From Franschhoek we headed towards the Garden Route. The next night we stayed on a ranch “De Opstal”. This area is famous for its Ostrich farms.
It was obligatory for us to have Ostrich steak for dinner which was meaty and excellent and didn’t taste like chicken at all.
The following day we drove up the pass out of the valley on a long drive on the R62.
View back down to beautiful Franschhoek valley
Baboons at the side of the road
We visited an ostrich farm and got up close and personal with a few of those dinosaurs. The black ones are male and the brownish ones are female. This gives them camouflage for their shifts sitting on the eggs at night and day respectively. The eggs make a lot of omelettes being 28x the size of a chicken’s egg.
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- Michelle stroking Betsy
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- Ronnie getting an Ostrich massage
We joined the Garden Route at Mossel Bay. The Garden Route is good marketing, but having completed it, it was very pleasant, but I’m not sure where the gardens were.
We passed through a town called George which sounded much better in the guide book and doesn’t offer much for tourists.
The following night we stayed in “Wilderness” – a very pleasant activity town. In the morning we did a 10km hike along the Kingfisher Trail hike to a waterfall. A couple of girls were walking just in front of us when one screamed and jumped. A big adder crossed the path and divided them. When we met the girls again later at the waterfall at the end of the trail, we found that they were from Israel and like many of the couples we met, were on honeymoon.
Map of Africa defined by the river
We passed through the lovely town of Knysna, which has a very modern marina, but a bit over-commercialised.
On the beach we saw many strange blue jellyfish-type creatures which were being hunted down and eaten by armies of Sea Snails. The “Bluebottles” are apparently actually fish rather than jellyfish. They were also firing out a blue tendril stinging and paralysing the snails. A very odd battle.
“Bluebottles” being eaten by Sea Snails
