Road Trip South Afica

I have mentioned before how great hostels are for traveling and I would just like to reiterate how handy they are. While staying here in Cape Town I have been hanging out with Barret, who is from central Canada, Megan, who is from Texas, and Matt, who is also from Texas. We all really hit it off together. Barret is our token Canadian who we keep around so that we can say we are an international crowd. Actually he is here just vacationing since he spent the last week climbing Mount Kilimanjaro, the tallest peak in Africa. I was impressed, who knew a Canadian could do that? Anyway, we all decided on road tripping over to the Garden Route, which is a beautiful drive along the South African coastline. I knew my little Hyundai Atos would be up to it.

Our plan was to drive from Cape Town down to Cape Point then east to Mossel Bay, which is the unofficial start of the Garden Route. Plans are mere outlines, however, and this one was no different. The day started as the forecast predicted; torrential, down pouring rain. Just a few meters out from the hostel I thought that the little Atos, now bogged down with four people and luggage, would not make it. The rain was unbelievable. Although none of us were ecstatic about the horrendous conditions for our picturesque drive, but we made do. We made our way to Cape Point, which is the most south-western tip of Africa. We all thought this was a pretty half-assed title for a place, so we decided to get to the southern most tip on our road trip, none of this south-western junk. We still took our picture in front of the Cape Point sign, in fact that was a bit of a chore. It was pouring rain so we didn't want to set the camera on a timer outside so we asked a guy who just happened to be there in his car to take the picture from inside of his car. It worked out, sort of, but we all got soaked standing there yelling at this guy in his car who is 20 feet away trying to talk him through using my camera for 5 minutes before he finally clicked the right button. It was nice of him to help but when you are taking a picture of four people standing in crazy rain, you put a little hustle into it.

After our drive through the point we started to make our way over to Mossel Bay. According to a lady we asked Mossel bay is a 3 hour drive from Cape Town, we were on hour 6 and had covered a quarter of the distance. Of course we did have about a hundred pictures, a great lunch, and about ten cookies from random eateries on the way to show for it. We accepted the fact that we are terribly inefficient road trippers, but none of us cared. Eventually we made our way to the main highway and I played dad as everyone promptly fell into their post-lunch food comas.

The South African landscape is one of the most diverse that I have ever seen. We started on the coast where towering bluffs overlook crystal blue water crashing against the beach and within an hour we were entrenched in a forest of tall tree that practically covered the entire sky from our view. It was like traveling through a fairy tale world of overgrown nature. Everything is bigger in Africa, it is unadulterated nature.

Eventually we arrived at Cape Agulhas, which is the southern most tip of Africa. It took us 11 hours and 400 miles to get to a place that is 3 hours and roughly 260 miles away. Mossel Bay was still another 150 miles from Cape Agulhas so we all convinced ourselves that there was nothing to see there and found housing in Cape Agulhas. This actually ended up being great as we ate at a local restaurant and talking with the owner who was more than happy to chat. He was a nice guy. He seemed like he had no place else to go, but he was an unbelievably nice guy and we talked with him about the town and his restaurant. Cape Agulhas is a sleepy little beach town. It was very different from Cape Town and a great contrast.

After the night we ended up taking a much more efficient route home that took us 350 miles and 6 hours. We couldn't help but take the scenic route. Luckily the weather cooperated better and we were given some spectacular views of the South African coast. All in all it was an unbelievable trip and, to me, one of the most unbelievable things was that three days ago I did not even know any of these folks and today I was toting them all over South Africa in a bright yellow Hyundai Atos. It really is crazy how life works sometimes.