Road Trip Days 5 & 6

Day 5 - Friday the 11th of February - Heading Back - Total Kms: 550


When I assumed I would be in pain on waking up this morning I was wrong. The pain didn’t wait till morning to hit, I was in pain the whole night. I could barely make the trip off of my bunk and down to the floor as I was so stiff and in so much pain. It hurt to walk, it hurt to turn, it hurt to do anything that required movement from my body and so unjustly and in horrible contrast Bayan was in very little pain whatsoever. So I suffered alone, aching as I went up and down the stairs in the backpackers to take bags to the car, struggling to bend down to the ground to pick the bags up in the first place. At least this morning I decided that nothing would get me out of bed before 9am so there wasn’t another horrible early morning wake up.

We left the backpackers and Cape Town somewhere around 11am and started our trip back to P.E which we would stretch over a day and a half.

There isn’t much to be told of this day, we were on the road pretty much non-stop from Cape Town to Plettenburg Bay. There were tonnes of road works stops which actually were a blessing for my cramped and aching body as we would sit at a stop for maybe 10minutes at a time so I would always get out of the car and stretch. After a solid 5 hours of driving we reached Plettenburg Bay where we decided whilst driving would be where we spent the night. We phoned a couple of backpackers we found in a road trip guide and picked the best sounding one. We got to the place and as we approached the front door we realised the shock horror of the accommodation we had chosen. There standing in front of us was a staircase which we would have to ascend and descend every time we came and went. The pain we were in, my oh my, the pathetically slow pace at which we climbed those stairs. Yes, finally, the pain caught up with Bayan and I couldn’t have been happier. I was even more delighted when our climbing companions called to say that their muscles were also stiff and they couldn’t move. It was wonderful news to me to know that I was not suffering alone. The girl working there was at first confused and then amused by our stair climbing ways. We took each step slowly, holding onto the railing and pulling ourselves up to ease the stress on our legs. Finally, after a noisy and slow climb we reached the top and signed the paper work. Then we had to go back down to get our bags. This was plain hilarious. We were crying from laughter at ourselves for howling in pain as we were going down. We could hear the people upstairs laughing too and then Bayan pushed me so I went down a couple of stairs really fast and that was so painful. We were both humiliated by our sorry state and also extremely entertained by it as well.

Leaving Cape Town..

Bayan and Me and the view of Cape Town behind us

The view from my rear view mirror

cool blue house

The sun was slowly making its way down so Bayan and I decided to go to the beach. A Brazilian girl was also staying in the same dorm as us so we took her with us to the beach. She laughed as Bayan and I attempted running on the sand to help our muscles and the pain we would cry out in with every step. We frolicked on the beach for some time and I drank some dirty pond water to prove to Bayan that it would not result in death before heading back to find food. We got a Steers veggie burger for Bayan and a wood fire pizza for me and sat next to a Marimbaz band on the main street. We enjoyed our food and the free music and watched some kids dance to the music.

Bayan and me on the beach in Plett

Beautiful sunset

Day 6 - Saturday the 12th of February - The Last Leg - Total Kms: 250



We woke up this morning and lazily prepared ourselves for the day. We were tired and still sore and a little grumpy and I think we were both glad that this was the last day.

We started the day at the beach claiming to each other that we would swim but getting there and deciding that it was too cold. We went in about half way. Then we hung out with the lifeguards one of whom was very attractive, can’t remember his name though. We talked a bit and they asked about Australia and our trip. Then we packed ourselves into the car and headed off for our last stop before P.E. We were going to Tsiki tsiki forest. It’s actually called Tsikama forest but I kept forgetting the name and called it tsiki tsiki instead, I think it sounds better.

The guy at the entry gate let us in for free, nice guy, and we drove down to this beautiful coastline. It was so nice, so so beautiful. There were these suspension bridges hung across the water that we could walk over and so Bayan and I did that and of course we put our hands in the air and run across one of the bridges while screaming because that’s how we do. Then we saw the sign that said no jumping on the bridge, in all fairness we had done all our jumping before seeing that sign.

We needed to be back in Port Elizabeth by 4pm and so we didn’t get to spend too much time here. After seeing pretty things and me and Bayan not talking for a good 15minutes because we were angry at each other about something silly, we left.

The next bit was the last stretch of drive before P.E and we drove straight from our road trip to Sonja’s house for Unit Convention which is a Baha’i gathering. We arrived exactly on time and we had a very nice convention.

Next stop was King’s Beach which is in P.E and then finally at around 10pm we drove home, ending our road trip.

Ups and downs are expected with an endeavour like this, 2 people in each other’s company non-stop for 6 days straight can cause a little strain on the sanity levels and being the only driver I was completely exhausted and had no time to rest. There were times while driving that Bayan would fall asleep and I would stare at her with such envy almost wanting to wake her up because I didn’t think it was fair that she should sleep while I couldn’t. Lack of sleep and lack of food make me very grumpy and so there were times that I’m sure I wasn’t the best company but all that aside we had a great road trip.

