Recipes From South Africa

After spending a magnificent 5 weeks in Vereeniging with my mother, family and friends, we went to the fare Cape. The Western Cape and the Northern Cape have a great inviting feeling to them and you just can’t help feeling pulled towards it. I have always loved the Cape, the scenery, laid back approach to life in general and the friendly faces.

Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE Gauteng, was born and grew up there and the weather is absolutely perfect. Almost no wind (except in August), only rain in the summer (not always which can be a big problem for our lovely farmers) and sunshine pretty much everyday of the year. So why not stay there? Like I said, the Cape is just so calm and relaxing in comparison.

So after our 5 weeks stay in Gauteng, we flew to the Cape on Mango on the 31st of July 2008. The flight was great. The plane was new and has the most comfortable leather seats ever. We were also lucky enough to sit at an emergency exit so leg room was NO problem at all! Very friendly people, smiles all around and a very comfortable flight.

The flight took around 2 hours and when we flew over the Karoo, you could only see the great dry land with NO clouds or any pollution around to spoil the scenery. So after we landed, we proceeded to picking up our rental can for the 4 weeks we would spent in the Cape. We got a little blue Volkswagen Chico, a very popular car in South Africa, but probably nowhere else 

After we picked up the car we started making our way to our first destination, about 600 km away from where we were. It was only 2 in the afternoon when we got on our way and there was a long way to still go for us. The only problem is that I put our video camera down and then forgot it… I could not believe it! When I realised what I’ve done, it was too late. We phoned the airport but I knew… it was gone.

We drove down to the Garden route area, our destination: Wilderness. Wilderness is surrounded by rivers, natural lakes and lagoons which makes it a fantastic destination for water sports. There is also a 2500 ha National Park that is a birdwatchers dream. Why not swim in the warm Indian Ocean, soak up the sun on the beautiful white sands, view dolphins and whales or follow duiker and bushbuck along quiet forest paths.

The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe train runs between George and Knysna, travelling through Wilderness, although at the moment, this specific line is closed. Due to serious storms and floods, this line has been damaged severely, but you can still catch this lovely drive but in the opposite direction. At the moment it runs between George and Mosselbay.

After a 6 hour drive, we arrived at our destination at around 8 in the evening. It was so dark and we could not find the place we were supposed to stay at the next week. So we turned round and went to a hotel for the first night. They had some special rates because it was winter and the rate for the evening included breakfast.

After an exhausting day of driving, loosing our video camera and not staying at the accommodation we booked and paid 50% up front, we finally had a place to sleep, even if was just for the first night…