21/01/2012

Cape Town - Stellenbosch - Outshoorn - Wilderness

Botanical Gardens with Hanna

Relaxed and rested after some TLC at Aunt Lindy's, Sammy dropped us off at 'Ashanti Lodge Gardens', the so called 'party hostel' of Cape Town where we then stayed for 6 nights. It seems that it is the kind of place at which people arrive and never leave. We quickly befriended our roomy, Hanna, a lovely girl from Germany who had also just arrived. The following day the 3 of us embarked on our tourist trail by jumping on the city tour bus. You can't get much more touristy than that! We spent the day driving around with our tour headphones plugged in learning weird and wonderful facts about Cape Town and with our cameras at the ready. Our highlight on the tour was probably the beautiful botanical gardens where we wandered around for most of the morning.

Another 6 days in Cape Town might sound like quite a long time to many people but actually it is quite surprising just how much there is to do around town. We spent a short time at the beach, visited a very good exhibition on an African artist, Peter Clarke, at the National Gallery - well worth a visit, and following our history lesson on the bus tour we made a particular effort to go to the District Six Museum - a fascinating and eye opening exhibition on the aparthide. We had some great nights out too, notably the Royale Eatery for a great burger and The Living Room for a good boogie on Long Street, Caprice in Camps Bay and Assembly Nightclub...somewhere(!). 

The hostel bar proved to be a great place to meet people during Happy Hour. Not put off by our terrible attempts at pool we managed to befriend lots of fun people from all around the world, including tonnes of Israelis fresh from military service, more Germans(!), Irish, an Ozzie, a Kiwi, a few Brits and some locals.  We also shouldn't forget to mention our jet-lagged Korean roomy who'd wake us each morning at 5am rustling though her bag, usually when Hanna and/or we had only just got in from a night out an hour or so before! 



Climbing Table Mountain

Our absolute highlight of Cape Town was climbing Table Mountain despite possibly choosing the hottest day on which to do it.  Two and a half hours of steep steps (Izzy and her shorter legs were definitely at a disadvantage) and three litres of water each later we made it to the top followed by two more hours walking around the summit - a must do in Cape Town in our opinion.  We were so lucky with the weather as we had crystal clear skies all day. A few hours after our return the infamous tablecloth cloud set in - it was lucky we were off the mountain as it could have been rather tricky to navigate our way around through the fog.



View of Lion's Head from top of Table Mountain



We had planned to climb Lion's Head on our last evening in Cape Town to celebrate the full moon as we understand this is somewhat of a ritual for the locals however stormy weather and high winds (and not to mention a rather late night in Camps Bay the previous evening) meant that we had to give this a miss.  Something for our return to Cape Town in February perhaps.

Having felt that we had ticked all the boxes we could in Cape Town we jumped on the Baz bus - first stop Stellenboch.




There is everything to love and nothing not to like about this university town. In fact we are both wondering what postgrad degrees we can do in order to have an excuse to go back! We arrived at the appropriately named hostel 'The Stumble Inn' and spent the afternoon relaxing by the pool.

We were joined there later by two Irish doctors, Pierce and Connor, and Andy from New Zealand all three of whom we had met at Ashanti. The boys invited us to join them for a yummy braai that evening which we ate under torchlight.

Connor, Pierce and Andy

Sipping Fairview Cabernet Sauvignon

The following day the Irish boys went off shark cage diving in Hermanus whereas Andy and the 2 of us had appropriately chosen a full day of wine tasting. The 'Easy Rider' tour took us for a cellar tour and our first tasting at Simonsig Wine Farm.  Next we were taken to our favourite - Fairview - where we fell in love with their red wines and some delicious cheeses and chutney (the kind lady serving us may have allowed us more than our 6 glass quota...).  We had a quick lunch in the beautiful town of Franschoek before heading to the final two vineyards - Dieu Donne with breathtaking views and Boschendal where we played boules under the trees.  We arrived back at the Stumble Inn 'happy' and laden with bottles of wine.

