An entry in the TFS Travel Journal
No furry animals of any sort to greet us this morning. We enjoyed another veranda breakfast, then sat on the patio reading about more years of solitude, and the latest Fair Lady, for an hour or so. We looked at the recently vacated cottage #6, and as it was nicer and larger than our present room, we moved.
Then it was off for today’s adventure. We drove east along the coast to Plettenberg Bay, a getaway playground for Joburg’s social set. Certainly a lovely and affluent beach town, (a bit like the Malibu hills) with a pristine beach stretching on for miles. We stopped for lunch at Mike’s Kitchen, because he’s been cooking up fine food for 25 years; the restaurant is located in a fairly new (guess Mike was cooking somewhere else before) and garish roadside tourist mall. The meal was sufficient but not great - decent hamburger to satisfy our craving de jeur, stir fry chicken, a good paella w/shrimp, and a very good sundae for dessert.
Then it was off to more Garden Route activities, after a memorable detour to the Petromart. First stop was The Big Tree. Whew, they’re not exaggerating: the tree (reached after a 500 meter walk along a very nice boardwalk through a lush, wet forest) is an 800-year-old yellowwood, over 120ft high and over 40ft in circumference. Interestingly, there’s a similar-sized one nearby which toppled over about 4 years ago, and they’ve set up a viewing platform to see the result and explain much about gaps in the canopy, forest regeneration, etc.
We then drove through more lush forest to get to Tsitsikamma National Park, a beautiful park set along the rocky coastline at the base of the thickly-forested hillsides. We hiked (again, along a very nice wood-plank path) to an interesting old cave, then we crossed the Storms River, at the point where it empties into the sea, on a 77-meter long single-person-width suspension bridge that swayed a bit much for our taste. (thinking of you, JKM!)
We had a nice discussion with part of a family from Holland (the other part, including their 66-year-old mother, was busy scaling some nearby rocks) who told us about their 4 week trip through the U.S. We then walked back and sat on a bench overlooking the long coastline as the surf really crashed and pounded against, and over, all the big rock formations that were along the beach. It had by then become a gray, cloudy day but cool after starting out hot and sunny.
We drove back to Knysna, mostly through drizzle (and listening to the countdown of the American top 20, with Matchbox 20 and Smashmouth trading off #s 1 and 2 this week), where we stopped and had what turned out to be very delicious wood-oven pizza. (a medium and a beer totalled $5.50) Then it was back to our cottage for some lovely al fresco typing and reading.