Steph's adventures: More variety than you could poke a stick at!

Tuesday 1st May 2012 - Happy Month!

We had more variety than you could poke a stick at today: sunshine, winding coast-hugging roads, BMWs, rolling green hills, porcupine quills, melt in your mouth calamari, whales, stunning mountains, ostriches, Snuffel & Krap and of course a Letterbox!

We packed the car and said goodbye to Cape Town as we headed out in glorious sunshine but with Table Mountain’s tabletop still under wraps. Once we got past all the burbs and townships, we settled down to the start of "our drive".

As we drove out towards Betty's Bay, we both just 'oooohed and aaaahhhhed'. The coastal scenery was spectacular. After yesterday's grotty weather, having the sunshine was great, and also knowing that we were at the start of a great adventure was just magic.

And the road was ideal "bike territory" and on one of our stops, I did get to talk to a bike rider, so that was good.

There are so many places where they've catered for just "pulling over" to admire the view - just as well really, because the scenery was stunning.

We were aiming to have lunch at Kleinmond, and after numerous stops, we arrived there just after 11am. We had a look around and Jenny managed to find some porcupine quills for sale in one of the shops. She collects these, and usually they are very expensive so she was chuffed to have found some at a very reasonable price.

We had lunch at a seafood cafe, sitting in the courtyard right in front of the seafront. Jenny had been there before and had spent the whole morning telling me about their "best calarmari in the world". With a description like that, I wasn't about to miss it, so I ordered it too. Well, I know I've raved about quite a few of our meals so far, but there's no getting away from the fact that this will be added to the rave list. Talk about "melt in your mouth". This did. And to top it off, our location was perfect - and THEN we saw a couple of whales not far from us - how good does life get?

The house/apartment above caught my eye - not sure if you can see it in this photo but the bicycle design looked stunning. And below, this was proof about the "global village" the world is becoming, considering that the cafe is in South Africa!

So after our lunch and Jenny's porcupine quill purchase in Kleinmond, we headed off through Stanford Valley and some stunning inland scenery. We'd stopped to take some photos - as we do - and walking back along the road, we noticed heaps of porcupine quills all along the roadside. Jenny was in 7th heaven - we took the photos we wanted and then collected all the quills. We also had to laugh - Jenny thought she'd done really well buying a few in Kleinmond at a good price, and now we collected over 200 of them - free!!!

Later on, we came across this sign. I cant' recall seeing a sign like this before and it would have been a "true African" sign if the road was apalling, but we couldn't find any potholes! I'm sure we will come across some in our drive, but this stretch of road for the next couple of hours was in pristine condition.

To make up for not finding any potholes, we did find quite a few ostriches, so all was not lost!

In Bonnievale, I found my first Letterbox of the trip. In large cities and town in South Africa, most people have a Post Office box because there is no home mail delivery, but in the smaller towns they still have postmen, and hence letterboxes. So I was well pleased to find this one to add to my collection.

The other 'find' in Bonnievale was the "Snuffel and Krap" store. I'm sure any Afrikaans person would not bat an eyelid over the name, but to us it does have a certain sound to it ...

And another road sign we're not used to seeing ...

We're still in wine territory ... and in some areas, it seems that every few kilometres there's an outlet for wine tasting and sales. Some of these look very professional, and others look like its a very new venture for the people advertising. We've had our wine tasting for this trip, so we didn't stop at any more (otherwise we'd spent the next couple of months lurching from one place to the next) but the vineyards look lovely, especially with the autumnal colours that some have now.

This is a photo of Jenny and I taking a photo! Stunning scenery just outside Montagu ...

And after a day full of variety, we arrived at Airlies Guesthouse in Montagu. We had a self catering house at the back, right next to the swimming pool. The main thatched house was gorgeous.