That evening we decided to 'hit the town'.  The Irish boys had learned that the Saracens Rugby team were visiting - we are not sure who was more excited by this, them or us!  There is (not surprisingly) more than one bar in Stellenboch so of course we had to carry out a bar crawl in order to find the team. We met some great students (who made us feel like students again) and were overwhelmed by their friendliness. This was also useful as we were then led to the club where the rugby players were propping up the bar with their friends. A great night had by all!


From Stellenbosch we had originally planned to go to Hermanus to go Shark Cage diving but decided to cancel our stay there owing to reports of bad visibility and bored sharks. Izzy (who is beyond terrified of sharks) was somewhat relieved though we are still going to try and go when we get back to Cape Town in February.


So instead, after strolling the beautiful streets of Stellenbosch, we jumped on the Baz bus and headed straight to Outshoorn - famed for its ostrich farming. Our hostel 'Paradise Inn' was ideal with a great relaxed atmosphere. We were in a dorm with a couple of Dutch girls we had met on the Baz bus out of Cape Town so it was good to hear about their travels over a dinner of Ostrich.  Very fitting!

The next day we decided to visit the Cango Wildlife Ranch - a breeding and conservation centre for all sorts of exotic and endangered species.  With low expectations we were actually thrilled by the tour and our guide, Kevin (who spoke several languages!), was extremely knowledgeable and had a great rapport with the animals.  The cats had to be our favourite though all of the animals had their own characters and were clearly very happy there.  Actually that night the manager of the ranch happened to come for a drink at the cool hostel bar and he had a wealth of stories of the animals, many of which had started as babies in his back garden.  Apparently the porcupine used to push his 4 year-old's noisy truck around the garden in the middle of the night.  We also had a real giggle about 'Bonk' the elderly nymphomaniac tortoise who has 7 females on rotation to avoid killing them all off through exhaustion.



Kevin with the playful female cub tiger



Bonk



Laurie emerging out of the chimney in Cango Caves

For some exercise we signed up for a 54 km bike ride with some others from the hostel, namely Laurie (a teacher from Chester) and Andy (our Kiwi friend from wine tasting). There were others but they couldn't keep up with us ;-) . We had been advised that the ride started at the top of the mountain so we stupidly expected it to be downhill all the way. How wrong we were!  54 kms of up and downhill on pretty basic mountain bikes was gruelling although it was the best way to take in some amazing views and pass the tourist sites. We decided to stop off for an 'adventure tour' at the stunning Cango Caves en route which entailed 1.5 hours of crawling around and squeezing ourselves through tiny spaces hoping that no one in the tour group would get wedged and block us in (this did happen once and a tour group was stuck for 10 hours). Hels hated it! It turns out that her mild claustrophobia has increased to pretty severe but we got through it (after Andy said she should just 'man up'). You've got to love the Kiwis! 

We celebrated making it home in one piece with our final bottle from Stellenbosch and a couple more drinks served to us by the memorable (very goodlooking) barman Hugo, the owner of the place Marius and some hairy bikers from Cape Town.

The next day we went for a tour around an ostrich farm and despite our sore heads and sore botties from the bike ride we volunteered each other to ride the ostriches in front of everyone. The poor birds couldn't wait to throw us off as they careered around the field. It felt a bit like doing a bucking bronco.  If the birds could have flown away, we're sure they would have done.









Canoeing through the Wilderness National Park



Later that day, we were sad to leave Outshoorn but were excited when the Baz Bus dropped us off at the stunning 'Beach House Hostel' in Wilderness just in time for sundowners on the terrace which overlooked the sea. The rest of the bus looked mighty jealous!  We have managed to adopt Andy and the next day the 3 of us decided to go for a hike and a canoe to a couple of beautiful waterfalls for a picnic - how very British!  It was another exhausting and energetic day so we thought we should treat ourselves to a delicious fish dinner at 'The Girls' restaurant in town.  The food really was outstanding and we rolled back up the hill to our hostel with content bellies.

Before leaving Wilderness we wanted to check out 'Vic Bay' (a small surfers' hangout) so on our last day we walked there for lunch and a dip in the beautifully warm sea (unlike the ice-cold waters of Cape Town).  We ambled along the disused train tracks which wound their way around the cliff tops and through some tunnels before heading back to the hostel to catch the bus for Knysna.

For more photos follow this link: http://s1082.photobucket.com/albums/j363/izzyandhels/

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