Overlanding. It is great. It results in some very interesting conversations between myself and Thomas:
Thomas: If the canopy is locked up, I guess we don’t really need to put the extra padlocks on while we are sleeping in the tent – we would hear anyone trying to get in and wake up anyway.
Me: Well, what if someone wants to steal our stuff during the night? The padlocks are a deterrent and we might as well use them. I don’t think we are going to jump out of our tent and accost robbers in the middle of the night.
Thomas: I would totally jump out of the tent to accost robbers.
Me: But what if they have a gun?
(Pause)
Thomas: Well, I would jump out, unlock the car, and ask them what they want. Obviously.
Well, now that we have that scenario sorted, I definitely feel much more secure.
Anyway, overlanding is indeed pretty cool. We are slowly getting used to it and had a nice relaxed start as we headed up into Klein Karoo for some stunning scenery, weird little towns, lots of wine and more ostriches. Before heading to Klein Karoo, however, we did go shark cage diving in Gaansbaai. It was epic. One of the great whites actually head butted the cage while we were in there. All up a very good day. The pictures are pretty kak though, so I will not bore you all with those. (We are slowly integrating South African lingo into our everyday speech. Favorites include: kak, kak lekker and sis man. Probably we should work on our Afrikaans and expand our vocabulary somewhat.)
Klein Karoo is known for being one of South Africa’s big wine regions and while we definitely partook in a fair amount of wine tasting, we decided that we would also embark upon a quest for brandy appreciation. This was largely because South Africans with their Dutch / Frenchy heritage are obsessed with the stuff. While we did taste a whole lot of brandy, the quest was fairly unsuccessful on my part and the more I tasted, the more I realized that I was indeed a whisky girl through and through. Seriously though, every distillery insists on making at least one brandy that is “meant to be mixed with coca-cola” and I am convinced that any spirit to which this approach is applied, must be found seriously wanting.
The journey through Klein Karoo was a bit of a nostalgia trip on my part as it followed a holiday I had taken with my parents years ago. One town we went to was a spa town called Montagu, which we used to holiday at a lot. We decided that, as I no longer needed to be entertained by the fun park style hot pools, we would hike up the highest mountain overlooking the town. It was spectacular, but within the first 45 minutes we promptly ran into a Cape Cobra – of course. I am not sure who tried to get out of there faster – me or the cobra, but I certainly shot straight back past Thomas and left him standing somewhat bewildered and unappreciative of the fact that I did not tell him that he too should move it. The snake looked pretty freaked out as well though. If I was not so petrified it would have been pretty amusing how intensely it was trying to shimmy up a bank of rocks, only to flop back down again. We also did a bit of rock climbing because the formations in the area are spectacular and Thomas has now found another new sport he wants to take up.
We hit up several small town museums in this area – of varying quality – and I managed to score some good farm stall style Karoo food, including Kudu and Ostrich prepared in various ways. As Thomas cannot partake in the meat, he has purchased an ostrich egg from the supermarket in Oudtshoorn (a town that is VERY proud of its ostrich history and sandstone “feather palaces” that line the main streets of town). This, coupled with a book received from a friend in Cape Town setting out ten South African dares has convinced him he needs to boil the thing for breakfast. Apparently this takes 1.5-2 hours and amounts to 25 chicken eggs. Hmm. It also resulted in the following conversation:
Me: If you want to boil that ostrich egg, you will have to get up at least at 6.30am tomorrow morning to do it.
Thomas: I’m not getting up at 6.30 to boil an egg!
Me: Well, I’m not waiting around until midday for you to boil an ostrich egg.
Thomas: (pause) It’s all about priorities (pause). Sometimes I think I’ll never really understand you.
Aside from our general estrangement over the necessity and timing requirements of boiling ostrich eggs, things have been going swimmingly. We visited the Cango Caves which, while they do not have anything on a real caving experience in NZ, still have some of the most magnificent formations I have ever seen. We also drove the amazing Swartberg Pass in the area, found the best waterfall pool ever, and visited a cute town called Prince Albert, which Thomas is convinced is not making the most of its naming potential.
On that note, and because I am very mature, one of my continual favourite things in SA is the fact that the Afrikaans word for “shop” is “winkel”. This absolutely never gets old for me. Never. “Smitswinkel”, “Janswinkel”, “Wernerswinkel”. Seriously, the amazingness does not cease. Somewhat surprising that the proprietor of Ronnies Sex Shop (see below) on the side of a deserted highway through the Klein Karoo did not make use of this excellent coincidence – but I guess others do not find it as funny as I do. The other exciting SA happening is that whenever Thomas gets bored in the car, he decides to practice his South African accent on me. This can go on for hours at a time. He is convinced that he is getting better. He is not. It is terrible. Now that we have managed to rig up some speakers he is getting less practice time, however, so things are generally working out pretty okay.
Crossing into the Eastern Cape we hit up Graaff-Reinet, Nieu Bethesda and Cradock – all of which were well worth the effort. Graaff-Reinet is the fifth oldest town in SA and has some amazing architecture, much of which has now been declared heritage sites. It also had some lovely museums, a beautiful Dutch Reform Church, and a restaurant that did sensational lamb’s neck.
We spent a day in the Camdeboo national park in the area and wandered up to see the valley of desolation, which was indeed desolate. We camped in the park in the middle of nowhere and the wind just about blew us off the camp site. Nieu Bethesda takes the term one-horse-town to a new level, but is notable for the owl house which was created by an eccentric lady a while back and includes a lot of crazy cement statues and crushed glass everywhere. It also has a lovely brewery (one of the exceptions to the South Africa has kak beer rule – but the beer is pretty much only available on site, so the rule is not entirely overthrown). The Mountain Zebra National Park near Cradock was good for the price, and was the last stop on the nostalgia tour in which I forced Thomas to partake.
After the journey through the Karoo, we decided that we were ready to get back to “real Africa” – by this, I mean we were ready to move out of SA. In order to do this we first went to Bloemfontein. Aside from its lovely name (flower fountain), this town is not, shall we say, particularly cosmopolitan and we stayed in a caravan park – in the sense that there were permanent residents there. We approved of the museums though and went to a very nice restaurant with an excellent waiter who, it turned out, was part of the burgeoning Bloem theatre scene – wouldn’t you know.
And because, why not, here is an excellent tortouise Thomas found:
January 2014