On Tuesday it was back to school for Kelly and on the road for us. We had an unstructured additional week to play in South Africa, and hadn't really made up a plan until we worked something out over the weekend.
I was looking for a vacation within a vacation--something like sitting at a oceanside bar all day, getting to know the locals, eating whatever the fishermen bring in each day. Langebaan and Paternoster, on the west coast, north of Cape Town, sounded like that would fit the bill. But Kelly had been up that way a couple of weeks ago, and told me that I'd get bored pretty quickly up there, that there wasn't a lot to do.
Then, of course there was the Garden Route, that everyone raves about. Lots of beautiful towns on the Indian Ocean, massive beaches. What they don't mention is that it's 4-5 hours of driving to get there.
Well, anyway, we opted for a short trip to Hermanus while we worked it out.
Hermanus is about 1 1/2 hours out of Stellenbosch, and turned out to be a great place to spend a day and a night. It's claim to fame is that you can whale watch from the shore. Unfortunately it's not the right time of year for passing cetaceans, but it was almost 90 degrees and sunny when we arrived so we had a great time exploring the local cliff walk.
We stayed at the venerable Windsor Hotel, which sits right on the waterfront, and hung out in the little village, had local seafood, and actually bought local stuff to bring home.
As good as Hermanus is, it didn't rate more than one day, so we decided to venture forth to the first real town on the Garden Route, Mossel Bay. The road to Mossel Bay, N2, is long and rolling through farm country. If the Cape Town area looks like Southern California, this area looks like Iowa.
Cheryl was a champ driving the 4+ hours, but trying to keep up with the local driving customs was a little taxing. Most of the highway was two lanes, no divider, and the custom is to pull way over to allow cars to pass, or to avoid oncoming cars passing on the other side. Every kind of vehicle, from little mini cars to tandem tractor trailers. Occasionally a farm tractor would enter the traffic. It was something else.
Mossel Bay is a mixed bag. It has an enormous refinery outside of town. It's clearly a working waterfront community with a real harbor with ships coming in and out. It also has a lovely waterfront. It is our first real interaction with the Indian Ocean.
By chance we booked ourselves at the Point Village Hotel for a balcony room with a view of the ocean for $66 a night.
This is the view from our room.
The Point is the end of a waterfront peninsula in town, beautiful and kinda scruffy all at the same time. There's a campground across the street, and plenty of people swimming at the beach next door.
The local zipline (which Kelly rode a few weeks ago) is here, and lots of little tidal pools.
There are a couple of local waterfront restaurants, in which we enjoyed another dinner at sunset.
During the day we took a walk into the center of town, which was somewhat unremarkable, but has something called the postal tree. In centuries past, Portuguese mariners would leave their mail at the tree as they passed through around the end of Africa, either going East or West. Mariners going in the opposite direction would pick up the mail and bring it back the other way.
It still is used as a postal box, and Cheryl sent out a postcard from there.
There is one local activity we didn't take part in:
Once again, we felt we'd seen most of what we'd see in the town. Having made it this far on the Garden Route, we made a plan to push on to Knysha, about 1 1/2 hours away, and stay for 3 days, and then work our way back to Stellenbosch, for a little Kelly time before we went home.
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