Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Tuesday 31 January

One of Sharon's goals when planning the South Africa stage of the trip was to visit the Elephant Reserve just outside the village of Addo.

Although the park contains various wildlife other than elephants, we were only blessed with multiple sightings of warthogs (keep your comments to yourselves please!), and some antelope.
The park is big, with numerous 'loops' to drive along in the hope of catching sight of beasties, and so after a few hours of fruitless circling we decided to take a rest stop at a large watering hole surrounded by low-lying wooded hills.

Just as we were about to give up hope I spied movement up in the woods to our left; a train of elephants! As we waited we noticed knots of elephants approching from several directions, including a largish group of cows with their calves.

Our patience was rewarded when five of the bull elephants made their way down to the watering hole to begin drinking and bathing only 20 or so meters from where we sat in the car!

Incredibly pleased with this close-up sighting of elephants we decided to take our leave of the Reserve, but paused at a 'hide' on the way out where - to our surprise - we found a small elephant bathing itself completely oblivious to our presence!

Not much to write about Port Elizabeth itself except to say another good couple of nights accommodation to prepare us for the next leg.

Following our route along the coast through the Tsitsikamma region, we decided that Storms River Village would be a good place to stop for a night. No one could argue that this was a tranquil place, but as villages go this one was tiny! Our hostel was nice enough though, our bedroom being a detached rondavel (a small thatched round building), and the owner Danny was a very friendly and completely chilled-out dude from Switzerland.

On a recommendation from Danny we spent the afternoon on a woodland walk incorporating a visit to the 'Big Tree', essentially an enormous 800 year old Outeniqua Yellowwood tree.

The walk was very pleasant, and left us ready for a couple of beers and a good meal at the hotel in the village before we turned in for the night.

Before moving on to our next destination, Port Elizabeth, we took the opportunity to visit Storms River Mouth in the Tsitsikamma National Park.

After a hearty breakfast, we decided to do the Suspension Bridge and Lookout Trail, setting off fairly early before this popular path became too crowded and whilst it was still relatively cool. This was a fantastic walk taking us past sandy bays and coves and through woodlands, slowly climbing until we reached the suspension bridge which spans the river mouth itself. As expected, the views from the bridge in either direction were amazing but taking decent piccies was tricky as the bridge wobbled about (especially when we were on it!)

Once across the bridge the path climbed quite quickly, taking us through more woodland up the side of a cliff. Once at the top, we were afforded yet more spectacular views of the sea and the coastal paths back along the route we had taken.

With the temperature rising, we slowly made our way back to the car to continue on our travels, heading for Port Elizabeth.

Sunday 29th January was a fantastic day. We headed off early from Knysna to the nearby 'Monkeyland', a sanctuary to around 400 monkeys which due to interaction or exploitation by man cannot be easily released into the wild.

Our knowledgeable guide spoke softly but with passion about his charges, and with obvious distaste for the uncaring pet owners, circuses and street entertainers who were responsible for plight of these animals. Besides giving us the opportunity to see some relatively rare species (ring-tailed lemur, anyone?) in a natural habitat, we were also able to cross a rope suspension bridge high in the tree canopy that was literally festooned with monkeys!

Next door to Monkeyland was a huge aviary called Eden. This is home to a huge range of species - all of which appeared to be hiding from us at first (with the exception of a particularly mischievious white Macaw which planted itself on Sharon's back as soon as she arrived and had to be extracted with some force!)
The aviary turned out to be enormous and we saw (and in some cases were attacked by) an extraordinary number of different and largely beautiful birds.

Finally for Sunday we took a trip to an elephant sanctuary. This really was an unforgettable experience (I know, I'm going to do that phrase to death!). But here, we got to walk the elephants by holding their trunks, and were able to feed them and basically get closer to them than you would think possible.

We'll showyou the photo of the inside of an elephant's mouth later! To know that these animals were not being exploited and were being cared for properly in a secure environmnent made the trip all the more special.

Knysna (pronounced nice-na) really is nice. And not least because we took a tour of the local real-ale brewery - Mitchells. We like brewery tours even more than we like caves. However won't dwell on the great time we had there or the inevitable bag full of take-outs we bought (and drank soon afterwards).

One of the things we really wanted to do in South Africa was to take the 67 kilometer journey from Knysna to George on the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe steam train.

The route takes in every kind of terrain imaginable; through steep rock cuttings and forests, across expanses of water and alongside picturesque bays. Sensibly, we decided to have our carriage window open for the entire journey and thus emerged at George Station covered from head to toe in soot! However, the journey has been one of the highlights of the trip so far.

Knysna itself is a charming provincial town situated on the edge of a lagoon, and is also famous for the 'Heads' - two sandstone cliffs which 'guard' the estuary leading to the lagoon.

Subterranea

We like caves. We have been in caves in a number of places; Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Barbados and maybe others. Thus, we jumped at a chance to visit the Cango Caves just outside Oudsthoorn.

This huge 20 million year-old network of caves was first used around 10,000 years ago as shelter by the Khoisan people. Nowadays, the caves provide yet another breathtaking diversion for tourists - the photos simply do not do justice to the majesty of these rock formations.

Sleepers

Wednesday 25 January we travelled to Mossel Bay. Apart from the natural beauty of the area, we were intrigued by our hostel - the Santos Express - which is a converted train 'parked' on the beach! Our room for two nights was a sleeper carriage; it was 'cosy' to say the least but comfortable, and nothing beats the sound of the Indian Ocean lapping against the nearby shore to send you off to sl..zzzzzz!

and Seals

For some reason we had slightly fuzzy heads on Thursday morning, and so felt that a bracing boat trip would be just the thing to blow away our hang-ov... sorry, cobwebs. A walk to the Port at Mossel Bay provided a trip to Seal Island. Amazingly, this 'island' is a relativily small outcropping of rock which is home to around 3000 seals - and boy! do 3000 seals crammed on a rock stink! Yep, very cute to look at but pass the gasmasks please.