Epic Adventure -- Day 29 -- 27/09/2012 -- Plettenberg Bay

We woke up early this morning, and drove straight into Plett for breakfast. Instead of opting for the commercial option of Wimpy and Mugg and Bean we went to their high street and found a little cake shop that served breakfast and each had a bacon and egg sandwich. After skipping mum we walked around the high street to kill time before my 11am facial. He facial was wonderful, I had a beautician called Rosie who used an array of techniques and products to make my face feel wonderful, it still does! Whilst there I had also asked them to book a hair cut for me, as my hair was in dire dire need of a trim!! A really good stylist by the name of Ryan cut it exactly as I wanted, not too much off and more definition in the layers :) whilst I was having my facial and hair cut Dan entertained himself by writing some of the blog posts from the previous days and looking at husky puppies in Scotland, as he is dying to have one when we get back.

As we had managed to lose the cable for the external hard drive, and it is the only means to get music for the wedding, we drove to the last computer shop we had spotted in the hopes that the hard drive didn't need some specialist connection that needed ordering. Luckily, it was a bog standard cable and we parted with R30 in exchange for entertainment at our wedding :D next stop was Spars bottle store Tops to buy Dan some bottles of J C Le Roux, as it was on offer for R40 and we had yet to see it under R50.

Back at the Dunes Dan spent the afternoon finishing his book whilst I watched the movie The Green Lantern. Our last walk on the beach was beautiful, just at sunset. Unfortunately we never spotted a whale or any dolphins, which are sighted often in the area. Once we got back to the house, the braai we had started earlier was about ready to cook on and we ate boerwors and baked butternut squash. Dan felt extremely ill, so I put him to bed and packed up all of our things for an easy and quick departure early tomorrow morning for the drive to Graaff-Reinet. Dan had asked reception earlier in the day if it was possible to have our inventory check in the evening some could get our R1000 deposit back, and also leave early the next day, to which he was told there was no issue with that. When I phoned them at half 9, the woman at reception told me that no one was available to do the check as it was very late, and yet that had just told us to ring before 10, which we had. After some coercion she asked me if we still had all our towels, which we had, so she asked me to come to reception to collect the deposit. Jenny - 1, The Dunes -0
:D

Epic Adventure -- Day 28 -- 26/09/2012 -- The Dunes & Kuerbooms Garage

Dan woke up this morning feeling a bit sick, so we took the morning slowly. The first thing we did at a reasonable time, about 8:00am, was to phone the garage and ask them what was happening with the car, as we had received no call the evening before as promised. The woman we got on the phone was less than helpful, she had no idea what was happening with the car, when Herman the mechanic was going to take a look at it, or when we could expect a phone call about what was wrong with it.

After showering and eating pizza for breakfast (yum!) we decked that as it was half 10 and we had not heard anything about the car yet we would walk to the garage and hopefully talk to someone with more than half a clue about what was happening in life. Our hopes were dashed when we arrive, our land rover was still outside and no one was about. The same dumb woman was in the reception area, and when asked what was happening we got the same glassy eyed look and 'I don't know' response. We also learned that the mechanic, Herman, had 'gone out' and she had no idea when he would be back. How frustrating!!! We decided to walk a little way down the road to where the river leads out to Plettenberg bay and the ferries operate to sit on the banks of the river to wait. After around half an hour we phoned again, and you guessed it, had to talk to the dumb woman again. However, progress had been made, Herman had taken Snolly out for a drive! Hurray!

After a little while longer we walked back down the road to the garage a d walked down to where we could see Snolly, just outside the work shop. Thankfully Herman was about to talk to!! The bad news is that he had no idea why she blew through coolant, she did the same for him that morning but now was running fine. She also had a pressure test to check for leaks, and the pressure in the system as fine. We left again to let him get on with looking at her, with the promise of a phone call in about an hour. We walked towards the Dunes and stopped at a little Cafe and shop called Thime and Again, where I had some juice and Dan enjoyed a very tasty Cornish pasty! About an hour past and we had still had no phone call so we decided to walk home and stop bothering them, mostly because Dan still felt ill.

We watched a couple of hours of the highlights of the ICC world 20/20 cricket (read, Dan watched the cricket, I fell asleep!) before we finally got a call from the garage! This time it was the same dumb woman, to tell us our car had been fixed. At this point we said, well what was wrong with it and what did I fix, because no body phoned us to talk to us about any work. She, of course, had no idea what had been done, and said that Herman had spoken to a Daniel about the work. Well he hadn't. Not being able to beat any more useful information out of the slow specimen of human, we just walked back to the garage, where we were presented with a bill of R638. For what, we asked? The bill charged us for a pressure test, a carbon test and for an hours labour plus vat. So we demanded that she ring Herman to find out what had been done to fix the issue in the car, to which we were told that he could find no problem, the car had not gone through any more coolant, and that was that. She did mention that the coolant could have been pushed out of the system of the cap was not put back on properly again after the last time we checked the level, but we really didn't appreciate a bill of £50 to be told to screw the cap on properly by a woman who probably couldn't tell her left foot from her right.

Finally we had wheels again!!! As the diesel level had severely gone down during Germans drives to test the land rover we drove into Plett to fill her up and also to book a facial for me for the next day, at a place that proved nearly impossible to find as it was about a mile down the road from where the sat nav and the phones gps told us it was! After booking the facial for 11am the next morning we drove home to eat a light dinner of salad asDan was still not feeling great, watch some more cricket and go to sleep.

Epic Adventure -- Day 27 -- 25/09/2012 -- Robberg Nature Reserve

So it seems we both needed some catch up sleep after the last few nights, which may explain why I slept for 12 hours and Dan slept for 16 hours. Wow did it feel good to get some rest. We managed to rouse ourselves at about 9:00 and decided we should probably do something with our day. As I had found out about it the day before, and it was number one on the trip advisor recommended list for this area, we chose to spend the day walking and hiking around Robberg nature reserve, a long peninsula jutting off the western side of Plettenberg Bay.

Since we had read that some of the trails are quite long and we may be walking for quite some time we stopped at Pick and Pay to get some supplies for a picnic lunch we would have along the way. We bought some break rolls, some cheese and some ham and Jenny sat in the back of the land rover and made some sandwiches before we left the car park. We then proceeded on to Robberg. The nature reserve is no doubt staffed and maintained by someone so they charge a small fee of R40 per person to enter, a bargain for what you get to experience once inside. You enter along a dirt road at the beginning of the peninsula and carry on up a brick paved road for 200 metres or so before coming to a small car park. From this car park you can embark on one of three different walking trails leading you through and around the peninsula. The shortest of which is only about 1.5km round trip, while the longest one is about 10km. We set off with the goal to do the longest route that takes you right to the point of the reserve.

Once we set out however we found this may be a very ambitious goal. The trails, if you could call them that, were often hard to distinguish from the bush growing around them and were often precariously perched on cliff faces with no railings or banisters preventing what seemed like inevitable falls. Nothing like these trails would be allowed to exist in the UK as health and safety would have a massive laugh before shutting them down. Here however you do things at your own risk and people do actually exercise something called common sense. The views from the cliff faces looking back on Plettenberg were fantastic and we often stopped on memorial benches along the way for frequent rests and drinks of water.

