South Africa: Day 15

We started off quite early in the morning, or at least, as early as we could, towards Wilderness, Before Wilderness we would make a stop in Knysna and drive by Plattenberg first.

View over the whole bay 

Whilst driving through Plattenberg we found that it was a very nice little town, cosy and enjoyable, with lots of places to visit, but due to the lack of time, it would be no more than a drive through town, once outside though we noticed the real big contrast, all around the outskirts of the town you had the “townships” which is how they call the slums in South Africa, it was especially something remarkable because the distance between the town and the township was quite short, just being a single road in some places.

Shopping plaza at the waterfront of Knynsa

In Knysna on the other hand we did have a little stop, we walked around a little shopping centre to have a look around and found a nice store where we could get some plain shirts for less than the cost of dry cleaning the dirty shirts that we had in the luggage.
 When we got out there it was close to lunch time so we headed towards the seaside where we found a little boulevard with tons of tiny souvenir shops and restaurants, there our eyes fell on a place called “north” 34, where they had lots of fresh fish and other delicatessen, the menu was huge, really huge, I remember having a book of 30 pages to go through for my main course, we got some oysters and a few little things to share, we weren’t going to eat too much, because that night (new year’s eve) we would get plenty of food.

Once we got in Wilderness we had a quick look at the beach and went to check on our booking for the night, at the restaurant, we managed to change our booking from 6:30 (which in our opinion was waaaaay to early, but the only table they had available, or se we thought) to a table at 8:30 outside, which was a great improvement in our opinion.

So the time to go for dinner had arrived and we got at the restaurant, and as soon as we got there the host told us that there would be a table available inside in a few minutes if we’d like the offer. We gladly accepted and thought to ourselves that we had wasted too much time and effort stressing about the evening. We had a wonderful dinner with lots of wild meat like ostrich, springbok and wildebeest. And to top it up, at the end of the night we had a wild Genet come in the restaurant, apparently it had been sneaking in for the last few weeks (they told us that they were going to catch it and release it in the forest in the short future).

After dinner the waiters invited us to join them at the sister restaurant which had a very nice balcony to celebrate the new year, and this is where we did wrong, we kindly rejected their offer as we had made plans to join our BnB host in the other house where he told us he would be serving tonight. 

Don’t get me wrong, the house where we went was beautiful, really astonishing, and front line, with incredible views. But it was dead, when we got there everyone seemed to be half asleep, I think some people where really already sleeping and the mood was very awkward.

Anyway we made the best out of it, had a few glasses of bobbles with the host and ate our 12 grapes during the 12 last second of the year, well, at least I did, I can’t speak on behalf of the rest of my family.

South Africa: Day 14

After waking up two or three times because of Sofie deciding to kick her legs on my head I decided it was about time to get up.

Today we were going to visit the Stormsriver mouth in the Indian Ocean, we headed down to the nature park where the river ended and after a good while of waiting we got in.

The park was apparently known for camping as well, as we passed a few camping spots before getting to the end of the road. Once there everything would be done by foot.

We started walking towards the hanging bridge where you had the best view over the mouth. On the way there ( it was about a 1 km walk) we saw a few very nice bays, but all natural ones, which they probably want to keep that way as there was no one on them. We got to the bridge, which was very unstable, and had a fantastic view over the river colliding with the sea, as well as tourists, lots of tourists.

Little hidden beach

After getting back to the initial bay we went for a swim and then we continued to the next beach, on this net beach there was a well-known beach restaurant, so well-known that he had a waiting list of about an hour, we were in no rush though. 

We had a walk around the beach while waiting and then we got told about the red water that they recently had (which caused dolphins and whales to stay away of the coast side). 

This red water incident occurred when a special kind of algae (sea weed) started over producing the nutrient that it usually produces, the reason being the temperatures being too high or something similar. This caused a lot of fish to die due to the lack of oxygen and well, it sort of formed a vicious cycle. The name comes from the water staining coper brown or reddish because of the nutrient of the algae.

Towards the evening we returned to the BnB and got some rest at the pool, only to get ready shortly afterwards for another early dinner. Today we were dining at a little bistro which was actually a polo club during the vast majority of the time, during our dinner the light went out, first for a little instance of 2-3 minutes but afterwards it looked like it had gone for a good while, so we took the opportunity and left (not without paying obviously)