South Africa
We flew out to Cape Town at the end of November, when the UK was having the really bad weather spell with lots of snow. We arrived to lovely blue skies and temperatures in the mid twenties - what a welcome!
We spent five nights in the centre of Cape Town which was a great location for exploring the surrounding areas. We visited the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront area with its abundance of tourist shops, shopping malls and numerous bars and restaurants. You can enjoy a meal and drink sat by the water’s edge whilst watching all the sea faring vessels passing you by.
We went on the open top red bus tour which took us all around the city area and up to the Table Mountain cable car station. We were lucky that the sun was shining and that we were able to go up in the cable car that day, as Table Mountain is renowned for having what they call the table cloth on, when it is shrouded in clouds and the cable car may not operate. When we reached the summit we walked half way across the mountain, which has spectacular views over the city and down to Cape Point.
We hired a car during our visit and drove down to the Cape and climbed up to the lighthouse with its amazing views over the Atlantic and the Cape of Good Hope. On the way back from that trip we went to see the penguins at Boulders, a town overlooking False Bay.
The next part of the trip took us to the wine lands of Stellenbosch for a two night stay. We went on a small organised tour to some of the numerous wineries of Paarl and Franshoek, beautiful countryside and lots of wine tasting.
We then headed down to the seaside town of Hermanus, famous for the Southern Right Whale, although it was just about the end of the migrating season, where we were lucky enough to see one in the bay. We also spotted dolphins around the bay in De Kelders.
We headed north then to the pretty town of Swellendham which has a lot of Dutch influence in their buildings, and then our next stop was at a lovely guest house on an Ostrich farm just outside Oudtshoorn, where we visited the farm and saw Ostrich chicks just four days old, one of which my husband held in his hand. We drove about an hour to the Cango Caves with magnificent stalagmites and stalactites that were millions of years old.
Back down to the coastal town of Kynsna for our next leg of the trip where we stayed for three days. We visited wonderful beaches including Plettenberg Bay and got fantastic views from the heads that shelter the Knysna lagoon.
Our final part of the trip was at the private game reserve of Shamwari where we spent three nights. Shamwari is about a one hour drive the east side of Port Elizabeth. We stayed in one of the lodges known as Long Lee Manor, where we had a lovely suite overlooking uninterrupted views of the reserve, the hills and the wildlife. We went out on five games drives during our stay - they take you out at about 05.30am for around three hours and again in the afternoon about 4pm for another three hours.
Among the animals we saw were a pride of Lions, Cheetahs, Giraffe, Elephants, the endangered White Rhino and Black Rhino, Buffalo, Hippos, Zebras, Hyenas, various Antelope and much more. We watched two young male Cheetahs hunting for food, on one occasion they had just made a kill and were enjoying their meal of Springbok!
On the reserve there is also the famous Born Free Foundation rescue centre where we saw lions and leopards that were now safe from the terrible places they were living previously, often in appalling conditions.
We had a fantastic trip and would certainly go back to South Africa again, the people were all very friendly, eating out is very reasonable, and we experienced wonderful varied scenery.
Please feel free to contact me if you would like any more information on my trip.