Once we reached the turn-around point for the shortest route we stopped and had a long-ish rest. This simple 800 meter trek along the cliff had taken more out of us than we expected. It was at this point that Jenny noticed a strange sound and we looked down to find maybe 100 seals gathered along the rocky shore below us! We continued on for quite some time until we arrived at the second turn around point. This second point is unusual because the rocky layout of the land gives way to a 50 meter wide stretch of sand running through the reserve. We walked along this stretch towards the Plett side of the reserve until we were confronted with the end of the sand and a 100 meter drop to the rocks and sea below. We decided this was as good a place as any to sit and have the lunch that we brought along. As we ate we noticed even more seals on the rocks below, so many so that the noise they made blended together and sounded like a busy pub setting rather than seals in the sea!

We finished our lunch and had a quick chat deciding if we would attempt the entire loop of the reserve or turn around at this point. We were both feeling a bit tired so decided to head back to the car via the other side of the peninsula. To get there we walked along the stretch of sand, away from the cliffs where we ate lunch and down a very steep sand embankment to a beach below. We found out later that the westerly winds and surf bring sediment onto the beach where it is carried by the wind through the sandy valley we walked along, eventually building the dunes/cliffs where we ate lunch before it is blown into the sea on the east side of the reserve. I stopped and collected some of the sand for my dad's sand collection (He's a geologist. That's my vain attempt to explain his strange behaviour ;D)

We walked around the large expanse of beach for a few minutes, taking some photos of the scenery and some shag that we spotted. (alas no paper bags) We then got asked by another hiker where the trail went from here. An easy answer we thought until we had a look ourselves. We knew which direction we needed to head, and we could see the trail about 50 meters above our elevation and 300 meters away but it didn't look as if we could get there from here. The answer, rather shockingly, is that the trail headed along the rocks and cliffs precariously close to the pounding surf. The trail was routinely as little as a foot wide and the rocks were wet, slippery and not always fixed.

Along this treacherous path we found the entrance to cave marked with a sign describing that 3000-4000 years ago this cave was inhabited by the Khoisan people. Jenny wanted to have a snoop about but the sign warned about destroying artifacts if you entered the cave, and so for once Jenny listened and we passed the cave without disturbance :D. We found our way back to the car and had a short look at the visitors centre boards before heading to Pick and Pay for more braai supplies.

When we got to the shops and turned the car off the radiator continued to run once the car was turned off, and when we opened the hood to see what was going on we found out that the car had devoured her way through 6.5L worth of coolant! After filling her up we rang Doug who found a service station near us called Kuerbooms service station (we always read that word as KABOOM, not exactly a reassuring name for a garage :D). We sat in Mugg and Bean and had a drink each whilst we waited for Snolly to cool back down, I had a frozen margarita to calm my nerves.

After driving around for over 30kms trying to find the garage, we were eventually pointed to the first road we were initially on, oops! we left the landy there to be looked at, and walked the 2kms back to our house at The Dunes, thankfully it was not far away. We went to the restaurant for dinner, I had another two frozen margaritas (only R30 a piece, and they were huge!!) and a chicken pizza, and Dan ate fish and calamari washed down with a few beers. Not a bad way to end a long and eventful day!

Epic Adventure -- Day 26 -- 24/09/2012 -- Plettenberg Bay, Elephant Sanctuary

Unfortunately we had yet another bad nights sleep last night, this time not the fault of our neighbours but instead of the howling wind and the fact that the house, although beautiful, is probably made of plastic. Half the night if felt like it was going to be blown down by the wind and the rest of the night as thigh it would be torn down by the torrential rain that came later on. The rain actually helped us get a little sleep though, as even though it was stupidly loud, it was a constant noise and as such didn't startle us out of the light sleep we had fallen into, which is what kept happening with the wind. I really can't fault the bed though, it is so so very comfy and is a small saving grace when we can't sleep that at least we are comfortable.

A slow morning ensued after the rubbish night of sleep, and it was only at about 10 am that we left the house. What we had decided to do today was something I found via the trip advisor app on Dan's phone, and that was to visit the nearby Elephant Sanctuary to walk with and learn about elephants. The trip advisor app for the iPhone is amazing, if you don't already have it you need to get it, as it allows you to find the best attractions, cafes, restaurants and obviously accommodation nearest to you. I have always loved elephants since I was little, probably because my mum loves them too, and so I convinced Dan that it was worth the R325 per person for the hours experience. I think it really was!

When we arrived we had about a 25 minute wait until the next walk went out with the Ellie's, so we were offered tea and coffee and walked around their shop whilst we waited. When the group before us left we were walked to a platform and told about the Ellie's. There are 5 in total, three from Botswana and two from the Kruger national park. The ones from Kruger were breaking down fences and stealing the neighbouring farms food stuffs so would have been put down if not for being re-homed at the sanctuary. The three from Botswana were the elephants that they allowed us to meet where the Botswana trio, Morula, Thandi and Jabu, because the two from Kruger are a bit younger and can be more naughty! Before we got to walk with the elephants they asked us if we had any questions, the only questions came from one accusing woman who seemed to make it her mission to attack/question the handlers methods and care of the animals, quite aggressive and very annoying. Always wanting to be first in these types of situations I jumped at the first chance to go walk with them. Three of us were lead over to the Ellie's, I was given to Morula and her trainer told me to stand to the left hand side of her and put my right hand back behind me with the palm open, and she would lay her trunk in my hand. It was so magical!! We were told not to close our fingers as elephants breath 70% with their trunks and only 30% through their mouths, so we didn't want to smother them. She kept her trunk in my hand and pushed me from behind, she was really strong but also very gentle at the same time.

Dan's turn was next, and he lead Thandi through the Ellie's track into the bush, whilst the rest of the group took a different trail, as if they got scared and bolted we didn't all want to be following behind them. Thandi still had all of her trunk whilst the other two had lost the tips of theirs to snares back in Botswana. Because she still had the 'fingers' at the end of her trunk, Dan said she held onto his fingers whilst he walked in front of her, how sweet!!! They then demonstrated some of the actions elephants do in the wild, Morula showed us how they go on their knees to dig in the ground with their tusks for roots. Jabu sat and lay down for treats, because they lie down to go to sleep. Dan thought that watching it sit, lie down and then get back up again made it look like a giant dog, which it kind of did! Elephants only sleep for about four hours per day, the rest of the time they spend eating! Thandi showed us how they flap their ears when they get irritated by flies or when they get angry, if you see an elephant near you doing that it's usually safest to back away.

