What day is it? Where am I?

Questions I ask myself as we wake up in a different guest house almost every day.

What a fabulous trip it has been so far, and what a truly beautiful and VAST place it is! Amazing scenery with contrasting mountains, seashores and plains, and the fields are so huge, as big as the whole of our small island it seems.

Considering how ill I was ten days before the trip, and at one point with yet more impending cancer treatment due I did doubt we would ever get away on holiday.

Fortunately we did and we have both loved it. The flight was long but bearable , and we collected the hire car from Cape Town before setting out to Hermanus , the whale watching 'capital'. We got there in time to enjoy a walk along the cliffs and had our first whale sightings.

It was very windy and so our scheduled boat trip the next day was cancelled, however we planned to do a much longer walk along the cliffs and hopefully get to view some more of these magnificent creatures.

It was spectacular to be able to perch on rocks close to the swirling seas and see these huge mammals swim slowly along, seemingly enjoying the swell. I did envy the folks that had binoculars ( I forgot ours!) and long camera lens, but with the whales only a few hundred yards off shore it didn't really matter.

We left Hermanus and headed inland to Oudtshoorn , it was a long drive so we broke it up with a stop over at a game reserve for lunch. We only had a one night stay at this B and B and so had to decide to either do the Caves, or the Ostriches.
As the weather wasn't brilliant and we had had a fair bit of rain, I didn't fancy going somewhere dark and cold, and so we booked to visit a working Ostrich farm.

We saw the whole process from hatching straight through to going out to visit the fully grown birds. Did you know they have a poor immune system? They get sick quite quickly, don't like the cold much either- that makes two of us then. They can be aggressive, particularly the " teenage boys " and they all like to kick ( forwards apparently) just in case you ever come across one.

If you do happen to go into a pen/ field you take a stick and hold it up, they feel threatened as something is taller than them, so less likely to attack.. I thought our son being 6ft 7" wouldn't have need of a stick, but Ostriches have very long necks!

Driving back down to the coast we are really in the Garden Route now, we stopped briefly in Wilderness for a drink , but wanted to carry on to Knysna and find our next B and B .
You can see why it's a popular place with lagoons, islands and beautiful scenery all around.

Heading off today to do some exploring as we have two nights here before we make our way to Tsitsikamma National Park.

Good news too in I've just about stopped coughing and I've nearly finished my antibiotics, it's been tough to be in 'wine' regions and not really had much wine ( but maybe that's not a bad thing?!)


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