Day 5 Garden Route

The Garden Route

This morning we start our journey along the Garden Route.
It comprises 200km of indigenous temperate forest, pine plantations and thick fragrant bush known as "fynbos", beneath the Tsitsikamma and Outeniqua mountains, running alongside rocky coves and glorious sandy beaches. A few lakes, lagoons, gorges and mountain passes are then tossed into this scenic salad for extra garnish. Tourist development, logging and population growth may have taken their toll on the forest and fynbos, but the Garden Route remains a breathtakingly beautiful natural playground.

Church at Ladismith

Crazy Garden

Local Transport in Ladismith

Our first destination was Ladismith as we travel from the Stellenbosch Winelands distrist in the Western Cape.The scenery as we travelled across the mountain ranges were stunning even the pictures taken from the window as we travelled turned out good.

Views through car window

To name some of the towns we travelled through on this first leg of our journey, from Ladismith-Calitzdorp-Oudtshoorn,  which is the capital for Ostrich farms in South Africa.
We visited the famous Cango Ostrich Farm where they had ostrich eggs been incubated, and you could handle the small infant birds.  Kath tried feeding some exited hungry ostrichs, while Lynn tried to stand on an ostrich egg. We all declined the opportunity to race ostrichs around the paddock, it looked far to dangerous for us.

Baby Ostrich

Kath feeding the Birds

Lynn stepping on an  Ostrich Egg

Oudtshoorn Hotel

This evening we out went down to a local outdoor restaurant, which specialised in alfresco BBQ meals, which we all enjoyed, before returning to our hotel for a game of cards with one or two drinks, before retiring for the night.