Dan and I then got to go up to Thandi and rub her trunk whilst we were shown her ridiculously long eyelashes, to protect her eyes from flies and dust and her tear ducts, which are not situated in her eyes as you may expect but on the side of her head! Elephants ear canals are also not behind their massive ear flap as you may also assume, instead they are right in the front of it. The ear flap is very very soft, and is used to swat away flies that bother her :) we the got to stroke her tummy, it's more soft than you may imagine, but still really tough at 2cm's thick. Their tails are also very tough, with short hairs at the end, and it's used as a fly swatter :D

They are such beautiful and gentle animals, it was a very magical,and humbling experience to be able to see them, touch them and experience them up close. If we could get a pet elephant we would!! I'm sure it woud make great friends with Mo and Snuggie, dont you? At this point they showed us how the elephants tend to hold each others tails when they are fording rivers. The handlers then let another group of visitors walk the elephants back out of the bush and back to the field where they spend most of their time. Once we arrived back in the field they brought out some bowls of sliced oranges and sweet potatoes for us to feed to the elephants. The two elephants that were missing the end of their trunks had to grab the food by wrapping their trunks around it, while Thandi could be fed by placing the food directly into her trunk.

Once we were finished at the elephant sanctuary Jenny wanted to have a look at a giant enclosed attraction called 'birds of Eden' two minutes up the road. The few acres of net enclosed forest looked interesting but at R240 a person we decided to pass. We saw a quaint looking shop on the way back to the main road called 'the mohair mill shop' where we stopped and had a look about. It was a strange collection of shops and they even had some goat in a pen nearby, one which wasn't very friendly to Jenny haha. There was a small cafe attached to the shops where a man was playing the piano so well we thought it was a recording! About this time we realised it was getting to be lunch time so we headed into Plettenberg Bay to stop at Pick and Pay for braai supplies.

We picked up a few steaks, some butternut squash, some more salad supplies and more fire wood. It is after all national braai day, so we thought we should celebrate. The braai took a little longer than we thought to reduce to coals and so we only started cooking at about 16:00. The food was very good and just what we needed. I was feeling a bit tired though so told Jenny I was going to lay down for a nap. She wanted to head to the resort bar for a frozen margarita and I told her we would leave in an hour after my nap. Jenny tried to wake me up at 18:00 but it was no use, I was gone for the night! She occupied herself for another hour or so watching tv and typing up blog posts until she too succumbed to sleep quite early.

Epic Adventure -- Day 25 -- 23/09/2012 -- Plettenberg Bay

We woke up this morning at about 7, but thankfully of our own accord as the noisy neighbours had yet to surface. We did hear them puttering about half an hour or so later, but not nearly as loudly as the day before. As it was a Sunday we figured there would probably not be a whole lot open as usual, so we chose to have a very slow and relaxing day. Once we were up and showered we drive into Plett and chose the Mugg and Bean for breakfast, mainly because they offer 30 minutes of free wifif, and we were falling behind on the blog! Dan opted for eggs benedict again (I think he is going through a phase) and I had French toast. While we were eating, these two little brown birds, or LBJ's kept flying in and strutting about as though they owned the place, nicking any scraps off the floor they could get. The waitresses vere very unphased by the birds, so they must be regular visitors. I may have fed them some of my French toast!

After updating the blog and saving those of you who had blog withdrawal, we wandered off to look at all the shops had to offer, as it had just started to rain. I saw a really lovely fluffy white bath mat in Mr Price home that I really wanted to buy, I clearly have some sort of house nesting syndrome, exasperated by the fact that I have no house! :D Dan convinced me we didn't need the bath mat, so we walked on and stopped in Bargain books. We bought a new book for Dan to read as he had devoured the Michael Chrichton one, and we drooled over a few home DIY books too. In Woolworths I found a packet of biscuits I used to love, called Oat Crunchies and we swiftly bought those. You can clearly tell we are having a thrilling day, and one which is obviously thoroughly entertaining for you, the reader ;)

We also found a pair of trainers for me as we had chucked my pair away when we had the bag weight issue in Glasgow (they leaked anyway), and got more fire wood. Once we got back to the Dunes, we had a fire for four hours, and Dan booked the remainder of the ostrich steaks for us that we had with more salad. unfortunately we have no photo evidence as it is so freaking fast, but we also keep being visited by this cute little shrew, that darts back and forth from the road to the hedge In our garden.

As our day had been very lazy and relaxing so far, we decided to head to the resorts bar for some drinks. I ordered a long island ice tea, that was reallystrong and really long, and you can see how far I had gotten once Dan started on his second drink! As we neared the end of my long island ice tea we felt slightly peckish and so opted to order one of their pizzas. Sunday's happen to be 20% off pizza days, and so the pizza came to a shocking R40, for this enormous, very loaded and very tasty pizza! We enjoyed it so much we ordered another for take away to eat later that night and for breakfast the next day. I then chose a frozen margarita from the menu, that was also really big, and we skyped my parents and Dan's mum for a few minutes before it was time to head back to our house to sleep.

Epic Adventure -- Day 24 -- 22/09/2012 -- Plettenberg Bay

So our first night in the lovely Dunes Resort was not as great as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the house is fantastic, beautifully decorated and the bed is super comfortable, but we have the loudest and most obnoxious bunch of Afrikaans people next door, their main bedroom is next to ours and it may as well be sellotaped to my ear! We cannot blame them for being loud when we first lay down to sleep last night, it was only 19:00. But their loudness at 23:00 and at 6:00 this morning was a bit much, including their singing at 7:45.

Jenny was so irate that we went to see reception first thing after we had a shower. Reception was less than helpful, saying that they are very full so they would speak to the people and if they were not quiet tonight then they would see if they could move us; not the best of solutions. To take her mind off of the situation I convinced Jenny to head into Plettenburg for an early breakfast. Jeremy, our host at Coombs Camp, had recommended a place for breakfast called 'The Lookout Deck' with wonderful views of the bay and sea. Jenny had a massive omelette and I had eggs benedict. They were both delicious, but would have been better suited to a mid morning breakfast as they proved a little much for us at 9 am :D I noticed a sign outside the pub advertising a 3.5 litre yard of ale for R134! It's a shame we are only here for breakfast!

Once we finished our meal, we walked around to the other side of the deck and walked on the small beach for a while, looking out to sea in the hopes of seeing some dolphins or whales, but saw nothing. Oh well, we will see them before we leave I guess. We then attempted to drive back down to the shopping centre we saw earlier but instead stumbled upon their main shopping area so stopped for a wander around. We waked around the main street looking for interesting shops, nothing in particular. I found a bookshop where I could buy a copy of Michael Chrichton's 'Micro', the very last of his books. I had always enjoyed reading his books while on holiday and 'Micro' is the last one I will ever get to read. I found out a bit late (November 2010) that he passed away half way through the writing of this book in 2008.

There was a place down the way selling really interesting wooden frames, all with slightly different designs on them. I wanted to buy one of them but the lady who owns the stall was not around, so I guess we will go back. There was a little shop that sold cow hides, and one was a brown and white skin that was really beautiful, but Dan convinced me that we can probably find one at a later stage that I like just as much, but that we won't have to carry around with us for ages :) we poked around a few of the other shops and looked at what property we would want to but, before driving down to Pick n Pay to buy things for a braai; ostrich steaks, salad and haloumi cheese, some fire wood and some more J C Le Roux.

