Sorry it has been a week since my last post, but Tim and I have been busy adventuring throughout our road trip to the Eastern Cape. We spent 5 days on the road, and we were sure to make the absolute most of our time at each stop along the way! The next couple posts I write will give a detailed account of our road trip, with plenty of photos as well. But, before we get into some of the awesome excursions we went on at each stop, I want to tell you a bit about the drive.
For this road trip, we traveled from the Western Cape to the Eastern Cape, from Cape Town (point A) to Port Elizabeth (point B):
Breakdown of the journey:
On day 1, Friday, we picked up our car at the Cape Town Int'l Airport. We named our beautiful car Portie, since she took us all the way to Port Elizabeth. She was such a smooth ride and a lovely car, a VW Polo! I miss her already...
Meet Portie, our lovely car for the journey. :)
For the whole trip, I was the driver, which was awesome. I reeeeeeally enjoy driving, and it would have cost us more money to add an additional driver for the rental. But, no worries, Tim was a great co-pilot! He was my own personal GPS--instead of using a Tom Tom, I had a Tim Tim (get it? haha). With some Google Map printouts and a map book of South Africa in hand, Tim successfully navigated us throughout the whole journey, with barely any wrong turns or confusion!
After leaving Cape Town, we drove east along the main highway (the N2) and went south to Cape Agulhas, the southernmost tip of the continent! Cape Agulhas is also where the Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean meet--it was truly beautiful. On the map above, Cape Agulhas is the orange circle below the town of Bredasdorp. After exploring Cape Agulhas, we continued north and then east along the N2 to Knysna. Knysna is a beautiful town in a marshy valley between two peaks--it was truly beautiful. This is the town where we spent our first night :). Photos from this part of the drive:
Day 1 of the drive was mostly through vast farmland :) Lots of cows, sheep, and horses. And very vast, wide, rolling farmland hills.
This sign made me laugh...
The views everywhere were beautiful.
We stopped to look at the view, and as I was walking around to take the above photos, Tim was like "watch out for the baboons". I thought he was joking with me...but there this baboon was, just watching me! Hehe...glad he didn't eat me.
We also drove by a lovely winery. We stopped so I could get coffee for the drive. :)
I love how diverse the terrain is in South Africa!
We drove by lots of cute towns. :)
The open road ahead! Yes...we were driving on the left side of the road...
Dusk at the beach along our drive.
The sunsets along our drive were always stunning.
This is the bed n breakfast we stayed in in Knysna on our first night. It was adorable, and the family made us a lovely warm breakfast in the morning. :)
On day 2 of the trip, we started off by driving through Knysna in the
morning to see the beautiful marshy bay. Then we continued west along
the N2 to Port Elizabeth. This section of the N2 is called the "garden
route" because we drove through really lush mountains covered in pine
trees. Parts of the drive along the garden route were right along the
coast, and others were through the valleys and peaks of the lush
mountains--it was truly astounding. Before we went to our hotel in Port Elizabeth, we stopped at the Seaview Game and Lion Park for a few hours. This is where we drove through the park to see zebras, lions, giraffes, and African antelope. This is also the amazing facility where we were able to handle cubs! We got to play with 4 lion and 4 tiger cubs, a black leopard cub, 2 hyena pups, and 2 young servals. I will go into more detail on that excursion in another post because it was SO amazing! Once we got settled into our hotel in Port Elizabeth, we drove around the coastline of PE. We watched some surfers and saw a beautiful sunset. Photos from this part of the drive:
The marshy bay of Knysna at dawn. :)
The marshy water was so still and lovely.
Young pine trees in the Tsitsikamma region of the drive. There were large areas where new pine trees were growing to replace those cut down through deforestation.
The lush hills and valleys of Tsitsikamma! So beautiful.
A river running through the valley in Tsitsikamma. This is the view from the bungee jumping bridge! (Eek!)
Surfer in Port Elizabeth as we drove along the coastline. :)
When we drove along the coastline of Port Elizabeth, some Vervet Monkeys came out to play!
Hehe, I love the Vervet Monkeys! :)
The rocky coastline of Port Elizabeth. I like the coastal areas of Port Elizabeth much more than the city. It was so calm and quiet :)
We caught an amazing sunset along our drive through Port Elizabeth!
On day 3 of the road trip, we went on an 8-hour guided safari through Addo Elephant Park, one of the national parks in South Africa. Addo is the third largest national park in South Africa, covering about 180,000 hectares (444,700 acres) of land. It is about 45 minutes north of Port Elizabeth. The park includes the Zuurberg Mountains and the Sundays River Valley. The original park was founded in 1931 in order to provide a sanctuary for the 11 remaining elephants in the area. The area surrounding the park was vast farmland, and many of the elephants were killed because they destroyed the vegetation of the farmers. Another blog post will go into more detail about our safari--but it was awesome!
On day 4 of the road trip, we left Port Elizabeth and drove back west along the N2 toward Tsitsikamma. We spent a few hours doing a zip-lining excursion through the treetops of the Tsitsikamma forest. This excursion was called the Tsitsikamma Canopy Tour, which is the first zip-lining canopy tour to be built in South Africa. It was very rainy this entire day, but the rain only added to the canopy experience! Zipping down the slides went faster in the rain, and the forest was so lush and green in the rain. The rain also brought out the true forest smell that was lovely! After the Tsitsikamma canopy tour, we drove up north to Oudtshoorn, where we spent the night.
