Tuesday 29 Oct 2013

L: Yes, as usual, I was up early to see the birds, and the dolphins and whales.......Wow, what a feast, but these dolphins are so fast that it is really difficult to get a pic of anything, but their back or snout, ha ha.

I was very lucky to have a little Pied Kingfisher diving into the sea right in front of me for most of the time and saw him catch a fish.

I went back to the room, lovely accommodation that we have, to rouse Steve. We showered and tidied up and headed off to the local Checkers to replenish our stocks for the next week. Steve dropped me and headed off to fill the bakkie and then came back to the shop to join me. By then, he had started to feel really dizzy for some reason so went back to sit in the bakkie while I finished up. We hope that he has not started an ear infection......

S: We went back to the beach so that I could get some fresh air and try to feel better, but decided it was better to go back and lie down for a bit, taking a motion-sickness tablet to help with the dizziness.

L: I unpacked and sorted out the provisions into the bakkie and the ammo boxes that we store everything in and made lunch of fresh salads and fruit as Steve had already eaten the cheese rolls and given the rest to a beggar.

S: The tablet seemed to work so we set off for the beach, which I must emphasize is only a hop, skip and jump away from Aloe Again!! Though I didn't hop, skip or jump, I strolled slowly, to keep the dizziness in check. We took a nice, leisurely walk up and down the beach and collected shells and watched a lone (spelt l-o-n-e) surfer at Super Tubes.

L: I was continually trying to get a good shot of the dolphins and whales and really enjoyed my time down at the beach, but unfortunately Steve did not manage to stay and went for another lie down. Yesterday Steve was bitten by a tick so I am a bit concerned about tick-bite fever so I will keep a close eye on him over the next few days.

When I came back, I went into the back garden to see if I could catch sight of the African Paradise Flycatcher and when I did, I called Steve to come and look at the huge female one that was perched almost out of sight in a tree. She is so much larger than the male, not sure if he is a juvenile. Steve helped me to catch a fairly decent photograph of the female.

We decided to have an indoor braai, upstairs in the communal lounge area – though there is no-one else at all in our palace. We played a few games of pool, read, and typed this update and went through the loads of photographs, looking for a decent dolphin one.......

S: After washing up and packing away, we headed off, downstairs, to bed. We are leaving again in the morning – to the Outeniqua area to the Prince Alfred Pass. Catch you later :-)

Monday 28 Oct 2013

L: I got up early, in the mist at Storms River Mouth, and decided that birding wasn't going to work so went back to bed until Steve was ready to get up. We had coffee and breakfast and put on a load of washing. While that was going, I went off to find the birds and was not disappointed especially with the little sunbirds which did not seem to notice how close I was.

Steve had started packing up the ground tent and all our goodies so we showered after the washing was done and set off to Storms River to cross the Van Stadens bridge. It was so high and really pushes the vertigo feeling. Steve turned back and I went on and took all the photos. When I got to the other side Steve had braved it and came and joined me. It is beautiful.

On the way back, a huge black eagle flew over our heads and I got a couple of pics. It has a really scary face.

S: We decided to go the rural route to get to Jeffreys Bay so we turned off onto the R102 and enjoyed going past all the dairy farms with thousands of cows in the fields. We could safely travel at 80kph without people and trucks coming up behind us at 140.

Nicole, one of our daughters had been sourcing places for us to stay in J-Bay and found a place and booked us in for 2 nights. We arrived an hour earlier than checking in time so we took the opportunity to visit the local Billabong factory shop. We shopped up a storm :-)

We arrived at our accommodation, called Aloe Again!! and settled in, having a self-catering place, the first solid structure in 10 days. It is a lovely place with all the amenities. Thanks SafariNow.com. We have a double room with en-suite and private courtyard plus kitchenette. We use an upstairs kitchen/dining area/games room which is shared and have access to the outside garden and braai. A backpackers with a difference.

We are about 50m from the beach which is right where Supertubes is, the premium surfing wave in the whole country or so we hear from the surfers. We took a nice walk along the beach enjoying the afternoon sunshine. We had been there for a while and we took a seat up on the promenade. I pointed out some “surfers” to Steve who had the camera and when he trained it over the “surfers”, discovered that they were ,indeed, dolphins!! We managed to snap a few shots of the large pod, swimming South. How lucky, are we? It seems that the dolphins swim up northwards in the morning and back down again in the late afternoon.

L: I popped into the garden to see the braai area and heard a “zaay-ter” sound (as described in my bird book) and quickly grabbed the camera. I was so excited to see my first African Paradise Flycatcher.

We had an early supper of sushi as we didn't feel like cooking and didn't really have a lunch today. It was great, right on the beach front.

We headed home and caught up on loading pics and blogged.

Bed......

Sunday 27 Oct 2013

S: We both had a good night's sleep and Lesley was up early tweeting again. I did the sensible thing and slept in late till 7am. We had a cooked breakfast this time and were joined by a duiker and her young grazing across the road from us.


I had a bit of a disappointment when my silver bracelet dropped off my wrist and down the drain while I was rinsing the cups under the tap. Unfortunately the pipe curves at an angle a little way down and I could not see nor retrieve it.


There are a few walking trails in the area and we decided to do two of them. The first was the the Loerie trail, 1km long, and the other was the river mouth walk to the suspension bridge.


The Loerie trail starts just behind our camp site and heads up the hill and along towards the river mouth. So after a quick drive to the gate to pay for another night we climbed the hill into the forest. The trees overhead were so dense that we could only see patches of the sky. There were so many birds chattering but we did not see any to photograph until we had reached the end of the trail and found a male Southern Double Collared Sunbird which allowed us to get close while he chirped, primped and posed.