When we got back to the house I lay down for a nap, being still quite irritable and tired from being woken up this morning, and Dan sat outside to read his book. I'm not quite sure how long I was asleep for but it was a good couple of hours as once I resurfaced Dan had ploughed on through about 300 pages of the 530 so far! He graciously took a break from his reading to take an exploratory walk around the Dunes and found a road with a lot of dead sticks on one side that are perfect for kindling for the rest of our time here, so we grabbed some of that and came home to make a fire for our braai. I wasn't very hungry, so Dan ate three ostrich steaks and had some salad and haloumi cheese, whilst I just had the cheese :D

Epic Adventure -- Day 23 -- 21/09/2012 -- Kenton-on-Sea to PlettenbergBay

The Dunes Lounge Area

Waking up this morning our only task was to pack up the cottage and prepare for our trip to Plettenburg Bay. As with most mornings this trip we awoke at about 7:00 without setting any type of alarm. We knew we had to be out by 10:00 so we slowly roused ourselves and began packing the car. We both decided that, before undertaking a four hour excursion, we should stop in the same breakfast establishment as the morning before to fuel ourselves with gratuitous amounts of caffeine before setting off down the road.

It was at this breakfast spot that we managed to get a huge amount of free wifi that allowed us to catch up on these posts. We sat for about an hour and half using the Internet while we had one drink a piece, a bit cheeky me thinks! While Jenny was uploading some photos to the blog I walked down to spar to get us some ham for sandwiches on the road.

The Dunes Main Bedroom

Once our blog posts were uploaded we decided it was time to get going and so set the sat nav to Plettenbergbaai or Plettenburg Bay, only 325km away. I noticed before we set off that sometime along the road today the car would pass 130,000km, and we would pass 2,000km on our trip odometer. I told Jenny a story about having a road trip book for kids when I was younger that stated when a car passed each 10,000km the driver was to buy everyone a soda (although, much to my amusement I remember reading that phrase as 'the driver must buy everyone a sofa' !?!?) And once the car hit this milage we pulled off at a BP station so I could buy Jenny her requisite drink/furniture.

Once we resumed our driving I was on a mission to make the trip as quickly and as smoothly as possible and so had no intention of stopping for the remaining 240km. Because I have spent the past 4 years in the UK and the previous 18 years in the eastern US I have not experienced many long stretches of empty road, well I have, but not quite this long or this empty. I know South Africa is not the most sparsely populated country but it does have some mighty empty stretches of road and gives you a whole new appreciation for how large a country this really is.

We occupied some of the time by taking about Bill Bryson's book 'Down Under' in which he spends most of the book trying to convey to the reader how large Australia actually is. I told Jenny some of the anecdotes involving scale and I soon came to understand why he writes most of his book on this topic. As we pressed on I noticed something peculiar about our GPS, despite traveling 15km/hr over the speed limit the GPS still had us arriving at 2:16. Soon it became evident that the GPS was not going to tell us the actual arrival time no matter how fast we traveled. I even managed to get the machine to tell us it was going to take 25 minutes to cover the last 28km at 118km/hr!? It probably has something to do with the GPS not being allowed to tell you your ETA if you go over the speed limit.





We arrived at the Dunes Resort just after 2, and checked in. It seems in an RCI resort you need to be given quite a few pieces of paper and part with a deposit before they will give you your key, perhaps because we were basically given a lovely two bedroom house for the week! It is lovely, very well decorated, similar to Dan's parents beach house in the States, and the two double doors downstairs open out onto our own lawn, car port and braai area. We both set to unpacking as soon as we arrived, and in less than half an hour I had all the clothes in the dresser and Dan had all of downstairs sorted. Afterwards we decided to have a wander down to the beach, only a 5 minute walk from our house. The view from the deck the Dunes has built is brilliant, and apparently a great place for whale and dolphin watching, a common sight along these shores. We were not able to see any so we just took a walk on the beach, inspected a weird looking jelly fish and Jenny walked in the sea which is really cold!


After our return to the house Dan started on a bottle of wine, whilst I relaxed in front of the tv. About an hour later (and more than half the bottle!) two ladies came by the house, giggling together, and when they came to the door they asked us if they could please get their ice creams out of the freezer. It turns out that they were the maids who prepared our house that morning and had forgotten their treats here, good thing we hadn't eaten them :D

As we hadn't gone to the shops before arriving, we decided to head to their restaurant for dinner, where Dan had fish and chips and I had a chicken and bacon tosted sandwich. They were both yummy, and so was my fresh pineapple juice. They have a swimming pool outside the bar, and it looked very inviting whilst sitting next to the fire, but it's probably also pretty cold at the moment! Dan was a bit drunk at this stage, after so much wine and a beer so we toodled off home for some more tv and then off to sleep pretty early!

Epic Adventure -- Day 22 -- 20/09/2012 -- Kenton-on-Sea

Another early start for Dan and I this morning, mostly due to me feeling ill last night, which made us go to bed quite early. Thankfully the fever I had is now gone! After having showers, we drove off on this glorious morning in search of the cafe we found yesterday but were turned away as they were closing. What amazing view they have! We chose the table in the corner which was closest to the views and the sunshine. Dan ordered the full English breakfast (becoming the norm for this trip!) and I just asked for a couple of pieces of toast, still not feeling too great. We got to chatting to a lovely woman who was sitting at the table next to us, and it turns out that the cafe is really new, so we were pleased we had discovered it.

Spar, just a few metres away, was our next stop where we bought two six packs of beer and a bottle of champagne, and set off in search of Lance who was our saviour from yesterday. The drive to the Kariega game reserve only took about 15 minutes, and along the way we saw some more impala, nyala, and some zebra too! At the gates to the reserve the guard was very confused by our arrival and tried to contact Lance by radio to find out where he was. After getting just static, he sent us off back down the road to where he thought lance might be, which was essentially an unsign posted gate. We rang the bell and the gate opened, and after a few minutes drive we happened upon a workshop. A guy came out she. We called and asked for Lance, but as Lance wasn't there we left the drinks with him. We knew it was a safe bet to do so as Lance obviously worked there too, after we were greeted with the phrase "are you the two who got stuck yesterday?". As we drove off we heard him happily exclaim to his mates in the workshop "hey look what I've got!!" I hope Lance gets a look in :D

Once we dropped the beers and champagne with Lances co-workers we had about 2 hours to waste before we headed back to the house for lunch with the Lardner-Burkes. Jenny suggested that we take Di's advice and have a walk on the local beaches. Kenton-on-Sea is a bit of an unusual town because it is located on a contained peninsula formed by two rivers, so for such a small town it has an amazing length of beach. We spent the next hour walking along one of the safer, straighter stretches of beach and climbing some of the enormous sand dunes. The sand dunes reminded me of the links courses I played in Scotland, such a shame that there are not more golf courses here; lack of demand I suppose.