On the last day of our road trip, we drove through the winding mountain roads outside Oudtshoorn. This was truly amazing. Since it rained the whole day before, the mountains were foggy in the morning and were absolutely stunning. We drove through the mountains to the Cango Caves, where we did a short tour through the large "rooms" within the caves. The Cango Caves were really beautiful with lots of stalactite and stalagmite formations. After exploring the caves, it was time for our road trip to come to an end. Instead of heading back to the N2, we took some smaller highway routes to drive through new scenery, which of course, was also beautiful. We drove through more lush mountains, some desert-like cactus-covered mountains, and the wineland region.
As we drove, we could see the foggy, misty mountains in the distance. But, soon we were able to drive through them, which was even more stunning.
The drive was amazing.
:)
I wanted to touch the clouds.
I could have stayed here forever.
My fairytale home.
The winding roads we got to drive! :)
OSTRICH! hehehehe.
I think she wanted to eat me...
More baboons came out from the mountains! There were baby baboons riding on the backs of some of them, which was adorable. And one baby was hanging from the mother's stomach, drinking the milk. Precious. :)
So, there you have it folks. That is the recap of our road trip to the Eastern Cape! Sounds super fun, right?! It really was amazing. If you ever have the opportunity to visit South Africa, I highly recommend it--the scenery throughout the whole country is amazing! Truly stunning. But, before I finish this post, I just wanted to share a few more thoughts about our drive besides the description of the scenery.
First of all--I got to drive on the LEFT side of the road! Which was awesome, actually. I was a bit anxious about driving on the left side of the road, and driving while sitting on the right side of the car, but it was actually quite easy and felt pretty natural after no time at all. I was nervous that I would unconsciously want to drift back to the right side of the road, but didn't find that to be the case at all. Most of our drive was on highways and main routes, so the drive itself was quite easy and simple. However, the way that passing slower cars on the highway was a little different from how we pass in the States. Most of the highway was one lane traffic, so the slower vehicle would shift into the shoulder of the road to allow you to pass. I found this to be very courteous and so friendly, as compared to some of the aggressive road-raging drivers in the States. What was really interesting, was that people did this passing maneuver even if there was oncoming traffic in the next lane--if you put on your hazard lights, the oncoming cars knew to also shift toward their shoulder as well. At first, I was a bit cautious and scared to do this type of passing, but it was a very smooth system that worked quite well! Also, since many parts of the highway passed through mountains, the highway would often open to two lanes for the uphill portions to allow cars to pass trucks and vehicles that accelerate slowly up hills.
Secondly, I just want to comment on the high quality of all the roads during our journey! The highways were so well maintained, and the pavement was SO smooth. It was wonderful. I think the pavement stays nicer here since it doesn't snow, and without the freezing water and salt to crack and erode the pavement, it stays much smoother than the roads back in the States. But, wow, it was so nice! Also, instead of paying police officers to "hide" along the highway roads with radar guns to catch speeding drivers, they have traffic cameras posted at various intervals to catch speeders. I think this is a cost-effective method for maintaining traffic. However...I think I may have gotten caught by one of the traffic cams speeding! EEK. Somehow, I am not surprised, I inherited my mom's lead foot. But, still, I would potentially get a speeding ticket in another country. Only me. Monique said that if the camera did catch me and not the car behind or in front of me, they may send the car rental company a speeding ticket for me in the mail. However, this can take weeks, so I am just going to cross my fingers and hope a ticket doesn't come my way! Shame on me...
Lastly, I just wanted to share some thoughts about hitch-hiking. At various points during our drive along the highways, we would see a large variety of hitch-hikers and pedestrians. It was very strange to me because it felt like the hitch-hikers or pedestrians would appear out of nowhere. In the middle of the mountains, or forests, or fields that stretched on for what seemed like miles, a person or few people would be walking along the highway--women, men, children; it was a variety. It made my heart sad as I wondered where these people came from, where they were going, and if no one picked them up, where they would sleep for the night and if they would be safe and warm. We passed through towns and small cities, and just on the outskirts of these middle-class vicinities, we would see poor shack villages; there is such a stark difference between the quality of life and cost of living for people in the proper towns and in the shacks. At the end of a work day, we would see people trying to hitch-hike back to their shack village from the main town. When driving in the mornings, we would see young children, who should have been in school, walking into the woods and mountains with bows and arrows or fishing poles. It makes me sad that for many families, their children must hunt for food to eat, instead of attend primary school. :( But, it was positive to see that many pick-up trucks and larger trucks often stopped to pick up the hitch-hikers to help them get home at the end of the work day. This seemed very hospitable to me, but it was also a bit sad to see 7 or 8 people crammed in the bukkie of a truck. It was especially sad to see people walking along the highway in the middle of no where at night or in the rain. We would often see these people walking along parts of the highway that were near no houses, no shacks, and no civilization; so it begged me to think of where these people would end up, where their destination was, if they had one. Some food for thought, eh?
Alrity, well this was the very lengthy post summing up our road trip from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth, and back! :) The journey was truly amazing and unforgettable. In the next couple posts, I will describe our experiences at Cape Agulhas, Seaview Game & Lion Park, Addo Elephant Park, and Oudtshoorn. Happy to report we had a safe road trip! :)
--Kaity
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