Update for the last week

WOW - it'ts been hard to find a place to blog from - not to mention the willpower to take time away from the beach to sit and type!! OK, enough bragging about beaches - here's what we've been doing!

When we left T & K's house in Swazi we headed for Lesotho (pronounced Lesutu). This could easily be the place to film another Lord of the Rings episode - it's the tallest place south of Kenya's Kilamanjaro. Indeed, the entire country is at altitude - the only place that can make that claim in Africa. Lesotho is a heritage kingdom carved out from South AFrica and entirely surrounded by it. By far the most pleasant border experience we've had to date, the border guards joined us that evening at the Highest Bar In Africa for a beer and a story.

Julie in the bar

Jeff and Steve in the bar.

Lesotho is a land of sheep, wool, overgrazing cattle and shepards on horseback. It's been absolutely completely deforested, yet it has an odd, harsh beauty of a high altitude pastureland and stunning mountain vistas. Took us about 4 hours to climb what claimed to be a mountain track (!) to reach the top - and despite our 4x4 Nissan and expert driving by Jeff, we still got smoked by a 2x4 minibus full of locals with tiny tires! Of course, WE had stopped to take pictures (yeah, pictures, that's it). Stayed 2 nights so that Jeff and Steve could hike, and i had a lovely horse ride across the high valley to the edge of the escarpment and through the grazing herds. Despite being not much to look at, my pony was a wonderful beast and it was a really nice morning (cold and sunny - the warmest time of year here and it was no more than 60!) 

We blasted across middle south africa to reach the sea - no real interesting stories to tell there - EXCEPT we did some bird watching from the car, and actually spotted the rare Bearded Vultures (no dirty jokes, it really is a bird!) along with the Long Tailed Widow bird (not to be confused with the Whyda) and the short tailed widow, and the red bishop!!

We spent a really beautiful day at the beach in Storm River Mouth - inside the Tsitsikamma National park. Definately a recommended stop, we saw whales breaching from the beach! The waves at this beach are HUGE - crashing relentlessly upon a line of rocks about 10 meters off shore.

There is a can't-be-beat hike along the beach that climbs about 500 meters to a promonitory that has breathtaking views of whale migration, during which you are kept risky company by monkeys and baboons.

We spotted the Cape Wagtail - a flirtacious little brown job that took us all day to identify - along with some sort of cormoran (sorry Scott!)


That's it for now - we're currently in Knaysna eating oysters by the dozens and drinking nice wine! Then it's off to the garden route with a stop to see our new friends from the Mozambiquan beach camp, and then on to the wine country. Hopefully i'll be able to get some photos up from there!
Cheers!