The Honeymoon in South Africa (Part 3)

Safari Day 1:
There isn't too much to mention about our Safari adventure that wasn't captured on video or in pictures so I'll be able to keep it short for the most part.
The 9:30 flight to Hoedspruit was a relatively short one; two hours on a 50 seat plane. The term regional airport takes on a new meaning when you start to land and notice an impala running across the runway and into the woods. The airport itself was more or less a visitor center with a checked baggage counter. We had only packed two suitcases and two backpacks in an attempt to avoid checking bags. It wasn't until later that Jillian had discovered that she had forgotten to put any of my pants in those two bags.

 The arrival started off a little rocky as we were told that a driver would be at the "arrivals gate" (aka the Parking Lot) with a sign that read 'Kapama Southern Camp'. There were signs for all other resorts... but no Kapama. We walked around and ran into a woman with a Kapama shirt, explained our situation and she began speaking Afrikan into her two-way radio. Our driver was preoccupied and we had a replacement en route. Twenty minutes later our driver showed up, we loaded up our bags onto an open air Toyota Land Cruiser modified for safari viewing and began to pull out of the airport parking lot. I wasn't looking forward to the long drive after our flight, but the driver assured us the game reserve was very close. He wasn't joking, we drove across the road and right into the entrance of the reserve. Within 5 minutes we were watching Kudu, Impala and Giraffes feeding while we drove to our camp.

Arriving at the camp, we were offered damp cloths to wipe our hands and faces then handed fresh lemonade while our bags were taken to our room. After we had been given details about our stay, the facilities and optional extras (like the spa and elephant-back safari) we made our way to our room, unpacked and unwound a bit before heading to the dining facility for a late lunch.
Later that evening we had our first evening safari. There were only two vehicle safaris each day and we would have to wait until our 5 am wake up call for the next one. We saw a lot more that evening but, unfortunately, as the sun went down, none of our cameras were able to capture decent pictures or video. We followed our evening safari with a delicious buffet style dinner and a short night of sleep.

Safari Day 2:
Our morning wake up call came WAY too soon. I had made the mistake of playing the movie Tommy Boy on my tablet before we went to bed and Jillian and I stayed up too late watching it. Thank goodness we didn't sleep through our call, because the morning game drive was awesome. Post-trip, I would tell anyone that morning drives were always better than evening drives. We weren't on the trails for perhaps ten minutes before we came across a female lion that was waking up and looking for breakfast. We trailed it for a while before it found a couple unsuspecting impala and took to chase. Despite the distance from my phone, I got a decent video of the end of the chase as both animals ran between two of the safari vehicles. I could not have asked for a better first morning drive, but it got better. We later found an entire pride including a dominant male that scared Jillian right out of her seat. We followed them around for the majority of the day, getting much closer to them than any of us were comfortable with.

There were a few other memorable things on our first day. Jillian and I met Fabiano; a gentleman who worked at Citibank in Columbia. He would be there for roughly the same length of time that we were and would be joining us on all our safaris. We also took a trip to the River Lodge between morning safari and lunch to have massages at their wellness center. It was my first professional massage and was so good it put me to sleep. I actually woke myself up snoring. While we were at the River Lodge we were able to stop by their gift shop and buy me a $70 pair of green 'shants' (pants that turn into shorts via well placed knee-level zippers) to replace the jeans Jillian left in our rental car at the Cape Town airport parking deck. With my sweet new shants in hand, we grabbed a mediocre buffet lunch before we found our driver and went back to our much newer and fancier camp.

That evening another couple, Carlos and Debbie, from Columbia joined us for our night drive. This one was very uneventful. Afterward, we had a nice dinner with a bottle of Riesling accompanied by local music performed by our wait staff. There was no late night movie via tablet this time but there was still little sleeping b/c Jillian got a pretty severe headache from the sulphites in the wine.

 Safari Day 3:
Because of limited space, we had booked an elephant-back safari excursion the day we had arrived. It wasn't until the morning of that we realized we probably should have booked it for an evening trip instead of missing a morning game drive. Regardless, we were up early for this as well. We had our own driver, Brad, take us to the Elephant center. It was a pretty miserable morning. It was cold and very windy and there was a light drizzle on the horizon. Once the other visitors started to arrive, we were introduced to the elephants; all rescues from different parts of the continent that had formed their own herd of orphans.

