama National Park until Plettenberg Bay. In Mosel Bay we went into a judge factory shop from Billabong. Here we lost each other and, because we forgot our mobiles in the car, needed about two hours to find each other again. The police station and the factory shop were the reasons why we were quite late. So we went on at the middle of the afternoon and had to skip a lot of possibilities to visit snake and elephant sanctuaries. We went on along the N2, the motorway which begins in Port Elizabeth and would have been able to take us near to Cape Town if we were following it. Actually, the motorway is not comparable with a German motorway, as sometimes it looked like a normal country road. Eventually we came near the Tzitzsikama National Park, where we were looking for the biggest bungee jump opportunity in Africa. Unfortunately we missed the exit of the motorway and passed a toll
Sunday (Garden Route Travel)
2008/11/09
A refreshing night was lying behind us and after a nice breakfast, consisting of a mixture between English and Continental breakfast, we started travelling again. Our first stop this day was the bungee jumping in the Tzitzikama National park. It took us about 15 minutes to reach the bridge. I had had the idea of a wooden suspension bridge, but we found out, that the jump started in the middle of an old concrete bridge. We watched to person jumping of the bridge but decided, we don't want to do that. So we needed not much time till we went on.
We drove for a while until we reached the little city Knyzna. This seems to be a nice little tourist one. It also had a shopping and coffee shop area called Waterfront. In this we found a lot of interesting shops for clothes, souvenirs and much more. We had a look at some shops and eventually decided to take a coffee, because we needed a loo. Well, the coffee was nothing special but the view we had from the upper level of the terrace where we were sitting, was great. The yachts in the harbour looked quite expensive. Mirjam was thinking of the end of her stay in South Africa and that's why we had a second look at the souvenir shops. I think we both found some very nice ones.
Monday (Garden Route Travel)
2008/11/10
Our day started with a nice breakfast, some fruits, eggs and bacon; that was very delicious. We were a little bit under pressure this morning, because we wanted to visit the Cango Caves which are in the north of Oudtshoorn. We already knew, there would be offered guided tours and there is no other possibility to visit the caves. Two different tours were offered: the standard tour and the adventurous one. Whilst Mirjam wanted to catch the standard tour, I preferred the other one. After checking out, we realized that we couldn't get the tour in the planned time any more and so we started with some shopping in Oudtshoorn. About 11 o'clock, we reached the Caves and the next one and a half hours, we climbed, crawled and walked through the caves.
This day I was driving and we didn't know what would have happened, if we went into a traffic control. Well, some kilometres after Knyzna I saw one and I also saw, there wasn't any chance to stop, leave the road or change the driver. The lucky thing was that the control was on the other side of the road. However, after that, we were quite nervous and I so we went off the N2 the next exit, finding a nice holiday resort in front of us. The area, we were, was called Wilderness. Following a smaller road we drove some time near to the motorway. Eventually we saw a traffic sign, announcing the "Map of Africa". We curiously followed the direction and came to a viewing point, overlooking another mountain, which had the shape like the outline of Africa.
In the early afternoon we reached the city George. This one was one of the bigger cities at the Garde Route. We saw a closed train museum and a very    
ugly city centre so we went on to Mosel Bay. Here we were thinking of finding the second B&B but decided to go further to Outshoorn. Before that I wanted to send my post cards from the oldest post box of South Africa and although the museum around this area was closed, the post box was reachable. But I hadn't any stamps and so I had to send the post cards later from Outshoorn.
Our last stop of the day was Oudtshoorn. This little village is famous for its ostrich products, e.g. feathers. There is also the possibility to ride ostriches but in the evening we first needed a B&B. This time it took us a while to find a nice one. The first one was     
looking and smelling old. The second one hadn't any door between the bathroom and the bed- and living room. It was possible to watch the other person in the shower and even on the loo. The third one was smelling and fourth one was the one we took. It was a little bit more expensive but otherwise absolutely okay.
This evening we went to a restaurant, our guest mother advised us but when we arrived we saw, that there were only old and very high-dressed people. So we went into the restaurant on the opposite of the road. Here we were sitting outside and after a while we recognized, that the people on the table behind me and on the next one where speaking German. The menu was also translated into German and the waiter was speaking German, too. This was the time, we realized, we were sitting in a German speaking restaurant. Well, the food was classical South African ones. Of course, we ordered and talked with the waitress in English, even when we were the only English speaking people there.
Afterwards we went on, and drove through the Kleine Karroo, a semi-desert in the south of the desert Grosse Karroo. A typical sign of the old days of the Buren is to be seen very often: We saw some fields and few houses but exceptional many wind mills, providing either water or electricity. Later on we took a little mountain pass to came back to the N2 and followed the road near to Cape Town. On this way we passed a beautiful little village called Barrydale. We had another stop somewhere near Robertson. The last part of the N2 was a very annoying one as we had road repairs every 1 to 5 kilometres.
We were driving quite a far way today but as we'd left the Garden Route, we were driving a lot this day without stopping much. We reached Cape Town at about 7 PM and decided to take the car back to the rental the next day, because the rental station was already closed.
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Well, this was only the second half of week 7. If you mist the first one, please click ‘previous’.