After 24 days of Advent Calendar pictures now I will finally tell you everything concerning my holidays. I will try to make it as short as possible - and that won't be easy with about 1000 pictures to choose from - but anyway I will divide my post into a Garden Route and a Cape Town part so that it won't be too much at the same time.
Armed with lots of biltong (typical South African dried slices of meat) and pumpkin rolls Stella, Louisa and me started our big tour on the 11th of December early in the morning as we had 850km to drive ahead of us. Having arrived in our first stop Graaff Reinet we felt like beeing in a completely different country because everything was so different to Johannesburg. Especially the fact that we could walk around on our own in the dark felt really strange but that way we had the chance to directly start exploring the small city, that is one of the oldest in South Africa and popular for its architecture with many Cape Dutch and Victorian buildings.
The next morning we went on to Camdeboo National Park, a park surrounding Graaf Reinet that is known for its impressive canyons especially the Valley of Desolation. But we didn't only admire the landscape we also had the chance to get close to some animals, such as monkeys, zebras, springboks and lot of other boks that we hadn't heard about before.
On the 14th we went on to Jeffreys Bays where we met Lea and Marina, two other volunteers that wanted to go on with us. Jeffreys Bay is a very famous surfing spot, so of course we couldn't miss the chance to take a surfing lesson which was a lot of fun! The day after we also tried sandboarding which is like snowboarding in the dunes and a very nice compensation in a country that doesn't really get to see any snow.
After so many adventures in our two days in Plettenberg Bay it was time for relaxing at the beach and a hiking tour that wasn't as relaxed as expected. For that tour we went to the Tsitsikamma National Park where we hiked to Suspension Bridge, a big rope bridge that is crossing the mouth of Storms River, and to a very nice waterfall. The hiking trails were very adventurous with a lot of climbing but the beautiful nature along the coast definitively compensated that!
Our next stop was Knysna, a cosy seaport surrounded by a big lagoon and almost unspoiled jungle. To explore the Knysna forest we did a mountainbike tour, again on very adventurous trails, so that we often weren't far from little accidents, but once again it was worth it and it was a lot of fun to ride on those steep, stony and rooty trails.
The day after we went to Wilderness, a very pretty small city with beautiful and almost lonely beaches. On our first day in Wilderness we were doing a short hike on the old railways along the coast that led us to a cave, where a man is living for 8 years now giving a shelter to homeless people. Many people had told us about his cave before but it was still very different to what I had expectes, decorated with lots of shells and furnished with wood and diffrent kinds of donations. Anyway it was very impressing and interesting to hear the caveman's story about God telling him to build up that shelter.
On our second day in Wilderness we did a day trip to Oudtshoorn and the Cango Caves.
Oudtshoorn is the South African centre of ostrich-breeding, so we visited an ostrich farm and also had the chance to do ostrich riding what was more like rodeo than real riding.
The cango caves were also worth seeing especially because we did an adventure tour. Instead of following the normal paths through the cave we explored it walking ducked down or crawling through gaps that sometimes weren't higher than 26 cm.
After those first eleven days we slowly left the official area of the Garden Route and went on along the coast because we had still planned two more stops before reaching Cape Town.
The first one was Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of Africa. Even though the Cape's nature wasn't even more impressing than the nature we had seen in the days before it was very nice as we went there during the sunset and the feeling that the whole of Africa was lying behind us was kind of impressing.
Our last stop before Cape Town was Hermanus where we had hoped to see some whales but unfortunately the whale season was already over and we couldn't see any.
And then, after more than 2000 adventurous kilometres, it was already time to go to Cape Town for Christmas! But about that I will tell you in my next post that hopefully won't be too long in coming ... But in the meantime you can already see some more picture in my gallery.
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