Knysna....

So………a bit about Knysna:  Knysna is situated on a large estuary about 400 miles east of Cape Town along the so called Garden Route.  It's a popular holiday destination for South Africans BUT the holiday season for them is short - and happily for us - effectviely finishes on the 11th January. The town is in drought conditions most of the time as they have over 280 days of sun every year.  However, if you go into the forests around Knysna they have rain every 2-3 days and are very green as a result.  This area also has many species of plants and animals only found here - such as a dwarf chameleon, tiny seahorse, Loerie (very colourful bird) and Pansy shells (a type of starfish).  Knysna also had the only forest elephants in Africa but it’s believed that they are extinct as the last sighting was 2007.  Sadly they were hunted for their tusks by the bored gold miners once the gold ran out in the forest in the late 1800s.

This is a wonderful place to stay but to truly appreciate it’s uniqueness you need to get into the forests and National Parks………..so we did!

Our first adventure was to the Tsitsikamma Forest for a canopy tour which had us swinging through the trees on zip wires!  It was great fun (I can’t believe I said that…!).

 

 And now for the action video featuring me!...................

We spent the rest of the afternoon in the National Park and walked to the suspension bridge along a very rugged coastline but there were still areas safe for swimming.

A baby Dassie - about the size of a large rabbit.

We have also been walking in the forest (people have been lost for days in these parts!) around the area of the old Bendigo gold mine.

...............and cycling, 20 miles -  including 4 miles uphill which was too much for me…..Malc thought it was easy though and went for a swim afterwards whilst I had a lie down!

After that we had to spend the day on one of our favourite beaches - Kettle Beach - (at my insistence!) and watch the sun go down from the deck of a fantastic Italian restaurant overlooking the beach..............it's a hard life!

Back to the wildlife................we visited a snake sanctuary because I like snakes and have been disappointed that I never see one ...............however, this one I wouldn't want to meet - it's a VERY deadly boomslang snake!

This is Fred - he's a water monitor - and he ended up at the sanctuary because he was somebody's pet and he got too big for them!

And this is Crusty - a five year old baby python - he will eventually grow to about 10 metres!!   

Happy New Year

We ended 2010 with a three hour hike in the mountains in the afternoon; beautiful but quite tiring and we didn’t quite make it to the end which would have ended in the Elephant Eye Cave (my fault!) so we will have to do it again.  

We walked close to these baboons so I took a quick picture.....and then hurried off!

 

We had a quiet evening at our house to recover and, surprisingly, made it to midnight and watched the fireworks at the waterfront from our balcony (admittedly we were standing on the table!) which were very good.

 

New Years Day was the BIG clear up as we cleaned the house and packed up (again!) ready for the new tenants to move in on Jan 3^rd….. we did quite a good job too!

On 2^nd Jan we spent the day with our friends in Betty’s Bay about 50km away eating crayfish and walking on the beach and then left early the next morning to complete the packing to move out.

The next few weeks will be spent in Knysna about 450km from Cape Town along the Garden Route and on the Indian Ocean rather than the Atlantic so the sea is much warmer.  We decided to make two overnight stops along the way and spent the first night in Franschhoek, one of the best wine areas in the Cape. 

We did some wine tasting of course and bought a few bottles....



 

The second night was spent in MacGregor, another wine region so we bought some more wine!  By now the Western Cape was in a heat wave and the temperature went up to 39 degrees!  We were staying in a stone cottage with a thatched roof which was amazingly cool under the circumstances but sadly their swimming pool had a problem and we couldn’t cool off – it was a three shower day!!

On the 5^th we completed our journey through the Klein Karoo and Overberg regions (famous for fruit farms, Karoo lamb and Ostrich) and headed for the coast via the Tradouw Pass.

The temperature went from 39 degrees down to 20 degrees as we arrived at George in a sea mist but soon rose again to 23 degrees in Knysna.  
 

 








Our home for the next 3 ½ weeks is a flat overlooking the Knysna Quays….lovely!   This is where Malc will swim every morning  - two or three times "around the block" and trying not to get run over by a boat!!

Christmas Holiday 2010

On Christmas morning Malc did his usual 20 mile bike ride whilst I completed the Yorkshire puds and gravy to go with the roast lamb that we had cooked to take to our friends for lunch.  We “poshed up” for lunch – well as posh as you ever get in a sunny, sand and sea barefoot type of existence…so we thought we had better get a photo as it doesn’t happen often!

We had lunch with our friends Andre and Alina and Andre’s parents and grandmother who was 94.  Andre’s mum had done the rest of the lunch…………………salad!  It was a weird combination with our hot meat and gravy but they think all us Brits are eccentric anyway so no-one was surprised!!

As usual, the young ones were very excited and the oldies fell asleep……

 

The sunset that evening on our beach was great……………it’s not called Sunset Beach for nothing!

 

On Boxing day, our friend Ella took us for a bike ride in the Koberg Nature reserve.  Koburg is the nuclear power station for South Africa’s electricity!  It was quite surreal cycling next to the power station but seeing Eland, Springbok, Zebra and Tortoise. Of course, I can't include any pictire of the power station as apparently taking them is illegal..............cycling and walking through the area isn't!

We had a few more beach days of course and swims in the pool and a drive around the Cape and Chapman’s Peak and Simon's Town on a day when it was far too windy to go to the beach.  

False Bay

Nordhoek Beach

Simon's Town:

 Izabel teaching Malc how to swim....

We also had a fantastic meal at Myoga at the Vineyard Hotel……………as if we hadn’t eaten enough! Six courses and wine to match each course for about £35 each!