Woke at 6.30am. Two hours before breakfast, but we need to pack as we want to be on the road straight after we eat - it will be a long drive today.
Before breakfast we took a short walk in the village. My friend Lynn has bought a property in Franschhoek so we went to take a good look. It is beautiful - just one street down from where we stayed.
After breakfast, we consulted with Arthur about our route to Wilderness and (having established that we like driving and don't mind taking the long way round to see a bit of scenery) he gave us an alternative to the boring motorway. Arthur warned us off also trying to fit in the Swartberg pass en route to Wilderness - far too big a drive, in his opinion.
We set off just 21 minutes behind Roy's schedule (once you get chatting to K and A you don't get away easily).
We went over the stunning Franschhoek pass again. Protea bushes line the road and are still in bloom. Two eagles were sitting on a signpost up at the top. The flowers on the flood plain next to the dam were bright red and yellow and I wish I knew what they were.
On the way out off the pass and toward Villiersdorp, it suddenly hit me that we had not emptied the safe in our room. Oh great - we were heading 400km away with no passports, cash or credit cards! So we had to turn back. Nightmare. We'd only done 25 - 30kms - but all of it on mountain pass road! After a 10 minute wait for baboons to finish playing in the road, we finally got back over to Akadamie St.
K and A told us they'd have had our stuff couried to us in Wilderness, but we'd not have got that far as we needed petrol. In fact, we did our first fill up in Villiersdorp.
I loved the Franschhoek Pass but to drive over it 3 times in one morning was excessive!
Villiersdorp through to Robertson felt like being in the Wild West of America... different landscape from Franschhoek. The winelands continue here - I never realised how much wine they grew in SA. The estates line the roads bordering their vineyards with beautiful pink or red flowers. We passed a shanty town at Ashton and then onto the road to Montagu. Above a tunnel and hidden in the rocks is an Old English Fort - which I spotted but didn't get a photo as I was jumping back in the car so that we could get back on the road ahead of a huge wagon!
At Montagu we marvelled at the coloured rocks - layers of brown, green, red, gold. We pulled in to a parking space at Montagu but did not have time to explore. It's a really pretty place. I read Dad's diary, as he'd stayed 2 days here and absolutely loved it. They spent most of their day here at the Hot Springs. As we drove out, I just felt a wave of grief and started to cry. In fact I cried for a long time. Luckily, Roy was driving. I put Dad's diary away and never read it again on the trip. Couldn't. I left it with Uncle Gordon as we left Durban to come home.
I really would have liked to drive the Tradouw Pass, (which Dad had also been over) but it was not to be - no time, and it would have been a detour for us. The signs kept reading "Oop de Tradouw Pass". Which we found amusing (I think you have to be from Yorkshire to get that one - "oop" here means "up"). However what it really means (translated from Afrikaans) is "The Tradouw Pass is open."
Through Barry Dale and Ladismith we noticed the landscape changing again - here there is still coloured rock (and a lot of red rock) but the hills are smaller and further away from you and the flatter open areas are semi-arid. This area is the Klein Karoo (little Karoo).
All over the place we see people walking on the roads. Given that the villages and towns here are miles apart, these people must walk a long way. Children coming to and from school, adults, going who knows where? You find yourself wondering "Where are they going? Where have they been? Why?" The homes that clearly belong to farm workers are tiny - but at least they aren't squatter homes.
I find myself singing the Culture Club song, Karma Chameleon in my head as I stare at the rocks along the Huis River Pass:
"Loving would be easy if your colors were like my dream. Red, gold and green. Red, gold and green".
At Calitzdorp, we stopped at the Bo Paas Estate, to take a Port tasting session! Well, Roy did, I picked up the drive from here so didn't indulge. We bought some port here to take home. Only a small bottle - our case is getting heavy!
We called in to the Rose of Karoo restaurant for food, and after finding out they did takeaway we decided to save time and buy sandwiches and milk tarts (yummy!) and coffee. We stopped at a picnic laybe overlooking the red stone hills to eat them and then got back on the road.
We drove through Oudtshoorn, which actually is a big town and famed for its Ostrich Farms. The fields around Oudtshoorn are vivid green (the lucerne/alfalfa that ostrich like to eat) and ostriches are everywhere. I find them funny as they always pull their heads up to stare at you as you drive by. Not at all shy!
After Oudtshoorn we head through a town called George. Unfortunately this is at "rush hour" and traffic is busy and slow - we get stopped at every single Robot (traffic light). Eventually we cross yet another pass - the Outeniqua Pass - can I say "stunning" again?
A sneaky road camera sits at the bottom of the Pass where the speed limit changes very quickly from 80 to 40 - luckily we'd been warned about this by a waiter in Cape Town and so we knew what to expect.
Finally - we are in Wilderness. It is by now 5.30pm and so we've been driving all day. The Guest House here is lovely. A spacious, open plan house. Our room has a floor to ceiling glass wall from which we can see the ocean. So we headed straight down to the beach (our house is elevated so there are about 100 steps down) and took a nice long walk to stretch our legs out. This takes us to sunset time and as we head back, we see a fabulous "moon rise" with the moon emerging like a golden ball out of the ocean.
That evening we went to Pomodoro - an italian restaurant in Wilderness village. We shared mushroom and grilled polenta to start, and then both had pizza. Roy's was goat cheese and butternut squash, mine was roasted veggies - I was surprised to see beetroot on a pizza, but actually it was pretty good. The pizza base was extra thin and crispy. We ordered "small" pizzas with greek side salads but overall the portions were huge. To finish I tried pannacotta and Roy had tiramisu. Coffees. Water. Bottle of Red. All for less than R440 (about £26). Amazing value.
