22 South of Africa

Pictures
Route
1 Windhoek to Joburg
2 Views and gold
3 Kruger bound
4 Elephant and rhino
5 To Olifants
6 To Blyde River
7 Swaziland beckons
8 Ezulwini Valley
9 To Dundee
10 Zulu battlefields
11 To Hluhluwe
12 Hluhluwe & coast
13 to Winterton
14 Wits End
15 The Sphinx
16 Bus day north
17 Kimberley mine
18 Through the Karoo
19 Plettenberg Bay
20 Pootling about
21 Buffalo Bay
22 South of Africa
23 On to wine lands
24 On to Paarl
25 Wine and port
26 Cheetah and eagles
27 Paarl and Stellenbosch
28 Paarl to Cape Town
29 Museum and art
30 Robben Island
31 Cape of Good Hope
32 Around Cape Town
33 Table Mountain
34 Going home

South Africa

Buffalo Bay to Agulhas

Wednesday 10 May 2006

Oude Caepse winkels (shops) in Swellendam

We left Buffalo Bay behind us today with no really firm plan of where we would end up for the night. We’d thought about staying at Mossel Bay for a night but decided that we had already seen the most beautiful parts of the Garden Route so we carried on. The Garden Route is a really beautiful part of the world and has an enviable combination of sea, sand, inland waterways and mountains offering pretty much something for everyone but it is now really just one big tourist attraction stretching down the coast. From what we saw there were, as yet, no tacky theme parks or big hotels so people are still coming here to enjoy the natural wonders around them but no doubt it will change over the years. It would be a great place to come for a couple of weeks holiday if there weren’t so many other parts of the world still left to be explored.

At some stage during the morning we decided to head down to the most southerly tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas. Our route took us through to Swellendam which was a really interesting place to visit, partly due to its split personality as a small town. We drove in off the main highway through the newer part of town. This was a pretty anonymous place with the usual collection of men just hanging around on the streets waiting for something that never seems to happen. The shops looked pretty ordinary and fairly low end, something we hadn’t expected as our book created the impression that Swellendam was a historic colonial town.

There was the odd building or two that looked as if they had been around for quite a while but following the main road through town we soon came across a different side to the town. Here was the old colonial heart founded by the initial settlers. Cape Dutch style one storey whitewashed buildings with thatched roofs lined the road on either side, the trees all turning to autumn golden colours. Off behind the main road a few more streets were also lined with small, and not so small, thatched cottages and pretty country gardens. Many of them now seemed to have been converted into B&B’s all of which looked like they catered for the top end of the market. It was a very relaxing place to stop for a while and break our journey.

From Swellendam we headed down through Bredasdorp and on to L’Agulhas. The landscape all around here was wide and flat agricultural land. The fields have all long since been harvested and are now just waiting to see the winter through. Sheep, cows and ostriches were grazing in some of the fields but most were just empty. Bredasdorp came and went, an administrative town for the region and from what we saw one that did not have much else going for it.

Olde Cape Dutch buildings in Swellendam

Towards the end of the road we passed through Struisbaai, another seaside town with some old cottages welcoming you in. They looked like old crofters cottages to me and now a big new estate of holiday homes is being built in the same style but with all modern conveniences added in. Struisbaai was really just a larger version of Buffalo Bay. Here there was a large supermarket and a few more shops which showed that there was a more sizeable population that live here year round but it again had the feeling that most of the houses were now empty and would be until next year’s summer season.

Through Struisbaai the road wound round to L’Agulhas, the most southerly town in Africa. Signs above some of the shops and café’s reinforced the end of the world sort of feeling and again we were in a small place predominantly geared up for the holiday market. We followed the road down to the lighthouse and then a few kilometres further on down a dirt track. A short walk takes you through to a small monument with a simple plaque confirming that this is the most southerly point and the point where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. I had expected there to be something slightly more grand, a meeting of oceanic currents that was visible to the human eye, so it was a bit of a disappointment to say the least. Another couple there had their GPS out because the lady didn’t believe that this was the most southerly point and she wanted to check it.

We took a few photos and then drove up to a high look out point so that we could see down onto the town. It almost looked like a Lego toy town laid out before us with a backdrop of the sea and all lit up by light so clear it’s as if you could touch it. Our original plan had been to take a detour up to Waenhuiskrans for our overnight stop but we decided to stay in Agulhas instead. We did a quick tour of the local available options and ended up at Rosielou’s Cottages a slightly oddly laid out affair but one that had all we needed as well as a sea view.

Trivial Pursuit was waiting for us on the table and with G&T in hand we headed out to our balcony to watch the sun go down and to test our South Africa general knowledge. We didn’t do too badly but after a while realised that at some stage we had both been moving the same piece around the board. That probably worked in our favour as it meant we could both retire gracefully calling it a void game rather than the game lasting for a few hours until we’d got our final piece of pie!

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