In the future Bayan and I have decided that we actually want to take a back pack with us should we travel in this fashion again because at every backpackers we went to we were the only ones without backpacks, instead filling the storage space with several different types of carry bags and hand bags and plastic bags.

Also although we couldn’t choose our own soundtrack for this trip our road trip song became Liquid Deep’s “You don’t have to be alone” which played on the radio at least 5 times a day.

And so ended this adventure as chaotically and unorganised as the way it began.

Storms River

Suspension bridge

ready with her hands in the air to run down while screaming

Just the 2 of us

Bridge

A frog

Me :)

Road Trip Day 3

Day 3 - Wednesday the 9th of February - Driving, Driving, Driving - Total Kilometres: 450

Bayan and I decided to begin this day in Mossel Bay with exercise once again, however this time it was an act of spiritual exercise rather than that of our bodies. We set our alarms to bring us out of sleep just before sunrise so that we could have dawn prayers on the beach and as my alarm sounded I wondered to myself why we couldn't just pray on the beach at 9am instead of at 5:45am. Still I lazily pulled myself out of bed, dragged myself to the bathroom to brush my teeth and wash my face and finally awoken with prayer book in hand I was ready for some spiritual nourishment while watching the sun rise across the ocean. 

As you may remember Bayan and I were spending the night in a train which had been transformed into a hostel and so we went to the head of the carriage to open the door when alas! The door was locked. They had told us that the doors would be locked from 10pm but we assumed that they would be unlocked by now. No worry, I decided I would just open one of the carriage windows and call out to the security guard to open the door as we were advised to do in such a situation. So as silently as possible without wanting to wake the other guests I pulled the window down and stuck my head out and... he was no where in sight. Never fear, Bayan and I would succeed in finding a way around this. We went back to our room and put forward the option that we could see both the beach and the sky from our room so it would still be the same if we just prayed from our beds. A valid option, another great option would have been for me to just go back to sleep as I was on about 4 hours sleep a night and I was the sole driver so sleep was sounding like a stupendous option for me but our resolve to pray was too great and Bayan was set on dawn prayers ON the beach not looking at the beach and so I jumped out of our window. 

Jumping out of a window seems like nothing major and in most cases it isn't but in our case we were jumping out of the window of a train which was some 3metres off the ground and there isn't much to hold on to. So I jumped out of the window as silently as possible and I laughed as silently as possible while watching Bayan try to achieve the same feat. As she dangled her legs out and started sliding down it suddenly dawned on me that our cabin door was locked from the inside meaning we wouldn't be able to get back in so Bayan had to pull herself back inside to unlock our door and then try to get out again. Success! We were free and we went and found a spot on the sand to pray. 

Bayan trying to get out of the window

Dawn Prayers

Waiting for the sun to rise in Mossel Bay

When we were finished with our spiritual breakfast we went for a walk along the beach and then back to our room to try and sleep some more. As we were wanting to get to Cape Town by this afternoon and we still needed a place to stay when we got there we decided not to dawdle any more and by 10.30am we were on our way out of Mossel Bay and on the road again. This strip of road from Mossel Bay to Cape Town is the most boring, there are almost no nice stops along the way and it is just a big stretch of highway so not all that much happened. At the same time tonnes of stuff happened. It's really strange how in all that nothingness so much was going on. When I look back on this day we barely took any photos, we hardly stopped anywhere, we spent almost the whole day on the road.. drove 450kms and I have almost no stories to tell from this day and yet to me lots of stuff happened. Funny how nothing can be so eventful.

So we drove to Cape Town, the drive was made all the more tedious by the road works going on. This highway (the N2) has only 2 lanes and so when there are road works one lane is closed and cars have to sit and wait while oncoming traffic uses the remaining open lane. This offered me a few opportunities to get out of the car and stretch but it also extended our time on the road by about an hour. As we were driving we would look out for towns or attractions that might interest us to either visit on this day or stop at on the way home. When we reached Swellendam I was desperate for an opportunity to get out of the car so we turned in to see what we could find. We followed a sign to a berry picking farm but when we got there we realised that berry picking season is over so instead we just tried all the jam (blackberry was my favourite) and bought some blueberry ice cream and then asked the girl working there what else Swellendam had to offer. "The Fairy Garden" she says. "The what?" I reply, "the fairy garden" she repeats. Confused, a little weirded out, in my own head trying to decide whether she means the boat type ferry or the mythical creature type fairy and deciding to myself she must mean the boat type because she appears to be in her 20's and couldn't possibly believe or expect us to believe that there are fairies and if there are that I would be interested in seeing them so I ask her again.."you mean like fairies like this?" I say this while flapping my arms like wings. "Yes, fairies" she responds with a bewildering confidence, not even a grin or a slight hint of a smile has come across her face to suggest to us that this woman is pulling our leg. "And what exactly do you do in this garden?".. "you walk around and see fairies everywhere".

