Garden Route, South Africa

Since leaving Cape Town last weekend I've been making my way along the 'garden route', South Africa's most popular backpacking stretch, this runs along the south coast of the Eastern Cape region and is famous for great beaches and nice scenery along the coast.

My first stop following Cape Town was Mossel Bay, a popular holiday town with a couple of places to surf in season.
The waves weren't any good for the serious surfers but okay to learn on so I took a surf lesson one morning with an ex-pro from Mossel Bay (he's competed in some of the major events and came second in the SA National champs once!). It was great fun, but as expected I was pretty terrible... more lessons needed before I can even stand up on the board! I also had another few hours sandboarding, although not as good or dramatic as Namibia, it was still worth it.

Following Mossel Bay I took the Baz Bus inland to Oudtshoorn, an area famous for ostrich farming and obviously very warm. It was strange driving into the town and seeing fields and fields of ostriches, as the last time I saw them we were on a game drive and we were excited about seeing a few of them together! I stayed at a great backpackers and took trip to an ostrich show farm which took us on a tour and gave some of us the chance to ride an ostrich. Unfortunately the weight limit was 75kg (11st 10lb) and apparently I don't look like I weigh less than that!

Ostrich show farm, one of the "jockeys"!

I also went to the Congo Caves; one of South Africa's most popular tourist attractions. There are huge chambers with impressive formations created over thousands of years by dripping water reacting with the rocks.

Cango Caves

I'm now in the stretch which is regarded as the most beautiful part of the Garden Route, the coastline is beautiful and there are forests in a lot of the parts which go right up to the beach. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures last night of Buffels Bay, which had probably the best beach I've ever seen (and a great Rastafarian band playing in the evening!). Today I'm at a place called Nature's Valley and I'll move on to Storm's River tomorrow, these places are very remote and are literally just a backpackers in the middle of nowhere, which is why everyone loves the garden route!

Nature's Valley

I'm about 600km east of Cape Town now and will be reaching the surfers mecca of Jeffery's Bay in the next few days and then Port Elizabeth. I'll spend a few days at each of these, J-Bay to surf and relax and PE to complete my PADI scuba diving qualification.

I've updated my last entry with a few photos from Cape Town, have got lazy with my camera on the Garden Route and not taken many so far!