Once we had our very nice walk along the beach we returned to the house to have lunch with our hosts. And what a lunch it was; delicious home-made quiche, salad, avocado, olive ciabatta, potato salad and mud pie pudding, a type of millionaires shortbread. The food seemed to go on and on! It was great to have a chance to catch up with John and Di over the lovely lunch, and let them know what we are going to be up too on our travels. They have also just bought another home, with a view to eventually selling the larger home they currently live in and moving in to the newer one later on. What they are doing in the mean time is decorating the new place to be a B & B as they currently run a very successful one out of their own home (where we are staying), so this will simply be an extension of that endeavour.

The view from the deck

Di took us over to the new house, it's simply lovely! They are converting the bush next door to be a garden for the home, and it has a great view of Kenton. After our tour of the house we decided to go back to the cottage, as I still wasn't feeling 100% and just wanted to lie down for a little while.

Around dinner time we roused ourselves (aka I tried to stop feeling sorry for my self) and we drove 10km's outside of Kenton to a small restaurant called Stanley's, on a cliff overlooking the Bushmans river flowing out to sea. The view was spectacular, and we got there just before sunset. They put us on a table on the deck, Dan ordered fish and I had some chips. There was an adorable fluffy black cat that decided to make friends with us, possibly because I kept feeding it our food, much to Dan's irritation! The cat ate chips, some cream sauce, peas, butternut squash and fish, it had a better dinner than I did :D After our dinner Dan drove us home, for another early night.

Epic Adventure -- Day 21 -- 19/09/2012 -- Grahamstown to Kenton-on-Sea

Today we had to wake up a bit earlier than the day before because we were due to meet Jeremy to hand over the keys and the payment for our stay at Coombs Camp. Our alarm was set for 8:00 and we spent the next hour frantically packing our suitcases and loading up the car for our departure. Our stay at Jeremy's accommodation has been one of the highlights of our trip so far and he has been very helpful and generous.




Jeremy arrived a little after 9:00 to see us off. He mentioned that he saw quite a few of the animals on the farm near the alternate route to the camps exit and suggested we take that route to the gate to catch a glimpse. We heeded his advice and on the way back got some excellent views of the herds in the fields. We also spotted the strangest looking bird running through the field ahead of us at one point. It looked as though it was a dinosaur, standing about 4 foot tall and running much like a raptor Jenny and I were amazed by the birds colourful and unusual nature. As we got closer to it it took flight with a huge wingspan. We had no idea what kind of bird it was until we asked John Lardner Burke in Kenton, and he told us it was a Secretary-bird and that we were lucky to be able to see it!

We left the camp and headed into town to meet Kate Bryan at Wimpy for breakfast. We felt terrible because we told Kate that we would be with her just after 9:00 but due to our overestimation of swiftness we joined her just before 10:00. She assured us this was of no issue because she had plenty of university work to keep her busy while she waited. Kate has been studying physics and philosophy at Rhodes for the past 5 years and much of our ensuing conversation was based on this fact. Most of our discussion with Kate focused on the delight from both sides when we found out we all religiously categorise ourselves as Jedi. The 2001 UK census was the highlight of a dubbed 'Jedi movement' where all those incensed by the government asking their religion, or all those opposed to religion, were to give their religion as Jedi, nearly 500,000 people did.

We had a long and fun chat over breakfast before Kate suggested we retire to her house a few minutes drive away to carry on conversing and catching up. We followed Kate on her motorbike to her house situated not far from her parents house overlooking most of Grahamstown. There we joined Kate in the sun on her front patio and chatted at length over coffee. I talked with Kate for quite a while about specifics of my physics course, much to Jenny's dismay, and encouraged her to ask her nuclear physics professor a question that I had asked Chris Hooley during my studies to see what their answer was. Mostly, why when you examine the hyper-fine structure splitting of an atoms energy levels can solve for the energy levels by approximating a stationary electron and an orbiting nucleus when this is clearly a violation of relativity (consequences involving the approximation cannot be valid because the acceleration of the orbiting electron defines frame of reference)? I think you can see why Jenny didn't like our chat :)

We left Kate's after quite a long chat and promised her we would return in a few weeks. We then turned out sights to the drive to Kenton-on-Sea about 45 minutes away. About 30 minutes into the trip Jenny said she was feeling a bit ill and asked me to pull over so she could have some fresh air. I stopped along the side of the road and Jenny walked about for a few minutes still feeling ill, so she decided to get a thermometer out of the car. She momentarily forgot which way you pressed the door lock to unlock the car so proceeded to open the passenger door, press the lock button, and close the door. Thereby locking us out of the car on the side of the road with the keys still in the ignition and the car still running. Brilliant.

We tried everything to get into the car. All the doors were locked, the sunroofs were both closed, as were the windows, the keys were in the ignition and the spare keys were in a bag in the boot, our phones were both in the car and there was nobody on the road. The situation couldn't have been worse. After 20 minutes or so of trying somehow to get into the car I saw a car coming along the road, against Jenny's advice I decided to flag the car down to see if anyone could help us. The car was driven by a very nice man named Lance who works on the Kariega game reserve a few miles from where we were stuck. He examined the situation and agreed we were pretty fucked. His only advice was to try and open the locking latch with wire (the classic solution) and so he set off down the road to get some wire from his workshop. He returned 10 minutes later and we tried desperately to get the door open with this method. Much to our dismay the car has a central locking system and so even if the door lock is manually pulled up the door will not open. Great to know that other people can't break into our car if they tried to, really not so great for us in the current moment.

We stepped back and regrouped, thinking at this point that the only way to get into the car would be to break a window. This however would involve changing our travel plans to find an auto-shop that could repair the window ASAP (you don't spend any time in Africa with a broken window you see, not unless you want all your belongings, or the car, to grow legs). We even got as far as discussing which window would be the cheapest and easiest to replace when Jenny suggested that we try the bit of wire through the door frame again, but this time with the objective of pressing down the automatic window button on one of the back windows. This of course was only possible because we had left the car running and we thought it was worth a try before breaking a window, hoping that the back child window lock was still on.

Somehow it actually worked!!! Lance managed to get the window down enough that I could climb back in the car and unlock it! Jenny nearly knocked him down in gratitude! So after an hour or so delay we were once again on our way to Kenton-on-Sea. When we arrived at the house we met the maid who spoke very little English. She showed us the way to our cottage and set everything up for us. Since we had some time to waste we drove around Kenton and found the local Spar, a very helpful bit of knowledge and headed back to the house just in time to meet Jenny's grandfather's friends, John and Di Lardner-Burke. They are both very hospitable and made us feel very much at home. Both of them had quite a lot to do during the rest of the afternoon so we agreed we would come to their house for lunch tomorrow to have a proper introduction for me, and catch-up for Jenny.


Jenny was still feeling a bit ill, so we retired to our cottage and Jenny ran a hot bath for herself while I made some sandwiches for us and opened another bottle of champagne (Jenny HAD locked the keys in the car and I had been very nice about it, and at R49 a bottle -- why not!?) we had a very early and quiet evening because of Jenny's state and rested well for the next days adventures.

Epic Adventure -- Day 20 -- 18/09/2012 -- Grahamstown

So Jenny and I have always had disagreements about which one of our home countries has the most extreme weather. I always claimed that the thunderstorms in my area of the states had some amazingly intense thunder and lightning, and Jenny said that however intense those storms may be they would not stand up to an African thunderstorm.

