Day six and we're in Hermanus a couple of hours up the coast from Cape Town, we were actually staying across the bay at a place called De Kelders but we stopped off at the bigger town to meet up with some friends who were staying there. We had a great (and cheap) lunch with our friends at a restaurant at the bottom of the cliffs in front of the town, it was a glorious spot with the waves lapping against the rocks only feet away from our table.
With our fish lunches we supped a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc from Ataraxia (see above), a snip at ten quid, really fresh and zingy and matched perfectly with our meals. Hermanus is famous for being one of the best places in the world to spot whales from without getting on a boat, it was true, our friends spotted whales and dolphins every day just by looking out of their apartment window, we weren't so lucky however although I did see one whale but it was too far away to identify.
After a couple of nights near Hermanus we moved on, next stop was a place called Swellendam an overnight stop on the way to our next main destination which was a place called Knysna. Swellendam is famous for being the third oldest town in South Africa after Cape Town and Stellenbosch, it's a farming community situated 220km from the Cape itself. It's steeped in Dutch colonial history and still has many provincial heritage sites, most of them buildings of Cape Dutch architecture, it's a bit run down these days though and I suspect it's mainly used as an overnight stop for people like us doing the Garden Route.
Knysna is a "yachting" kind of place (see above), it's basically an old logging town (as it's surrounded by forest) where cut timber was originally loaded onto boats and later trains as the railway up from Cape Town was constructed. The Europeans arrived here in 1760 with Dutch famers settling the Eastern shore of the lagoon. The timber industry peaked in the British era around 1880, there was even a mini-goldrush in 1878, although now the town is mostly known for sailing and golf due to it's year round mild climate.
Another point of interest here is a geological feature known as the "Knysna Heads" (see below), two promontories of rock facing the Indian Ocean that guard the large lagoon that sits behind them. Passage through the "heads" is notoriously tricky due to a shallow sand bar, fierce currents, freak waves and lot's of rocks in close proximity. The place is so famous that apparently back in the day the heads were used as a case study at the Royal Naval College at Dartmouth in the UK.
After a couple of days in Knysna we moved on, the next stop was one we'd been very much looking forward to, a further four hour drive North up the coast and our first safari stop at a place called Addo, more about that in the next installment!
