While the
Cape to Addo tour had its perks, it has made me more certain than ever that I really
don’t like organised tours, particularly ones that go longer than two days. Although
it is convenient and easy, I would much rather have done the Garden Route on my
own, stopping where I wanted to stop and doing exactly what I want to do. However due to time constraints the tour
seemed like the best option at the time. So, Saturday morning I was picked up
by our guide, an Afrikaans Capetonian, and we headed off. We had a group of
7, three Australians, two Brazilians, one German and one Swiss, all of us under
the age of 25 (which was a change from my Namibia tour group which had people
well over the age of 50). This would be my 'family' for the next few days as we travel through the Eastern and Western Cape of South Africa.
A brief look at what we did over the last five days as follows:
Seeing a ridiculous amount of penguins at Stony Point.
I thought we had seen a lot at Simon's Town on the other side of the Cape Peninsula. This was actually ridiculous. And somewhat smelly (penguin poo).
Not see any whales at Hermanus
Hermanus is well known for its land based whale watching, but this seasons has apparently not been great for it. Instead we ate lunch here and had a look around.
Go wine tasting at Birkenhead Brewery
This was different to the tastings I had done at Stellenbosch, where they had brought out each individual wine and explained it and its flavours (notes?). Instead they gave us 6 wines and told us the order to drink them in (from the lightest to the darkest). I surprisingly could actually stand the red wines (which is odd because usually I hate them all).
Line up with other tourists to get a pic at the southern most point of Africa
Cape Agulhas is actually pretty cool, though not much to do there except look cool with the sign. There is also no noticeable difference between the Indian and the Atlantic Ocean.
Visit 20 million year old caves
Motion sickness (from the bus) and general sickness prevented me from doing the 'adventure tour' of the Cango Caves, so instead I did the 'standard tour', which was a peaceful and nice walk through several of the caverns. It really was quite beautiful and remarkable, and from what I heard you got more information from the standard tour than the adventure tour (which involved a lot of squeezing through small crevices). Apparently they used to have concerts in the caves because the acoustics were so good!
Went to this cool lookout
But despite the face that I was wearing my #activewear, we drove up to this lookout. I also don't remember where this is (another downside of an organised tour ... because I don't plan it myself I can never remember exactly where I went).
I think this beach was called Nature's Valley
And I only remember this because it reminded me of the Nature Valley muesli bars. A group of us got taken to this beach because we didn't want to go to an animal sanctury and pet elephants.
A boardwalk walk at Tsitsikamma National Park
This was park was absolutely beautiful and I would have loved to have spent more time there exploring, but unfortunately due to the nature of our tour we only did the one walk (which was only about 2km in total). We got to go over a cool suspension bridge thought.
See a cool sunset at Jeffrey's Bay
And buy some stuff at the surf brand warehouse sales. It's odd seeing so many people wearing Billabong, Roxy and Quiksilver in this part of the world.
(fresh buffalo carcass)
Go for a drive through Addo Elephant Park
And as to be expected, see a lot of elephants. Part of the tour was getting a drive through the national park in our tour bus, but there was also the option of paying to go in an open top vehicle. I chose not to because I've done a couple of those safaris already, and I know Addo is not as good as Kruger. So for the first 2 hours, while everyone in my group did the paid safari, I did the one included in the tour with our tour guide. Afterwards the rest of our group joined us as we drove around the rest of the park. The main sightings of the day were elephant (with some cute little babies), zebras and warthogs (and the cutest little piglet!!). Unfortunately no big cats. I can definitely say that Kruger was a lot better than Addo, due to the much larger variety of animals.
There were also several other activities that could have been done throughout the Garden Route tour, such as visit a wildlife ranch or an animal sanctuary or bungee jumping. These things had to be paid for as extra however, and part of the reason I didn't want to do these things was to save money, while the other was because I try and avoid most activities that involve animals (especially ones where animals interact with humans). There was a big emphasis placed on these activities, and if you didn't want to do them there wasn't much else you could do. It was also apparent at some points that our guide seemed to find it a hassle to find us something else to do or somewhere else to go.
I ended the tour early in Port Elizabeth as planned while my tour group had an extra night and were heading back to Cape Town. Because I miss a day I also miss canoeing on a river and seeing the Knysna heads which is something I really wanted to do. I'm quite happy to be free of the constraints of a tour and I'm quite sure I won't be doing another long one like that again, however it was nice to be travelling with other people and to make some new friends. To be hones though, I'd probably only give it about a 2.5/5.
I'm in P.E until Friday morning, when I fly to Johannesburg and then finally to Abu Dhabi for a few days!
My bed and my new friends (the cat is awfully keen on sleeping on my bed tonight).
Until next time!
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