Proof of Jenny's opinion came at about 2 in the morning this morning when I was woken up by the loudest and longest-lasting crash and roll of thunder I have ever heard. The storm was immense. Based on my half asleep attempts to time the lightning flashes and the sound of the tender the storm was probably 20 miles across. As intense as the lightning and thunder was the was almost no rain associated with the storm, and after an hour or so we managed to go back to sleep.

After waking up a little bit later than usual we decided to spend some time in the lodge in the morning before heading into town. We leisurely woke up and had some tea and coffee, took showers in our own time, and departed for town in time to have lunch. Part of the drive, being so high up, was very very misty as you can see! Jenny had been wanting to try a restaurant called Revelations which sits on the sight of a now defunct restaurant called Evolutions she remembered from her time at DSG. The new establishment wasn't quite what Jenny remembered but they did have free Internet so it gave us enough time to catch up on some emails and correspondence. We spent so much time on the Internet that I had 2 more beers simply so we could stay! We also stopped by Pick N Pay and asked a couple standing outside what the ridiculously long que of people that snaked round the corner was for. They told us it was que to hand in CV's for a few jobs with the supermarket, it was quite astounding how very many people there were!

This sign made Dan laugh!

After our lunch of a triple decker chicken and bacon sandwich, and a chicken kiev, we headed up to DSG to have a longer walk around than we had on Sunday and to stop in a couple of the classrooms to see some of Jenny's old teachers. DSG was as amazing as I remember, and they have done so much to it in the short time since I left in 2006! The very first thing we did, as I had promised her in an email that I would do so, was to go a pod see the secretary to the Headmistress, Fran Gradwell. It was wonderful to see her again, and catch up about all the goings on at DSG. The secretary at the front desk also recognised me, which was a great reminder of how close knit the school really was.

Crewe House

I took Dan past my old dining hall, where the entire school would gather at meal times, grab a tray and some food and sit at the long wooden tables surrounded by some of the old girls best works of art. Dan thought it was hilarious that there were a couple of pigeons flying about too :D we then meandered off to my old boarding house, Crewe to see my housemistress Mrs Long. It was wonderful to poke my head aroud the door and say "Hello Mrs Long", watch her greet me formally as she would any other visiter, turn around, turn back and exclaim "JENNY BEALE!" :D I introduced her to Dan and we reminisced about all of the trouble we used to get into, what's been happening in Crewe and DSG since I've been away, and what everyone is doing now. Dan also found me in the old school pictures of our house, and also the ones of me looking ridiculously young in our yearly collages of photos of ourselves during the year.

We then walked to the San, more formally known as the sanatorium, to say hi to Sister Mary and Sister Gail. Unfortunately Sister Gail had just left for the day, but I got to catch up with Sister Mary and tell Dan the stories about complaint to one of the sisters about having a headache just before a class test. We spotted Mrs Carver, the music teacher and waved to her, on our way towards the school blocks. We spotted my French teacher, Madame Fitzgerald in one of the classrooms, so went to say hi to her. It was great to hear the stories about how naughty we were, but how much she loved our class, and also to see Clementine Davies, an old girl who was one year above me in school (but two years older as I was a year young for my grade) who is now also a French teacher at DSG.

Old Pool

New Pool!

I then walked us towards the new aquatic centre, which is hilariously immense in comparison to the old school pool. Looking at the two together made me realise how much DSG actually needed a new, bigger pool, as the old one is tiny and looks very old and sad next to its larger shinier counterpart. The old sports room opposite the tennis courts is now a brand new junior school, it looks amazing and much bigger and better than the old school rooms. At the back of the new junior school is the new boarding house, which they have yet to give a name to. Dan liked the actual tour around the school and agrees that if we have enough money to we can offer our daughters the chance to go there :D

Once we were finished touring DSG we received a text from Laura Bryan saying that her family would be more than happy to see us and said we should come over to their house at 17:30/18:00. It was only 15:00 when we left the school so we headed back to Delizzia to have a coffee and use their Internet for more blogging. While we were there Jenny discovered that Heather had posted the rest of our couples shoot photos and so the blogging got put on the back burner while we loaded all the photos. The photos took about an hour to load, so I wandered to the bank to draw more money in the meantime.

The photos are just amazing, beautiful and more the I could have imagined, and I was more than happy I had chosen Heather once they finally loaded :) Dan was very happy too, and is glad she is going to be our wedding photographer :) This is the link to our page on her blog if you haven't yet seen them on Facebook.
http://heathersteyn.com/blog/?p=6529#more-6529


By this time it was nearly half past five, so we packed up all our electronics and headed up the road to the Bryan's house. As we pulled up, I saw Sean Bryan outside so wound down my window and shouted a hello to him. He had the same reaction that Di Long had, and I was so glad that they had a little time to see Dan and I before we left Grahamstown. Their house is amazing, exactly what Dan and I would love to live in when we grow up! They currently have 8 boarders staying with them, and I know that cannot make for a dull house. We sat in the kitchen and reminisced over drinks while the boarders dinner was cooked. Kate came over to say hi quickly and we promised to see her for breakfast the next morning so she could go study. Laura came home at this stage too and we moved next to the warm log fire in the lounge and chatted some more about where life had taken us all. Once the boarders had all gone off to their rooms we sat down to a wonderful meal of delicious chicken, veggies and rice that Anne had cooked for all of us. We left much later that evening, with promises to come back to Grahamstown see them all again, as it was just so brilliant to catch up for such a short time. Dan was certainly in no capable state to drive after four beers, so I took the wheel for the drive home to our lodge.

Epic Adventure -- Day 19 -- 17/09/2012 -- Grahamstown

So once again, probably because we keep going to bed around 20:00, we woke up this morning terrifyingly early. We left the house quite soon after waking up so we could spend more time in Grahamstown during a weekday when at least a few shops might be open. On the way out of the camp we took the long range lens with us and jenny stood out of the sunroof of the car in an attempt to get some better photos of the game on the farm. We went to a restaurant called Mad Hatter for breakfast where I had an English breakfast and Jenny had a bran muffin with jam and cheese. Our plan to use the free Internet at breakfast semi backfired when we were told that the restaurant made you pay for the Internet. Instead we set up a hotspot with my iPhone and checked the few small bits we needed to check online.

Rhodes Campus

After leaving breakfast we set off in search of a place to have our laundry done. Jenny convinced me to bring far too many clothes on this holiday but I do see the merit, to some degree. It's been 2 weeks and we have not needed laundry done, until now. So we grabbed our stuffed duffel bag and headed down the road to the nearest laundromat. The first place we visited said they only did commercial cleaning and so they recommended a cheaper place a few blocks away. After finding this other shop and paying the woman a very agreeable amount (R90) to wash, dry, iron and fold our clothes we set off into town to find something to do until 3 hours later when the clothes would be ready.

