On Friday afternoon we set off with Dean in the Venture. The first place we went to was Sani Pass in the Drakensberg. We stayed in a backpackers for Friday and Saturday night. The first night we arrived we were starving so drove down the road to the hotel to have dinner, it was the most expensive meal we have ever had and the worse, dean made up his money in bread rolls. We arrived late on the Friday night and on Saturday we went up Sani Pass to Lesotho which is a country in the middle of South Africa. To get there you have to go up in a 4x4, which was quite exciting especially when the path got icy and the car started to slide. The country is 70% mountainous and the place was covered in snow, we stopped on a frozen river and skated around and the snow came up to my knee! There was a women in our 4x4 who was freaking out completely which was worrying her kids. On the was back she wanted to get out and walk instead of being in the 4x4. Just as we passed them the driver lent out and told her that it was safe to get back in now and just as he said that the back end slide into her…she screamed and broke down into tears. We also visited a woman who lived there in her traditional one roomed round house and she gave us bread and beer.
On the Sunday we drove to another part of the Drakensburg. Rob ran over a dear.
We stayed in this really nice lake side cottage. We screamed when we saw it, compared to the back packers having our own cottage was amazing. And the location of it was so picturesque. It was a small thatched cottage with two bathrooms, decent size rooms, a fire and a spacious kitchen. There was a lake just in front surrounded by mountains and we had our own rowing boat that came with the cottage. The days there were spent hanging out, reading, making the most of our amazing beds and I had a bath! We also visited a falcon show, which freaked me out, not impressed by hench vultures being able to roam around freely. We stayed there from Sunday until Wednesday morning.
Wednesday we made our way to St Lucia via PMB. It was our final trip to the visa office to get our visa put into our passports. That was 5 attempts it took to get our visa’s how ridiculous is that. I don’t even want to think how long it would have taken if Jabu hadn’t of come with us. Compared to all the other trips this was a very short visit.
Then it was back on the road to St.Lucia. We arrived there late afternoon. We checked into our very basic flat before heading off to check out the beach…..which was 5 mins away and was gorgeous and un-spoilt.
For the next two days(Thursday, Friday) we had beach days one at Cape Vidal and the other was at the one around the corner. Cape Vidal is a huge national park which leads to the beach and has a protected coastline, so was beautiful and had hardly anyone on. On our way back through the reserve a leopard was just walking in the road infront of us it was wicked.
Sunday we left early-ish for Umfolozi which is a game park full of the big 5 and lots of deer. We spent two days there, staying in fancy ‘safari’ tents for the boys and round huts for the girls. The most scared night I’ve had in ages. Anna, Kate and I were sure we saw a lion on our way walking from the car to our room.
For two days we hardly saw anything apart from animals we’d seen already. So we saw Rhino, giraffes, warthogs, Wilderbeast, buffalo, Imparla, Imparla, Imparla [we decided that booing the boring animals was neccessary]. We were all getting really disheartened until the end of Monday when we saw and elephant it was massive! It came really close- we later learnt that they had had problems of elephants ruining cars. We were able to watch it for a good 15mins before it walked off into the bush.
Monday evening we went back to St. Lucia, the minute we got back we shoved our stuff into the flat (same flat as before) and we went straight to the beach for an evening swim. We’ve now been told that people shouldn’t swim on that coast as there are crocs there, being so close to an estuary. That was only a brief stay in St Lucia because we were flying to Cape town early Tuesday morning. At 2.30 we woke up having already packed the car and Dean drove us to Durban to catch our flight at 7.30am.
We arrived in Cape Town around 10am to be greeted by Cameron who is Kate’s next door neighbor’s brother. He showed us where we would be staying and took us to get our weeks shopping. He also gave us a tour of the peninsular (as he’s a tourist guide) the following day which was a superb way to see the coast line and to also hear some background knowledge. We had a visit up Table Mountain on the cable cart which was spectacular and got to see the Cape Town penguins.
For the rest of our time in Cape Town we saw the waterfront, had a girly evening, watched the rugby and went to church. We also met up with Shelia who is Kate’s next door neighbor’s sister. Both her and Cameron were so welcoming and helpful to us they made our stay in Cape Town amazing. On the Sunday Sheila took us around and we visited a craft market and then we went out to see seal island where there were tones of seals for some reason on a random rock in the middle of the sea!
We had the most amazing holiday and had a real mix of sights and experiences!
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home