After a story and instructions, we walked up a ramp and had an elephant come by so we could hop on. Jillian and I ended up on an elephant named 'Somapani' which means "Giant Warrior". I actually have no idea what it means, but I'm sticking with that story. The elephant ride was a very unique experience. Definitely a slow moving 'safari', but worth every minute. There was even a point at which we all stopped so a guy could take all of our pictures and one of the three baby elephants (the first birthed within this herd) laid down beside us and let out the loudest and longest fart I had ever heard. It had Jillian and I both laughing... along with everyone else in earshot.
When the safari ended we got back in our topless land cruiser and froze our asses off on the way back to our camp. Thanks for getting us blankets or something Brad. It wasn't until we returned for lunch that we were told we had missed wild elephants on the morning safari. It was a bummer, but having ridden elephants definitely made up for it. We would end up not seeing the wild group before leaving.
That evening a couple from Denmark, named Ula and Christian, joined our group as Fabiano left, taking a flight to Cape Town on the last leg of his South African Tour. We told him that we'd see him in the cape (though that, expectedly, never happened). It wasn't until after our night drive and having disclosed that we brought mace, that we discovered that our new friends from Denmark were also police officers. It was stressed that if we ever go to Denmark, the mace, apparently being a highly illegal weapon, should be left in America.
 Our last night at dinner, Carlos and I tried the mushrooms in garlic sauce before discovering that it was actually snails. There was a good laugh about it and how none of the women would try it, but at least I can say now that I have... and it wasn't terrible. We both stayed up in bed a little before going to sleep; Jillian writing in her travel journal and myself glued to an ESPN game tracker set on the Auburn v Texas A&M football game. It was around 10pm and I was able to get to about the middle of the second quarter before I was on the verge of passing out, so I stopped my pathetic viewing of yellow and blue lines on a virtual field and went to sleep.

Safari Day 4:
The day started off a little rough as Jillian had another headache when she woke up. It probably didn't help that it was still a bit cold and windy. Fortunately, our driver, Dennis, had actually packed us cotton ponchos and we were all pretty snug going out. The drive started off a bit slow, but picked up a lot of steam at the end. It was a grand finale that included the scarcely seen buffalo, rhino and hippo. No leopard was spotted so we didn't get all of the big 5, but the driver and tracker tried their very best and we appreciated it. After we got back, we packed up everything that we weren't donating to the local orphanage, said our goodbyes to the couple from Denmark and then got in a car with Carlos and Debbie to go to the airport. A few hours later we were back in Cape Town.

The Honeymoon in South Africa (Part 2)

Day 2:

Our second day in Camps Bay started out pretty well. Jillian decided she wanted breakfast in bed so we ordered pancakes and pork sausage. I guess drinking milk with breakfast isn't a common thing in South Africa b/c despite having not ordered any coffee or tea, when I asked for some milk, they brought it in a creamer cup... with no drinking glass. It wasn't the most refined part of the trip.
The morning was going to be the start of one of our largest plans for the trip, as we had planned a drive along the coast and around the western cape peninsula. Jillian had done a lot of research on the drive so directions ended up being pretty easy. Leaving Ocean View House, we headed south right out of our driveway onto Victoria Drive toward Hout Bay. Driving into town I was a little disappointed in the view b/c it was just a bunch of neighborhoods but I had yet to get to the good stuff. It turns out you have to drive through Hout Bay and around the coast line, on the 'M6'. There were mentions of a road that takes you up a mountain for the perfect picture taking spot. I suppose we missed that opportunity, but road side view was spectacular enough.

Back in the car, we continued south on the M6 which turned into a toll road. For a couple dollars toll, you couldn't have asked for better scenery. The road was basically carved into the cliff face with points of the road that were essentially half tunnels. Again, I can't say enough about the view.

 The toll road ended after about 6 miles, but not before leading us to a parking spot overlooking Noordhoek Beach. The crystal clear blue water looked to have washed over the white sands at some point and created a purple colored lagoon behind it. I assume that the majority of the land behind the beach was either a national park or marsh land b/c it was sparsely developed and only near the road that wound widely around the water. There also seemed to be a lot of thatch roof homes at this beach but that may have been a series of condos or detached hotel rooms.

Hout Bay being our first intended stop, our second wasn't too much further away. Though not really of great current or historic significance, The Slangkop Lighthouse, in Kommetjie, is currently the tallest cast-iron lighthouse on the South African coast at 33 meters high and was built during the First World War. There is a small nature reserve at the location as well so it was as good a place as any to break for pictures. It was a road that seemed a little less traveled than other tourist spots, but it was enjoyable.