At the Botanic Gardens

We strolled around town for a little while before deciding to have a look at Rhodes University just off the main street. Rhodes looks very much like an American University with park benches under trees in clearings where students sat conversing or studying in the shade. We went thought the main courtyard, walked around the campus for a while before we found our way to the entrance of the botanical gardens. The gardens seemed to go on forever and Jenny kept wanting to walk further and further into the gardens. I wanted to turn around and head back the same way we had come but she wanted to keep walking and explore the gardens, and we eventually popped out near the entrance to Grahamstown and about a 10 minute walk back into town.

We returned to the car and paid the parking attendant R16 for our 5 hour stay, before collecting our laundry. We then headed off to pick and pay for some food for the nights braai. While we were there we ran into Laura Bryan, the youngest of the Bryan sisters, and actually someone I wanted to see in Grahamstown before we left! Hopefully we will get to see her and the rest of the Bryan clan (minus Megan who is in Cape Town) tomorrow :D

Its a car stand off!

When we arrived back at Coombs Camp, much to our surprise, we found Jeremy's car parked inside an unlocked gate facing the road with the keys on the floor of the car. Jeremy was nowhere in sight and we couldn't get our car through the gate to our accommodation unless his car was moved. Luckily we had his phone number and phoned him to make sure everything was alright. He told us where the keys were and asked us to simply back his car up enough to let ourselves in.... We have no idea why this was the case!?!? It was a good thing no one had tried to take his car!

When we got back to the house the maid was finishing up the cleaning. Jeremy came down to the house to check on how we were doing just as we were starting up the braai. This time we had a veggie dinner of butternut squash and sweet potatoes. The butternut squash we cut open and put loads of butter and salt and pepper inside the cavity we cleared out of pips, and it tasted super yummy!! The sweet potatoes were just as good as the night before, and we were so full from that feast that we decided not to cook the venison steaks we had saved up! We sat for a long while afterward and enjoyed the fire before retiring for the night.

The view from our bedroom!

Epic Adventure -- Day 18 -- 16/09/2012 -- Grahamstown

When I woke up this morning I knew we made the right choice regarding our accommodation. The sound of the birds at 6:30 was deafening. I could have done with some peace and quiet but the noise ensured that Jenny and I were awake bright and early for a Sunday of leisurely activities in Grahamstown. Jeremy had told us about a wonderful place to get venison steaks in the area so we packed the cooler box with freezer packs in case we picked up any food while we were out. When we headed up the dirt road we spotted a herd of impala and a small group of warthog crossing the road in front of us. We stopped the car and took some photos. Interestingly the animals were not afraid of the very loud land rover but scampered off as soon as we exited the car. They must be familiar with cars passing, but not people on foot.

Because it is a Sunday and we had no particular plans for Grahamstown we drove very slowly back to town to conserve petrol, doing about 80km/hr in a 120km/hr zone. There was no one behind us and we both really enjoyed the relaxing drive. Once we got to town Jenny was too excited to do anything but drive to her old school, DSG, and have a look around.

As it was before 9 in the morning on a Sunday, I didn't feel bad about taking Dan on a short walk of the grounds, to the old school blocks, the library, my old house and the chapel. When we got nearer the chapel we realised that it was full of DSG girls, so we high tailed it out of there :D

We drove to the nearest Bp and got R300 of fuel, and asked the fuel attendant to wash all our windows for us, as the stop at the beach at Mossel Bay had left a layer of dirt over them and it was hard to spot the springbok with them so dirty :) we tipped him R30 for his efforts, and found out from Jeramy later that evening that we had tipped him too much, for that much he would have washed out entire car! Maybe next time :D

We then drove the 200m to the Pick n pay shopping centre, as there was a little place there I wanted to have breakfast in, but we found out that basically everything is closed on a Sunday. The Home Industries was open however, so I eagerly ran in and bought mocca cubes, the worlds most yummiest dessert thingy ever! They are small squares, that need to be kept in the fridge, of a coffee, biscuit and icing sugar mixture that are scrumptious! Dan also chose some chocolate brownies, which later actually turned out to be chocolate cake, but they were really yummy too. We went to the cinema, Roxbury, to see if there was anything on that we wanted to watch on our lazy Sunday, but they had one movie we didn't recognise, Abraham Lincoln the vampire hunter and Madagascar 3, so we decided not to go. Our shop in Pick n Pay was very successful, salad for dinner, Dan convinced me to buy a sweet potato to cook on the fire, I got us some yummy biltong with lots of fat, and this really amazing juice called sunshine juice, it's made locally and there are still bits of pulp in it. I used to get one every weekend at DSG when we were allowed to go into town, I just love it!

Dan loves the size of the biggest JC, 1.5L !

We drove off in search of food and I directed us to Grahamstowns High street, aptly named High street :D Even though Dulces, a cafe that I used to adore was no longer there, there was one in its place called Delizzia run by the same people, so it was just as delicious! Dan had eggs benedict for R78 and I had French toast filled with mozzarella and bacon for R35. I'm clearly not the one who has expensive taste ;) we also abused their Internet, uploading three blog posts and probably looking to all the world like the most unsociable couple ever. That's the beauty of spending so much time together, is that if we don't converse before breakfast it's really not an issue :D

We then walked down the main street, in search of a butchers that Jeremy had recommended, but never found it. I took Dan along to Birchs, my old school clothes shop, but that was closed too unfortunately, so I guess we will postpone the hilarity of my school uniform till tomorrow :D

We decide that because so much was closed that we were going to head home early to cook an early dinner and relax in our wonderful accommodation. First stop was Pick n Pay again to pick up some venison steaks and also some scratch cards. We won R15 on them!  On our way home we decided to take a dirt road to the right, about 3 km's before our lodge, to go on an adventure. After driving down it for a while. we decided it was too tame for us and we turned around to take the side 'road' we had spotted a while back to do some real bundu bashing(aka, off road driving)! It was great fun, the lad rover really showing us what she was capable of, but I got a little concerned a ways down the road as we really had no idea where it went to we turned around and headed back to the lodge.

Just after we got home we decided to walk back up the dirt road with the long range lens on the camera, to see if we could get some good photos of the buck. Unfortunately our stealthy approach was wasted as they were all across the field, staring at us as if to say "yeah like we couldn't hear you" and the cameras lens can only get really decent shots at about 50m, so we walked back to the house. Dan started a fire whilst I prepared the sweet potato, wrapping it in two layers of heavy duty foil ready to be cooked.

Jeremy then arrived because he wanted to check on the water levels as he was concerned they were a little low. We convinced him to have a glass of J C Le Roux with us and we chatted about some of the things we were going to do in the upcoming weeks. He told us of a few really good restaurants in Kenton and Plett that we are looking forward to trying. After he left we checked the sweet potato, which definitely needed another 30 minutes, so we got the fire back up to roaring once again. Our dinner was really yummy, a venison steak each, some salad with feta cheese, some potato salad and sweet potato with butter and salt!!

