Wednesday 2017/01/18

Oudtshoorn – Swellendam

The Thabile Lodge is also a great place for breakfast. With a bit of sadness, we leave from here and drive the R62 direction Swellendam. This route is a bit like Route 66. One travels between two mountain ranges through a partly absolute desolate landscape. It's outback. On both sides of the road, however, kilometers of fences without an obvious reason. We without breaks drive to Barrydale. There we have a short coffee break.

The places in the area of ​​the Western Cape offer a familiar infrastructure of restaurants, cafes, shops and so on. So far we had often to stop in malls for a break. Therefore it seemed to us as if the (white) South Africans are climbing into their car at home, driving to a mall, doing shopping, get money from the ATM, having lunch/dinner, meeting people and then safely driving back to their fenced home.

We continue our route over the not very high Tradoux Pass, which is very nice. We arrived at the Rothman Manor Guesthouse at about 2pm, a pretty 5 star accomodation. It's very nice there and since we have a pool just before our door, and it's about 40 degrees, we decide for a lazy afternoon in the deck chairs. Relaxation!

In the evening we walk into the town. Yes indeed, we walk! Only a few German tourists do this here (we meet another couple). We have dinner at a nice restaurant – crocodile, warthog and ostrich ... Safari in a different way today.

Back in the accommodation we enjoy some red wine with neat eco-noise (frog concert from the pond). Wonderful. No, we didn't have frogs for dinner today! But there would be enough.