Well Hello Travelers And Hivers!
Whats-up everyone, it's that time of the year again! The festive seasons are ahead of us and most of us will be doing some holiday adventures! I've waited the whole year for this three week break so I'll be using my leave from work to do some exploration around our wonderful shoreline in South Africa, granted I would be sticking to the Western Cape area and not travel the whole of our coast line! But fear not there are a lot of things to do, so let's kick of with the adventures!
As I mentioned before in a couple of previous posts that my Betty's parents have a house at the seaside so being able to cut off the living expenses really helps a lot in having a nice vacation!
Keep in mind that most of these photos were taken on the go in the car, so some might blur a little bit because of the motion.
I decided that getting on the road as early as possible was the best available option (for me atleast) Doing this we can have an extra half a day of vacation. So we set off at 2:00 AM heading southbound to the seaside! Needless to say the Betty and the Grans wasn't really happy with waking at that hour but meh they were more than welcome to take naps in the car on the go!
Night Time Driving
Night time driving is a dangerous thing to do, one can go drowsy and sleepy very fast and the headlights of the vehicles can often fool you in how far they actually are etc. one might think a vehicle is farther than it actually is and this can cause serious accidents.
We went past one of those on the way down, a car that struck a truck head on. Unfortunate to say I don't think there were any survivors.
The sun started to peek out at around 04:30 AM and I have to say that was probably the hardest period of the trip down, I heard a lot of people say that I should be careful when the sun peeks out. But I made it through all good!
We took a few photos of the sun coming over the mountains and such, BUT none of them do justice the way one will see it with the eye, and being on the move didn't really add much beauty to the photos,but memories we shall have!
Misty Through The Mountains
Making good progress until we hit the misty mountains. Well we didn't really lose a lot of time through them because of the roads being awfully quiet.
Although the mist did brake us a little bit, but we made up for lost time once we got through them. There were three separate passes that we went through and all of them had mist through the mountains.
It was scary and exhilarating at the same time, what made it even more fun was the fact that the Grans complained in the back of the car. Laughs Laughs no I am messing about. But she did worry a little about the mist and the visibility.
Once again we made it through.
I know it's not visible in the photo but beyond those guard rails it was all down hill between mountains, so driving of the edge would lead to a certain death or atleast put you on death's doorstep
Graaf-Reinet
Once we got to the halfway mark which was Graaf-Reinet, it felt like we were in a totally different country. No doubt I've been through there plenty of times but I was much younger then and much more unobservant back then.
The small town had a lot of these old style architecture buildings scattered about, it gave a Victorian Era feeling to the town.
The town is only halfway to the seaside but it has buildings decorated with anchors and such, I wonder why? Especially when it's not a harbour city or even has a ocean front anywhere close to it.
Mountain Ranges
As we got closer to the ocean the mountains seemed to pop out everywhere around us and driving through the mountain passes it really made one feel small and unimportant. Well not so much unimportant but it made me realize how small one really is compared to nature itself. It also made me realize how magnificently beautiful the country side really is!
A sort of majestic feeling.
Here are a few photos we took a long the way, mostly of mountains and the road as well as any view we found worthy to gaze at for a few seconds!
The Dam That Holds No Water
Okay saying that the dam holds no water is a bit unrealistic, I mean why build a dam there at all. Well the damn was constructed to trap in flood waters, so generally speaking when there are no floods the dam is almost dry with just a little bit of water licking at the dam's walls.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to get a nice photo of the whole dam area.
I found the story behind the dam very interesting, perhaps go give it a read yourself.
The Outeniqua Pass
Now this is where I absolutely had to make a stop!
I was totally stunned by the views on the last mountain pass, again the photo's doesn't really do justice to how beautiful it looked in real life!
Huge mountains spanning out infront of you left and right!
We had to pull off the road and enjoy the scenery for a while before arriving at our final destination. Rather do this now then when we have to make the journey back home! Or just stop on both trips!
The mountains gave me an eerie feeling, but a good eerie feeling. You see I'm that guy that loves stuff such as_The Lord Of The Rings_ and Game Of Thrones and also love the landscapes tied to such fantasy movies. These mountains reminded me of just that and even the Norwegian mountain ranges that stretches so high up through the clouds.
Like I said, it gives me this majestic feeling.
Welcome To The Seaside!
Well well well, I suppose we made it (or atleast we almost made it) We can finally see the ocean! We had a little detour from where we needed to be, I had to drop of the Grans at family members in George then me and the Betty had to make our way to Dana Bay which was about 50 kilometers apart, which felt a lot longer than it should have. 😆 We decided to drive all along the coastline because a view was important. 😉
Arriving At Our Destination
I am happy to say we made it, and we can see the ocean from the residence we are staying at!
Can you guess what I did straight away?
Unpack, and I swear I've never unloaded a car as fast as I did this morning.
Why? Well I wanted to stick my toes into the sand on the beach! That's why!
Beaching On!
The Beach! The Sand! The Waves! What more can I ask for? Well plenty I suppose but do I need more than this? No, give me the beach and the sand with the waves and I will be more than happy and content with life.
So we didn't plan on swimming in the ocean but I did tell the Betty that stepping in the sand won't be enough, I had to wet my feet in the ocean as well. I had to feel the sea sand stick to my feet.
We had a little bonus! We thought meh lets stand at the edge of where the water stops and we'd be fine! Laughs Laughs we stood there and all of a sudden there was a massive gush of water that crept and splashed up over our faces!
It was fun though!
880 Kilometers later just to stick our feet in the sand!
Dated 20/12/2022
Connecting the people of #HIVE across South Africa. #hive