Epic Adventure -- Day 17 -- 15/09/2012 -- Knysna to Grahamstown

We awoke this morning after a wonderful nights sleep with nothing ahead of us but a 4 hour drive to Grahamstown. We packed all of our bags and repacked the car before departing Lakeside in time for their 10:00 departure. Because our schedule only consisted of a drive today we thought we would take our time leaving Knysna and so headed to the waterfront for some breakfast before leaving town. We found a nice restaurant right on the harbour where we could eat outside and had a clear view of the TV showing the rugby. We arrived just in time to catch the second half of the South Africa vs. New Zealand test. (where once again I watched the Springboks loose...... O well)

Jenny enjoyed a croissant with cheese and jam and I had an amazing crab, line fish and prawn curry! We spent a good deal of time after our food was finished enjoying the sunshine and the remainder of the test match. It has been so nice over the past two days to have nothing pressing on our schedule, there has been lots of time for relaxation.

277km's to Grahamstown!

Yummy!

Once we got back on the road Jenny drove for the first leg of the trip (turn left in 277km!) while she left me to sort out tonight's accommodation. She had found two potential places to stay last night and asked me to phone them and check on availability and price. One of the places was in Grahamstown and looked like your average hotel, while the other was a campsite on a farm about 20km outside Grahamstown that looked very interesting and appealing to both of us. I phoned the campsite first, a quaint place called Coombs Camp, where the owner Jeremy informed me that he did indeed have lodging available but that it would be easier for him to put us in the cottage instead of the camp. He even offered to charge us the camp rate of R300 a night rather than the cottage rate of R450! We very eagerly agreed to his offer and told him we would be arriving at the farm around 16:00.

Dan's 'Rafiki' stick =D

About an hour down the road we crossed a very high bridge over a river pass. And noticed there were lots of buildings on the other side of the bridge. We pulled off and investigated the buildings. Turns out the bridge is the location of the worlds highest commercial bungy jump at 216m! We got out of the car and had a wander to the edge of the ravine, Jenny was too scared to get very close but I through a rock over the edge of the cliff, after 6 seconds we lost sight of it and it was still falling.

We returned to the road but after another half hour Jenny pulled off and decided she would let me drive for a while. We were running a bit behind schedule so I drove the last 150km a bit faster than we had been driving and we arrived at Coombs Camp just after 16:00. The cottages are located about a kilometre off the main road down a very rough dirt track. We met Jeremy half way down the dirt road and he told us where the cottage was, he would be with us in a few minutes after he finished mowing one of the fields. We found the cottage and had a look around in the meantime. What an amazing place to stay! Jenny had certainly done well finding this accommodation, and may have earned herself that particular task for the rest of the trip given this result.

We chatted with Jeremy after his arrival before going on a walk to explore the surrounding area. There is a larger lodge just next to the cottage we are staying in, that has a big lounge and kitchen area, a bar and three further bedrooms. I can imagine this must be a wonderful place to come with the whole family for Christmas. Jeremy told us that the only place to get good phone signal was to climb up near the road and stand on the anthill, so I trundled off to check that and to tell everyone we were alive and had made it to Grahamstown safely whilst Dan started the fire for the braai. Jenny occupied herself while I started the fire by using the tire swing by the cottage. We enjoyed a bottle of rose J.C. Le Roux and half a bottle of Morgenhof red with our steak and salad before retiring for the night, very content with the days activities.

Epic Adventure -- Day 16 -- 14/09/2012 -- Ceres, Moselbaai, Knysna

Our alarms were set very early today in an effort to make it to Ceres and get the issue with the car fixed before our 10:00 departure time from the cabin. We got up at 7:30 and immediately drove to auto zone in Ceres to find Jeremy and hopefully have him fix the issue with the coolant. We had needed to top it up with about 1 litre of water the night before, and a little more this morning, so it had obviously not been fixed overnight! We for d Jeremy and asked him to come and look at the car, and told him it was a coolant leek. He tested the pressure on the system and had a poke around, whilst explaining to us that with. As of this age there tends to be a pipe that rusts through on the bottom and causes major hassles, and it may be quite a big job to fix! Luckily he and and another mechanic worked out that it was just an old sealant cable that was not doing its job very effectively anymore. They replaced it, tested the pressure again, got the air out the system and sent us on our merry way, refusing payment for such a small job. What luck!!!

It was about half eight at this stage some decided to go to Wimpy and have some breakfast, I had French toast and bacon and Dan had a normal English breakfast :) 9:15 we dashed back to White Bridge farm to pack up all our stuff, dropped off our keys just after 10:00 and away we went on the rest of our adventure! Our first stop was Waverley Hills to say hi again before we set off on our way, as we tried to see them yesterday but we went by after 4 which is when they close. Phillip was away looking at a pizza oven that he had spoken to us about when we saw him, but Corrine was there :) We are so looking forward to the rehearsal dinner and food and wine paring there, and to spend more time with everyone who has travelled from far and wide to be at our wedding!

We set the sat nav to take us all the way to Grahamstown, knowing full well that at about 9 hours straight there we were unlikely to make it all the way there. We made it about 30 minutes before we stopped at a petrol station to use the loo and fill up on drinks and snacks :D about a hour and a half after that we drove through a little lawn called Ashton, and we had to stop and get a picture, for Dans friend Ashton in the States.
Dan drove for another hour and a half before we stopped for a much needed stretch. This stop is eventful enough to need a mention because when we got in the car and started up the engine again to set off.... It wouldn't start. It would turn the radio etc on, but the car would not start!! Panic ensued!!! We popped the hood and checked everything out, all looked ok, and I had the sense to shift the car in and out of park a few times and it stated again!! If you didn't already know, if you drive an automatic car and it slips out of park when the car is off, it WILL NOT start again till its back in park :D

Our next stop along the way was in a pretty little town called Mossel Bay, for some much needed late lunch. I demanded a sea view and suchi, so off towards the coast we trundled till we found a great place by the sea. We didn't pay very much for the four plates of Sushi we swiftly devoured, well not much by UK standards, but my favourite thing about the visit was the R8 pot of tea that lasted four cups! That's about 15 pence per cup :D

Where we had lunch

It was my turn to take the wheel, and as it was about 4 at this stage, we decided to stop at Knysna, another town on the coast, about an hour and a half down the road. I set Dan on the Internet to find somewhere inexpensive for us to stay for the night, but I'm better at those kinds of things anyway so eventually we stopped, switched and I found us a small but well appointed room at a place called Lakeside, with a view of the lagoon, it's own kitchenette and bathroom for just R350!

Our view from Lunch

We unpacked our things and Jenny tried to have a few unsuccessful Skype conversations with her mom before we decided to have a look at the well recommended local pub. It really was a locals pub, in so so shape and filled with the sort of people that I'm to scared to talk to. The two things it did have going for it was a very friendly barman, and very cheap drinks (R16 for a double brandy and coke, that's 70ml of brandy!) We stood and chatted to the barman for about an hour, Jenny enjoying a savanna while I had a Castle Lager and a Carling Black Label. The barman (who's name evades us) is a very talented artist, showing us his drawings and carvings while we drank, very impressive stuff! But after my 750ml Black Label I was feeling sleepy and we trundled back to our accommodation for some rest and recovery for our second leg of driving tomorrow.