After a few minutes of walking around the lighthouse grounds we decided it wasn't necessary, or timely, to take a tour inside the lighthouse so we hit the road again; bound for an Ostrich Farm that was said to be "somewhere on the left" before we made it to the Cape Point National Park.
It actually didn't take us that long to find the farm after leaving Kimmetjie. The M65 was just outside of town and there was very little on the side of the road between the lighthouse and the entrance to the National Park apart from mountain views. After roughly 20 minutes of driving, we were pulling into their very narrow driveway. Not that it's really important, but pulling into a parking space we noticed a very cool tree and I took a picture of Jillian in front of it. We walked around the grounds near their gift shop for a few minutes; looking at the ostriches on display, taking pictures and videos. There didn't seem to be much else to do there so we had a look around their store. It didn't take long to realized that buying anything made of ostrich leather was not going to happen on our budget... or really any normal person's budget. I would estimate that the price per square foot of ostrich is about $500. We considered buying a keychain for $30, but decided instead to get a postcard that we could mail to ourselves later. Total expense: $1.50...even the post cards were expensive! Sorry ostrich farmer. On our way out, I asked Jillian if she wanted to do the walking tour but she declined. It didn't bother me. I'm pretty sure seeing an ostrich for 5 minutes was about as exciting as it gets on that farm.

The national park entrance turned out to be about a mile south of the ostrich farm. We had been notified that outside the park's gates there were a large number of street vendors, that have the lowest prices on tourist merchandise.  So we made what we thought would be a quick stop before heading inside. Turned out to not be such a quick stop as we ended up buying one or two items from nearly every vendor. The prices were really too good to pass up and the vendors weren't beneath undercutting their competition without us even trying to haggle. We did try and get good bargains, but after noticing that the people selling things looked to be living in essentially steel containers behind their tables we felt a little bad about trying to talk them down. One of them even offered to trade some things for a shirt. We ended up leaving with just enough cash to get into the park, but we also had tons of gifts for family and friends.
Driving into the park and up to the ticket window, we realized that they took credit cards so we paid that way, intending to go back to the vendors on the way out. The drive from the entrance to the point was a little longer than I expected. Looking at a map, it's about eight or nine miles of paved road before you get to the parking lot near the lighthouse. Another note from Jillian's research was that the park was a nice place to grab lunch. It was a little after noon so we started looking for the restaurant. At first I saw a small pizza place and was slightly disappointed until we rounded the corner and saw what looked like a five star restaurant sitting above a cliff face overlooking the ocean. Amazing location and top notch food for cheap. I had a strong tasting yellow line fish and Jillian went out on a limb and had ostrich filet. It was a great lunch experience before heading up the hill toward the lighthouse.

From the parking area, one can choose to walk up a hill or take the "Flying Dutchman" funicular car up to the top for about five dollars round trip. As we weren't really big on the idea of climbing hills, we paid the fee. There was a bit of a line, mostly filled with an Asian tour group, but it was the right decision. Getting to the top without breaking a sweat made the views much more enjoyable for us both.

Despite getting such a great view from the lighthouse area, I knew it wasn't the picture I really wanted while we were there. We took the funicular back down, got back in our car and started back toward the entrance, taking the first turn on the road to our left. This turn took us on a road that ran along the coastline to a point just west of where we had just been. We parked near a few other cars and tour buses and walked along the beach while the line around the Cape Point sign died down. It was on the beach that I found a heart made of beach stones that someone had made. I found some washed up seaweed 'sticks(?)' and crafted a J and A for the heart. I thought it turned out to make a good picture. It wasn't long before the crowds dispersed and Jillian and I were able to do a camera swap with a couple Germans to get one of us both behind the sign; proof that we had both truly been to the edge of Africa.

We were a little slower getting out of the park b/c we came across a couple wild ostrich on the road and something that resembled a mix of deer and yak...Jillian believed it to be a common eland. The available daylight was starting to get away from us, so we decided to cut a lot of things out of our trip along the eastern side of the cape and focus what time we had left on Boulder's Beach and seeing the African Penguins. It was the right decision, especially considering the other options mostly involved looking at buildings.

We did make that last stop at the street vendors before turning east and rounding the bottom of the M65 where it turns into the M4 and heads North along the eastern shore line. After 10 minutes and a U-turn, we were in another parking lot filled with street vendors and singers. Another 5 Rand out of my pocket for a 'parking attendant' and we were heading down a residential street toward the entrance to the penguin lookout. I don't remember the cost to get in, but I do remember that we barely made it there before they closed for the evening. The penguins seemed to be in hiding until we made it to the end of a pier where all the penguins were lounging around; taking in the last rays of the sun. I took a little video and some more pictures and then we called it a day.
 The drive back to our hotel was a long one and we ended up getting back just in time to see the sunset. We were pretty beat, so we decided on another dinner close to home base. We tried another fancy looking place called ZenZero. Jillian had spinach and ricotta ravioli. I ordered a beef ragu and we shared apple cinnamon beignets for dessert. The food was average but a few adult beverages made it better. The bill was only $36 so that also helped. The evening ended there as we had to get a lot of packing done for our early morning flight to Hoedspruit for safari.