The beginning of the festive season: Oudtshoorn

I travelled with my mother to East London on Monday, December 18th to pick up Geza from the airport. At 19:30, Geza phones me and informs me that he is in Durban. The reason for this was not that he boarded the wrong plane, but that there was a terrible storm which forced the plane to land and re-fuel in Durban. The result of this was that Geza and the rest of the passengers to sojourned in Johannesburg at a five-star hotel for one night (I didn't feel too sorry for him anymore when I discovered this fact).

The following day, he arrives at the office, only to inform me that his luggage is still in Washington! So, we wait….and wait….. and wait…..until it arrived the following day. We left for Cape Town via the inland town of Oudtshoorn one day later as per the “Geza & Emma’s South African adventure itinerary”.

Oudtshoorn: Geza found it extremely amusing to drive on the “wrong” side of the road in South Africa. The poor bloke had sweaty palms after 30 minutes of driving, but they dried up pretty quick. The scenery was positively gorgeous: mountains and the odd settlement here and there. The land was very dry as it was a semi-desert named the “Kleine Karoo”. Geza pronounces the town “odds-horn” rather than the proper way: “odes-horn”, and any effort to get him to pronounce the town's name properly was in vain.

Arriving at Backpacker’s Paradise around 15h30, we wanted to do something before the day ended, so off we marched to the Cango Wildlife Ranch in search of some novelty. We were duly informed that the walking distance (as we had had enough of driving, especially on the wrong side of the road) was one kilometre. We walked for more than a kilometre, but we survived.

At the wildlife ranch, once the veins in my forehead quit pulsing (from the extremely hot and strenuous walk to the ranch where Geza thought I was going to faint), we were given a tour. I felt like a tourist. Yech. We saw: mating turtles, lions, cheetah, crocs, tigers (yes, there are officially no tigers in Africa), otters and vultures indigenous to this area [see below].

On the way back to the backpackers from the wildlife ranch, there was a lonely ostrich. Geza snapped a pic of myself and this ostrich where it appears that I am singing to this flightless bird! "Oooh, my dear ostrich.... how your feathers must itch...." [see below].

Next morning, we headed out to Cape Town for the second leg of the voyage. Baboons littered the road, to our delight. So sweet to see a baby baboon hanging on to it’s mother. At a certain point, I needed to see our map. So, I whipped open the glove compartment only to be confronted with a giant, enormous, humongous RAIN SPIDER!!!!!!! I screamed so loud that Geza began to drive on the other side of the road. After much ado, Geza finally pulled the car over and proceeded to open the glove box with the intent of removing the spider. Little did I know that he too is scared of this arachnid. To finish this tale, the spider was removed, the ignition re-started, and we zoomed off to Cape Town.

We arrived around 17h00 in Cape Town at Simon’s wonderful house near Muizenberg (a suburb south of downtown Cape Town). We shopped for groceries at Woolworth’s. This store used to be everywhere in Canada and was not much of a store. Here, it’s all the rage and glory, and very expensive...