Shortly into our walk we crossed a stream with a little waterfall. It was lovely and quite out of the wind with only the sound of the crashing waves in the distance and the chattering birds above us. (Lesley still trying in vain to find a bird to photograph.) A lot of the trees are labelled. Yellowwood, Candlewood and Pear being a few we saw.


We took a little detour up another trail and walked as far as the waterfall where we turned around and came back to our original trail. We only met one group of people along the trail and that was toward the end. We got to the road and I opted to go and fetch the car and left Lesley to enjoy the view. I knew we were not going to want to walk all the way back after doing the second walk. We drove to the restaurant and started along the board-walk to the suspension bridges. There are three of them now, one across the river and two shorter ones along the gorge.


It seems there was a fire recently and now the whole path is made out of recycled plastic planks. Lots of stairs up and down and then some really steep steps leading down to the main bridge. You can do the walk in a bit of a circle at the end, going down to the main bridge first. Once you come back over the main bridge then you turn left and do the other two smaller bridges and then back up a very steep set of stairs to join the main path.


On the main bridge there are some padlocks with couple's names engraved or painted on with a date. We suspect some guys popped the question on the bridge and made it public by placing a padlock. Rather novel idea we thought.


After all that walking we decided to treat ourselves to some lunch at the restaurant. Reasonable prices but rather mediocre food. After a quick stop in the shop for supplies it was back to base. We were grateful for the drive back instead of a walk as we were both rather foot sore. It was time for a rest and then a shower, a bite to eat (no braai tonight) and catching up on the blog.


We had another amazing sunset and once we had got up to date with the admin we headed off to bed. Hopefully there are a few people who are enjoying reading about our days as much as we are experiencing them.



Good night.

Saturday 26 Oct 2013

S: Yippee! No rain last night. The trip over the mountain looks more promising. After breakfast and packing up we went in search of the farmer, Chris, to pay our dues and find out if the river we would have to cross was not too high. We found him at his workshop and he took us up to the farm house so that he could make a phone call and check for us. We met his wife and three of his four children. They were all ten and under in age.


Chris could not find out for definite that the water level in the river was ok, only that it was impassable the previous Monday and Tuesday. This being Saturday, we decided to take the chance. We could also pop into the Baviaans Lodge which is about halfway and find out the state of the river. L: But that meant that if it was not good, we would have to come all the way back.......


S: The 40 kms to the lodge would take us about 3 hours which is an average speed of +- 15 km/h. And it was. But what a trip. The road was quite bad in places but we just ground along in 2^nd gear low range four wheel drive and the 'tractor' just chugged along. The views were amazing, the flora spectacular with flowers everywhere. Lots and lots of proteas as well. At one time we were travelling through a corridor of proteas with them brushing the doors.


We saw some black wildebeest and blesbok grazing together on top of one of the mountains. As soon as they saw us they ran, not like game reserve animals which would just carry on grazing. About 30 km in, it started to rain again and for a while we were in cloud and could see nothing around us. The road also was a lot wetter and on one stretch I had the Colt sideways as the back wheels slid into the ruts while I had the front wheels on the higher ground. Great fun. L: Hmmmmm, and pretty scary when you are not in control of the vehicle yourself, but then again, Steve, nor were you......


L: The most scary part, was not the driving, but getting out to close the umpteenth gate, with a sign that said “This is a leopard-friendly farm” and the other sign next to it, that said “Please close the gate”. Really!!!


I loved this trip, up such a high mountain on a rough track and then pretty much driving on the ridge of the mountains with the deep valley below, what an experience. I am sure that the photographs will not be able to justify the feel of it, but we did our best or mainly me, as Steve was driving. The pity was that we were in quite a hurry to get through the first part of the track to cross the river before it became impassable as it was raining so hard in the area. Bearing in mind that we have had the experience of a “dry river-bed” becoming a flowing river on our last trip to the Northern Cape. It can make you a bit more wary.


S: After 40 kms we turned off to the lodge which coincidently is the last farm into the mountains from the Kareedouw side. We met the owner, Rob, and his two children who were there for the weekend. He bought the farm about 13 years ago and built the lodge with a few cabins around it. We stopped long enough for a chat, coffee and some delicious fudge. He has some amazing paintings of bushmen in the dining hall of the lodge. A friend of his did them in exchange for free accommodation. There are apparently many examples of bushmen paintings on his farm. Rob told us that he had come through from Kareedouw the day before and the river water was below the causeway which means that it would be safe enough for us to cross.


We said our goodbyes and carried on. The road was a lot better now and the next 40 km to Kareedouw took us an hour.


L: Wow, what an experience. The river was so high, nearly up to the causeway so I told Steve to go, go, go because I did not want to get stuck on the wrong side or have the river come down stronger as we were crossing. Just a bit hairy :-O. I really enjoyed the view and looking back at the river after we were safely across and taking all the photos while Steve drove on. He nearly crunched a turtle in the middle of the road, I think it was confused with the level of the water so high, and I asked him to please stop and move it out of the road. It was great fun watching him and that the turtle tried to swim in his hands.


S: Storms River Mouth was our final destination for today and after a quick stop for lunch at a roadside restaurant (there was an amazing Honda Goldwing trike parked outside) we arrived at the home of the Otter trail. We weren't too sure about how long we were going to stay, so we checked in for only one night. The camp sites are right next to the sea so it is pretty chilly when the wind is blowing (which is most of the time). Anyhow the sunset was stunning. The weather had been overcast but the forecast showed the weather clearing up so we had decided that we would stay here a little longer.


We then pitched the ground tent as we would have to use the Colt to drive all the way up the hill to the gate tomorrow to pay for another night. Lesley went and did some washing while I entertained myself cleaning out the fridge after one of the cider bottles broke during our rough trip over the mountain. Then it was a braai and off to bed.



Night night …..