So we go, to the fairy garden which turns out to be exactly what she described.. a garden with fairies in it. Hundreds of figurines and statues of fairies. What this girl failed to mention to us was that there were also wizards and dragons and Harry Potter himself in this garden. As it was free we went inside and took the garden walk. This garden is the initiative of a lady who has created a garden in her home and transformed her whole house for the sake of allowing people to come in a be inspired by the positive and uplifting spirit of the garden. Fairies, in her eyes, are little guardians who are always there to guide and protect us and help us see the best in everything. It is a very beautiful idea and I'm sure I would have had a much more profound appreciation for this garden if I was 7 but for the most part I was not impressed with a grown woman advising us to come here. 

So we left the fairy garden and Swellendam for that matter with the understanding that there is so little to do in this town that people would send you to a fairy garden when you ask for advice on what Swellendam has to offer. 

Me with a dwarf in the fairy garden

and this guy was there too

Bayan and Harry Potter even though Bayan claims this statue was a girl

 Next was the last long stretch of highway before finally arriving in CAPE TOWN!!!! It was 6pm when we touched down and after googling 'cape town backpackers' we checked in at Cape Town Backpackers which turned out to be a great backpackers and only R80 a night thanks to their February special. 

After getting settled we tried to snooze for a bit and then got ready to go out for dinner. I have been trying to convince Bayan to try Asian food as they have great options for vegetarians and they use tofu which amazingly for a vegetarian of 4months she has never tried, and so we went to eat at a place called 'Simply Asian'. Bayan proved her natural skills at using chopsticks and enjoyed the tofu in her food. Then we walked to Long St (the main strip in Cape Town) and found a place to have desert. This place also offered karaoke so of course we had a turn. Bayan wasn't familiar with many of the songs on their list and Beyonce being her favourite artist of all time she picked DeJuvu. I asked her about the part where it says Beyonce featuring Jay Z and she just said that he only comes in a little at the end. So we're singing away when suddenly there's an entire section of the song with Jay Z rapping, so I did what rappers to best, I just repeated "What what what, whatta whata what" again and again until his part was over accompanying my rap solo with gangster rapper hand movements. 

Later when we went downstairs on our way out one of the bar attenders asked if it was us who sang the Beyonce song and then told us we sounded great.. kudos to Bayan and I and our amazing Karaoke skills.

We took our time walking back to our place and on the way a hobo who makes his own flowers out of beads asked if we would buy one so I bought one for Bayan. Then when another begger asked us for money I told him how he should try and actually work for it like the flower making guy.

As most nights go it ended with sleep and so went our arrival in Cape Town.

Arrival in Cape Town!!

Bayan using chopsticks for the first time

nom nom nom nom

Road Trip Day 2

Day 2 - Tuesday the 8th of February - Being Spontaneous - Total Kilometres: 130

The primary purpose of most road trips is to have fun which usually manifests itself by the participants eating a lot of junk with increased regularity and moving around much less as so much of their time is spent sitting in the car but Bayan and I aren't your regular road trippers and so of course on the second day of our adventure we set our alarms for 6am to go for an early morning run.

One thing which I failed to mention in the list of things that we packed with us for this trip is a little device called The Wheel. It is a wheel with two handles on either side which you use to work out your abs. We brought The Wheel with us on our road trip because we are not normal and yes if you want to know we used it... everyday!

So we had done the wheel the night before and now we were awake bright and early to go for a run. I did say we set our alarms for 6am but we woke up closer to 6.20am as we kept hitting that snooze button, whoever invented that should have gotten a medal, and after we both tried to convince each other that we should go for this run rather than just get back into bed we finally began.

The run was actually amazing, we ran alongside the water but on the road and there was this mist that surrounded us. The weather was cool which suited us perfectly because we started sweating very quickly. The sun wasn't yet able to find a way through the clouds so the sky was light but not bright and everything around us had a grey haze covering it. Our run took us about 40minutes and we snuck back into our rooms feeling great. Our two German roommates were still asleep so we quietly gathered ourselves int he bathroom to finish our exercise routine, of course we mean The Wheel. One thing I need to explain about The Wheel is that as you perform the exercise it feels like your stomach is being cut open, it is a killer ab workout but it works and you only need to do like 10 a day to start to see it working. Bayan, more so than me, makes a lot of noise when she is in pain and so you can imagine how funny it was watching her on the floor in the bathroom doing the repetitions and trying to suppress the owing and ooing she would normally have yelled out. 

Once our exercising was done we had our breakfast which we had packed from home and then decided on our plans for the day. Originally we were hoping to be in Cape Town by this evening so we decided to have a final look at what Knysna had to offer then try and squeeze George and Mossel Bay in before heading straight to Cape Town.

