We decided to take an end of year trip to South Africa for a few weeks. It has been a long time since we've taken multiple weeks off in a row, with the last being Hawaii a few years ago. We are lucky to be in a position where we can take frequent week vacations, but it is nice to just shut off for a while.
Also, for the past few months Genny and I have been playing a lot with our camera and trying to learn how to take better pictures. We bought a tripod and another lens as a costly result of this learning :) So during this trip, we ended up taking a lot more "keepers" than in previous trips, but it also meant that we deleted a lot more pictures as we made many mistakes as well. Genny posted more than I did on snapfish if you'd like to see more. Anyhow, we hope you enjoy the pictures.
We started off arriving into Johannesburg (Jo'burg) and spent the night at the airport (slept a few hours on a metallic chair...oh so not comfortable). But soon enough, we were off to Cape Town. We spent three days there enjoying the amazing restaurants, people, and scenery. It was their summer, but oddly these three days (and only these days) were unusually cold as we were convincing ourselves that we packed poorly and we needed jackets. The weather did end up warming up and we did a wine tour of Stellenbosch where we pretended that we were wine connoisseurs and rated wines from many different wineries including Simonsig, Fairview Winery (makers of Goats du Roam) and others and we ate a lot of cheese. For lunch, wine was free, but other drinks cost money. We also met Addi Feinstein, a Med student from New York spending a year in Durban doing AIDS research.
From Stellenbosch, we rented a car (VW Chico) for the remainder of the journey which was good as it gave us a spontaneous meandering capacity and headed to Oudtshoorn. This is a curious out of the way place that has way too many ostrich farms (we even tried to ride the ostriches). There was a great waterfall and the Cango Caves were great (we did manage to break almost every rule the caves had). There is also an overly touristy wildlife park there where they hustle you through the fences as past as possible. Not impressed.
Jeffrey's Bay was next which is a surfer's paradise. Unfortunately for us, it rained the entire time we were there, so we ended up eating and reading (and watched some TV). Hmmm - we're bad tourists. There's something there about the world's best 90 degree wave or turn or something that surfers do.
Addo was one of our highlights as we spent two days doing a self-drive Safari. The first day we ended up being surrounded by elephants. While very cool, it was also a bit scary knowing that they could destroy our car in an instant. We got some great pictures of them though - along with buffalo, lions, kudu, zebra and a handful of other animals. Missed the rhino though - just couldn't find them. Searching flickr for "addo rhino" doesn't yield many results either, so they really must be elusive.
From here, following our trusty Lonely Planet we ventured to Graaff-Reinet. The book said something about this being a historical monument with lots of great architecture and blah blah. It sucked. There's potentially the ugliest monument ever to Huguenots that died there. Anyhow, if anyone ever does a search and finds this blog in regards to Graaff-Reinet, don't go. But if you do, stay at the Buiten Verwagten B&B - they're fantastic.
In Mossel Bay and Montagu, we relaxed and walked. Montagu received a lot of rain, so we attempted to ford a few rivers that weren't supposed to be there before realizing that it wasn't too safe in slippers. I kept getting visions of Oregon Trail and "Genny got typhoid" or "You ran out of food, would you like to shoot buffalo." "you can only carry 100 lbs of food with you". Ok, enough Oregon Trail reminiscing.
We did a few days in Muizenburg as well and saw Cape of Good Hope (go there early and eat lunch at the restaurant after you're done with the walk) and my favorite beach in the world. It's called Boulders and is in Simon's Town. Simon's Town is the penguin place by Cape Town and these particular ones just relax right next to you on the beach.
And we're back to Doha now. Happy New Year, Merry Christmas, and Eid Mubarak to all of you!
Ankur and Genny
Owner login
