The Garden Route: Mossel Bay, Oudtshoorn, Knysna

  Mossel Bay, South Africa
Thursday, October 11, 2007

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Thursday 11th: We said our farewells to Dan and left Cape Town at 8am on the Baz Bus which is a hop on hop off bus service that runs from Cape Town to Jo'burg - it's great, it picks you up from your hostel and drops you off at the next - you just ask the hostel where you are to book it all up for you - couldn't be easier - fantastic!!

We arrived at Mossel Bay at 2ish and had booked to stay in the 'Santos Express' which is an old train parked on the beach - the rooms are in the carriages. Sounds great, but the bar and restaurant there had burnt down, the dorm room was more or less open for anyone to wander into and there was noone else there!! So, we decided to move to Mossel Bay backpackers hostel instead which was a great move - nice swimming pool, bar etc etc.
We went for a wander around the town and along to the beach. It's a really beautiful town, but soooo quiet. We had planned to stay a couple of days but decided to get the bus away the next day.
The hostel was cooking a braai (BBQ) in the evening so we just stayed there for dinner. The bar closed at 9.30pm so we amused ourselves playing pool and making patterns and medallion necklaces with some shells one of the staff had left out on the table (well, what else was there to do??!!!)

Friday 12th: The bus wasn't coming til 2ish so we went into town for a bit and tried to find the famous post office tree which was on our map.....we spent a while looking and asking locals but noone seemed to know where it is - I guess the thing isn't really that famous or special!!

Ben and I bought Chris a really special watch - a huge piece of bling with a rotating face with 2pac written on it in sparkly metal......obviously he was delighted!!! (there will be a picture here) The bus finally arrived and took us to George where we were picked up by a local transfer and taken to Oudtshoorn which is around 60km inland. The scenery between George and Oudtshoorn is stunning, with huge mountains all around.
We had ostrich for dinner at the hostel and chatted to people in the bar all evening.

Saturday 13th: We visited an Ostrich farm in the morning where they told us about their breeding and the feathers and leather etc and then we played with the Ostriches!! It was soooo much fun!!! We all rode an ostrich - it was really funny, they cover the ostrich's head whilst you get on, then you hold onto the wings and they take the head cover off and the ostrich starts running!!! We only managed to stay on for about 10 seconds each, but it was really hilarious. Then one of the professionals got on one to show us how it's done - they can steer them and get them to stop by pulling their necks. 



Then we got a neck massage from the ostriches - we stood with our backs to the ostriches with a bucket of food and then loads of ostriches leant around our necks to get the food - that was quite scary!!
After the ostrich farm we went to Cango animal park which we thought was going to be like a wildlife park, but it was really more like a zoo. They had some interesting animals there - white lions, white tigers and some tiger cubs which were so cute. The giant turtles decided to put on a bit of a show for us too which was really funny.


We walked back to the hostel and got back on the bus to George. We met the Baz Bus and headed for Knysna.
We arrived in Knysna at around 4ish, checked into the Island Vibe hostel and headed out to find somewhere fun to watch the England - France rugby. We walked down to the waterfront, expecting to find loads of bars as we'd been told Knysna is a bit of a party town, but found that it's only restaurants down there. The town seems really quite 'posh' and not really like a 'backpackers' place. 


We did manage to find a pub with 2 huge screens, so we settled in for the evening....and what an evening!!! Needless to say, we were quite drunk by the end of it which wasn't helped by the fact that the barmaid ended up giving the boys another 'free' drink due to their beer promotion when another one really wasn't necessary!!! Somehow a shopping trolley became our preferred mode of transport home - the boys pushed me up the hill, then Ben pushed Chris for a bit, then I crashed Chris into a wall - luckerly he escaped major injury!!

Sunday 14th: We didn't do a lot all day.....went out for breakfast, wandered around town a bit, went back to bed for a couple of hours.....proper hang-over Sunday behaviour!!
We went back to the same pub to watch the SA - Argentina match. I got kidnapped by a bunch of really loud South Africans so ended up watching the match and drinking with them - it was a really good laugh.....and what a result - it's gonna be great watching the match here next week.....I have my SA hat already - stolen from a man in the bar on Sunday!! ha ha - I just need to find at least 1 other English person for some moral support!!

Monday 15th: We went for a wander around the town and tried to walk to 'the heads' but gave up when we could see how far away they were!!! We walked along the lagoon and ate ice cream - didn't do much else....got picked up by the Baz Bus at 5ish and arrived at Jeffreys Bay at around 8pm.