alright, i'm back by popular demand for these pics and I am too lazy to develop them. We haven't even gotten to my highlight of the trip yet.
We took the sunset cruise in a lagoon in Knysna. It's a really cute town with basically one road and thats about it. But really popular with the tourists though. We stayed in a clean (for once) backpackers called Island Vibe. I was scared cuz I heard that this place is party central! That means I would have to mingle with peeps and I wasn't about to do that, being the lazy person that I am. But it turned out to be a pretty mellow place. It had a small "splash pool" but was still too deep for me! We ran into this English couple that we met all the way back in Port Elizabeth and ended up being the same hostels for the next week of our trip! They were so cute... too bad we didn't take any pics with them.
We went on a "canoe safari", which made it sound so enticing but all we did was canoe part of the Knysna River, then canoe back. It really wasn't all that interesting. We saw a snake swim across the river though!
Then we headed to the beach. Did I already mention those slimy Blue Bobbles and other jellyfish with snails eating them on the beach? Well there's billions of these things. It's so gross when you realize that you just stepped on a whole ecosystem going on... Even worse is when you touch those Blue Bobbles... they hurt like crazy! But they're pretty! That is why I made the mistake of touching them.
Guess which footprint is mine???? For some reason, people know this... (you guys are weird).
We then went to a mussel factory and ate all sorts of seafood. I love dipping my prawns in liquid hot butter... yummmmmmmmmmmmmm!!!
We drove from Knysna to a beach town called Wilderness. Thats when we saw this giant jellyfish washed ashore with TONS of snails surrounding it and just eating it alive! I felt really bad for the poor jellyfish... but I wasn't about to touch the thing! It's really funny because we saw another English couple at Wilderness and had met them previously at another hostel as well. It's funny how you run into the same people since you're doing basically the same trip.
Then we drove up to Oudtzhoorn, Ostrich Town! It was a really nice drive up there, lots of vineyards. Apparently, there was some Afrikaans music festival going on and we were lucky to have the accomodation that we got. All the backpackers was full except for this one place called Attikwas. It is run by a really cute old couple. I forget the woman's name but the guy's name was Katot and he thought we were such city slickers. He had a tent set up for us with bed sheets and mattresses and totally felt sorry for us cuz we never camped before! Well I have after being in Africa for 4 months but not Agnes! They stayed in a trailor while their house was rented out to other people. The house looked really nice though and we thought we'd be cute enough that they would change their minds and let us stay in the house! But that didn't happen. We should have taken pics of the shower. It was basically just a curtain all around you with a tap thats above your head and no hot water. But it was all good!
So we partied at the music festival the first night and tried Afrikaans traditional food. It was almost a rip off of the Black African traditional food that I had back home in Sizanani!The highlight of the whole Garden Route trip was probably the Cango Caves about 30 km away form Oudtzhoorn. We did the Adventure Tour, which was caving into small tiny crevices of a limestone cave. It was amazing! There were parts where it was so small, we had to lie down, head first and slide down a huge rock about a meter high and land on our hands. Other times we had to either get pushed by the guide from below up a "chimney" if you were too fat, or just wiggle your way up the chimney and hope you end up at the top. Good thing Agnes and I could wiggle like crazy!
The chimney!
Thank goodness my head fit in the 30 cm height!
After the Cango Caves, we celebrated by having Ostrich meat for lunch. It was just as tasty as the picture!
We went to an ostrich farm afterwards and took a 90 min tour. I got to ride an ostrich and Agnes got a neck massage from them. We got to stand on the ostrich eggs too. It can take about 300 lbs... but you just can't jump on them or else they'll break and you'll smell like rotten eggs for weeks apparently. One ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 chicken eggs! Just imagine the cholesterol!
We went back to our "campsite" and changed, then headed back to the Afrikaans festival, where we ate MORE food!
That was basically the end of the trip. We drove back to Cape Town and went out dancing for a bit, went back to our backpackers, and woke up super early to drop off the car and go on a plane to Jo'burg. I was so sad by then because that means my whole trip was O-V-E-R!
