After we finished with the Garden Route, we continued our tour of the Western Cape by first swinging inland through the Klein Karoo desert and then heading back to the coast.
Oudtshoorn
Oudtshoorn, while not physically on the Garden Route, has the spirit of a Garden Route town. There are plenty of organized adventures available, the two most popular being a visit to an ostrich farm or the Cango Caves.
On our way into Oudtshoorn, we stopped at the Highgate Ostrich Show Farm. We signed up for a tour, which I cynically thought would be 10% seeing the ostriches and 90% hard sell of their ostrich products. As it turned out, the tour was amazing. It might have looped through the workshops to show off their products and ended in the gift shop, but our tour guide was a wealth of information about ostriches. The highlights of the tour were obviously when we got to interact with the ostriches. We held two-week-old ostriches, which were almost as large as full-grown chickens and covered in spiky not-quite-feathers that almost looked like soft porcupine quills.
We fed the adult ostriches (after first hiding our shiny objects, per our guide’s warning), jumping when they dive-bombed our hands to grab the dried corn (most of which they sent spiraling to the ground in their feeding enthusiasm).
We balanced on ostrich eggs to demonstrate how strong they were, our guide at our side with an imposing thorny stick in case the mating pair of ostriches to whom the eggs belonged became annoyed with our presence in their nest. (Thankfully, they barely glanced at us.)
We climbed on top of and posed for pictures while seated on an ostrich.
And I actually rode one, which can only be described as hilarious. Go watch it on YouTube and see for yourself!
The following morning, Marc visited the Cango Caves and took the adventure tour, which goes deep into the limestone belly of the mountain and includes narrow passages and places where you must slide on your back or stomach. Never a fan of caves (or tight spaces), I opted to remain above ground.
Where We Stayed:
☆ Backpacker Paradise. Two-and-a-half goats. Our room was large with extremely high ceilings but dark, and the drizzling rain made the walk to the communal kitchen less than enticing. Free wifi was available in the common room, but a group of loud backpackers were hogging most of the bandwidth1 watching gratuitous YouTube videos (including the Hakuna Matata song from the Lion King) so we gave up and headed back to our room. (If you wondered why we hadn’t posted anything for most of the second half of April, you can blame the Lion Kingers.) Backpacker Paradise offers a group dinner, but we arrived too late to sign up for it, so we ended up eating at an Italian place across the street.
Where We Ate:
☆ Bella Cibo. An Italian restaurant recommended by our guidebooks and our hostel, we found it just okay. Perhaps our opinion was colored by the fact that, even though the place was completely empty when we arrived for a rather early midweek dinner, we were seated at a cramped table by the front door when we admitted that we had not made a reservation (or as the South Africans put it, a booking). Nonetheless, Marc thought eating ostrich saltimbocca seemed hilarious, so he ordered it.
Swellendam
After finishing up at the Cango Caves, we drove back to Oudtshoorn for lunch and then continued on through the desert and mountains to the town of Swellendam. We arrived at our accommodation late in the day, and so we kept our evening low key. We lazed about, making dinner and playing with one of the three dogs (we remain unsure whether it was Chardonnay, Sambuca, or Bailey) that resided on the property. The dog brought us an apple and clearly wanted us to play fetch with him, so we did until one of the other dogs absconded with the apple. Undeterred, the dog then brought us a tangerine. Hilariously, the dog seemed to chomp on the tangerine for a few bites in between each throw.
Where We Stayed:
☆ Wildebraam Berry Estate. Four goats. This is probably the only time that we will stay on an actual, working berry farm. Our room was comfortable, and there was a braai stacked with wood and starter. The location was peaceful, and the mountains provided a dramatic backdrop. We were also impressed with the farm’s products: we stopped in its store on our way out and purchased a jar of some delicious peppadews, which we put on sandwiches for a week to come.
Cape Agulhas
We left Swellendam and drove to Cape Agulhas is the southernmost point of Africa, where the Indian and Atlantic Oceans meet. 2 We almost gave it a miss, considering that it is a bit out of the way and we had heard that it is not as dramatic as the Cape of Good Hope,3 which is often mistaken for the southernmost point of Africa.4 Alas, the part of me that’s an embarrassing check-the-box tourist couldn’t bear being that close and not going to see it. We packed a picnic lunch that we ate while watching the Indian and Atlantic Oceans crash against the rocks.
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Hermanus
We continued driving along coast to Hermanus, the unofficial whale capital of South Africa, but we visited in during the wrong time of year to spot the whales.3 Regardless, we found Hermanus to be a beautiful little town. We took a stroll along the cliff walk that runs through the town, stopping to admire the ocean surrounding coasting mountains.
Betty’s Bay
We drove through Betty’s Bay to see the Stony Point Penguin Colony, but we arrived at 5:20 p.m. – which happened to be twenty minutes after it had closed for the evening. (Hey, Stony Point Penguin Colony proprietors, if you’re reading this, posting your hours online would be incredibly helpful.) But no one had told the penguins that they were supposed to be closed, and the penguins continued to parade through the fence and into the bushes, right past us.
We (and the other tourists who had gotten boxed out by the mystery hours) spent far too long delighting in the funny little birds, which seemed to never know which way they were going. Anytime another bird bumped it and turned it around, it would just go the new way as though nothing had happened.
And, finally, here’s a sunset that we saw over False Bay on our way up from Betty’s Bay to Stellenbosch:
1 Southern Africa has many amazing qualities, but consistently fast internet is not one of them.
2 Apparently, the convergence point for the two oceans, where the Indian Ocean’s warm Agulhas current meets the Atlantic Ocean’s cold Benguela current, shifts seasonally between Cape Agulhas and the Cape of Good Hope.
3 We verified this a week later when we arrived at the dramatic Cape of Good Hope.
4 For those out there who share this misunderstanding – as did we until we Googled it – the Cape of Good Hope is the southwestern most point in Africa.
5 During peak whale-watching season, from July through October, whales can apparently be seen as close as 20 meters offshore.