I had heard that Knysna Heads were beautiful so we drove off to see them. There was still a mist covering everything but the weather wasn't cold. It was actually perfect. We used our amazing navigational instincts to find where to go and when we found it it was stupendously beautiful. Ahead of us was this beautiful lake of water which we could see far off connected to the ocean, set against a backdrop of hills. The water was shallow and and we walked out as far as we could. It was so awe inspiring standing where we were because we were surrounded by this beautiful, clear water who's stillness was sporadically disrupted by small waves which appeared to emanate from nowhere.

There were small hermit crab type creatures scurrying around on the sand in the water and these little holes scattered across the floor from where streams of water would spit out like a fountain. I tried to capture a photo of one of these holes spitting but it would be over so quickly I never managed to click fast enough. We enjoyed the serenity for some time before noticing that there was a lookout on one of the heads that we could go to and so we went to see it.

Knysna Heads

I asked Bayan to pose with the boat... this is what I got

A trend that Bayan and I noticed in ourselves was our inability, or perhaps it's more of an ability, lets try it both ways, our inability to find the stairs and our ability to jump down or climb down high walls when we haven't found the stairs. We had parked our car at the lookout and the parking was on a ledge, we saw that if we went down onto the sand we could walk to a little cave type thing so Bayan and I not seeing any stairs instead climbed down the wall. We were both very proud of ourselves for being so versatile and finding a way down when there was none until we saw the stairs and then just felt silly. I'm sure we were great entertainment for all the people that were watching us and who at no point thought they should point out this oversight to us. I can't say much for this lookout, it was just a rock face and some water and the ocean which after about 10 minutes wore out it's entertainment value on us and so we went wandering instead. We found some pathways into the bush and saw 2 caves which looked and smelt like squatter homes for someone and we went up another path looking thing where we tried to take poser model photos but instead got eaten by mosquitoes. BayanOMG I see them!! It's not the same when you actually see them!!" so we left the bush and stuck to the pavement instead.

The ground was covered in these mussel shells

trying to do model poses in the bush but the mosquitoes were attacking us

We departed Knysna, the 2 wanderers, to continue exploring. We were on the road again and our next stop was somewhere near a town called Wilderness. We saw this amazing lake where the water was black so we pulled in to look around. Funnily enough the name of the place was Black Water Lake. While here my cousin Elina called me from Sydney which was exciting.

Black Water Lake

Next stop was Sedgefield. We saw a bunch of little shops and I bought a postcard which I still haven't sent home yet. There was also a sign which pointed out the way to Sydney, yes I was very excited. There was also a random beach in Sedgefield which we went to. The sign said it would cost R5 to go to this beach, clearly we didn't pay. We stayed for maybe 5minutes only enough to honor our policy of feeling the water at every beach we went to.

Sydney = that-a-way

random beach in Sedgefield

Next we went to George, I really ave nothing to write about George because we didn't do anything while we were there and after visiting the tourist information centre we actually crossed George off of our list of places to see, so we turned around and went to Mossel Bay instead.

By the time we got to Mossel Bay it was around 4pm and we were hungry. Somehow we managed to find ourselves at the beach front and there was a restaurant which had a train connected to it. Curious we went aboard the train and saw that there were cabins with beds in them. Bayan immediately came to the conclusion that this was a museum where you could see what the old trains looked like and she wondered why there was no difference between first and second class. I, however, jumped to the more reasonable conclusion that this was a hostel.. I was right. We went to the restaurant and asked about the train accommodation and decided that as we had no where to stay in Cape Town as yet and we wouldn't get there until sometime after 8pm we would spend the night here. I ate some amazing ribs, Bayan had vegetarian food and we explored the train and an old broken down bus that was next to us as well. As the sun went down we walked down to the beach and went for an evening run on the sand, we ran, we did some other exercises and then to cap it all off we stripped off our clothes and ran into the water. It was so beautiful, the sun was completely gone and the beach was lit only by the lights surrounding it. The water temperature was perfect especially as we were hot and sweaty and we were so proud of ourselves for starting and ending this day with exercise.

View from our cabin on the train

the kitchen

On the broken down bus

I thought of my mum the whole time we stayed here

Later we went for a walk around the town, we walked down to the harbour and watched the water, the water was pitch black except for some light that shone from a restaurant. Then Bayan saw something in the water. Then I saw it and for a good 30minutes we watched the water trying to figure out what was in there, we guessed fish, eels, then fish again, then I was sure it was an eel, then we just weren't sure, Bayan may have thought it was a snake until finally we got a good enough look at one to realise that they were seals. Content that we had finally figured out what the mystery creature was we walked back to the train and went to bed. So ended our second day on the road.

The harbour where we saw the seals