Grootbos
We travelled from Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe, to Grootbos (East of Cape Town), South Africa, today.
Grrrrrr.... not fun.
The first thing that irritated me was that our hotel (Old Drift Lodge) suggested to catch our 11:45am flight, we better leave the lodge at about 8:30.
The 40-minute trip meant that we arrived at the airport 45 minutes before check-in was even open.
And then the fun started with the airport having a power failure.
Somehow in the process of losing power and restarting their computers half a dozen times, the redundancy plan clearly couldn't cope.
So we stood in the check-in line for about 90 minutes. The IT people tried repeating the same failed operation a few times and then finally the suits (management) decided that we're going fully manual for check-in.
Do you remember the days when each counter operator had a paper-based passenger list with the seat allocation written on it, and then they ticked your name off the list and wrote out one of those cardboard tickets that they attach to your bags which has your name and destination?
Then they give you a hand-written boarding pass with your seat number.
I 'm young enough to never have experienced that on an international flight before.
Eventually we made our way to the airline lounge where we were then told that our plane is not even here yet. It has had a technical difficulty and a new plane was being found for us.
Eventually it did, and we arrived at Cape Town only three hours after the scheduled arrival time.
The airport pharmacy at Cape Town airport was open, and it was a relief to be able to talk to a qualified person. She offered me a medicine that was more than likely to clear my man-cold. I can tell you this medication actually worked quite well, and as I write this blog, I'm about 80% well again.
Our driver then took us through to our destination - a place called Grootbos, which is 145km East of Cape Town. Fighting peak-time traffic for the first hour (that part should have only taken us about 20 minutes), we eventually arrive at our hotel at 10pm for a late checkin and dinner.
Cape Town drivers, especially the mini-bus taxi drivers of which there are a great many, are incredibly aggressive on the roads.
It was worth the angst to get to the Grootbos reserve - this place was very, very nice indeed... Thanks Belinda (our travel agent at Travel Insights).
Here's a pic of the view from our bed:
And here's the view from our shower:
Is this a new trend where people take showers outdoors?
It was all very private from other guests I suppose, and who cares if the birds and the impalas see you au-naturale?
Our first guided tour was going caving at the local beach. Quite fun actually.
The coastal outlook is quite nice... reminds me of down Warrnambool way.
Our guide, Nash, was very knowledgeable about the flora. He grabbed a piece of kelp off the sand, and showed us its composition. Here's Ruth showing us the thickness of a tube of kelp.
Here's the rest of the kelp piece dissected. Nash cut a hole into its root, and pulled out an orange coloured piece that I think he said made fantastic bait.
The trouble with Nash was that he wanted to tell us everything about everything - he delivered way too much information for my little brain to hold onto. So that orange pulp that he pulled out (upper left of the picture above) may have been have some extraordinary healing properties for us humans - I can't remember!
I don't want to sound critical - he was/is a lovely bloke; just an unstoppable motor mouth.
You can see the rock formation coming down to the sea, and you can see cave entrances too.
Here's Ruth at one of the cave entrances we explored.
This photo gives you a feel for the scale of the cave - quite large.
In fact, at this spot, over a period of thousands of years, humans sheltered here. You can see there is quite a lot of space in this cave.
They discovered many human and animal bones here, and eventually stopped the excavations out of respect for whoever was buried here.
Here's a close-up of a small area that they left uncovered just to show you their diggings:
A fascinating aspect was the bee hive in the roof of the cave. Here's a pic showing the hole in the roof, looking quite innocuous:
To the human eye while you're there, it just looks like a hole in the rock (as it does in the photo above). But with the aid of the latest photographic technology, zooming into the hole, look at all the bees in there:
We travelled to a town called de Kelders which is also on the coast and has more caves. Beautiful spot actually:
The cave we went into had the classic stalactites and stalagmites, making for quite a spectacular walk. Here's a pic:
And another:
Ruth and I thought we might go for a swim in here - the water is sparklingly clear.
A better pic of the swimming pool:
Moving on from caves to the fine forest (Fynbos).
Around the Grootbos area we find a rich combination of forest and bird life. One of the more unusual trees is the Milkwood which perpetuates itself much like a vine, twisting and turning, rerooting and resporning. Here's Ruth under a Milkwood tree which you can see is sprawling all around her:
"There there. Nice Milkwood tree" she says
Here's another interestingly shaped Milkwood:
And another. You can see how it re-plants itself here:
I hope you get as excited about the bird life as Nash did. He'd break mid-sentence to pint out a particular bird as it flies past.
I apologise that I haven't identified them yet. Instead, I'll just number them for you:
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
Whatever!
Maybe flowers is your thing?
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
Off to Cape Town tomorrow.
Grrrrrr.... not fun.
The first thing that irritated me was that our hotel (Old Drift Lodge) suggested to catch our 11:45am flight, we better leave the lodge at about 8:30.
The 40-minute trip meant that we arrived at the airport 45 minutes before check-in was even open.
And then the fun started with the airport having a power failure.
Somehow in the process of losing power and restarting their computers half a dozen times, the redundancy plan clearly couldn't cope.
So we stood in the check-in line for about 90 minutes. The IT people tried repeating the same failed operation a few times and then finally the suits (management) decided that we're going fully manual for check-in.
Do you remember the days when each counter operator had a paper-based passenger list with the seat allocation written on it, and then they ticked your name off the list and wrote out one of those cardboard tickets that they attach to your bags which has your name and destination?
Then they give you a hand-written boarding pass with your seat number.
I 'm young enough to never have experienced that on an international flight before.
Eventually we made our way to the airline lounge where we were then told that our plane is not even here yet. It has had a technical difficulty and a new plane was being found for us.
Eventually it did, and we arrived at Cape Town only three hours after the scheduled arrival time.
The airport pharmacy at Cape Town airport was open, and it was a relief to be able to talk to a qualified person. She offered me a medicine that was more than likely to clear my man-cold. I can tell you this medication actually worked quite well, and as I write this blog, I'm about 80% well again.
Our driver then took us through to our destination - a place called Grootbos, which is 145km East of Cape Town. Fighting peak-time traffic for the first hour (that part should have only taken us about 20 minutes), we eventually arrive at our hotel at 10pm for a late checkin and dinner.
Cape Town drivers, especially the mini-bus taxi drivers of which there are a great many, are incredibly aggressive on the roads.
It was worth the angst to get to the Grootbos reserve - this place was very, very nice indeed... Thanks Belinda (our travel agent at Travel Insights).
Here's a pic of the view from our bed:
And here's the view from our shower:
Is this a new trend where people take showers outdoors?
It was all very private from other guests I suppose, and who cares if the birds and the impalas see you au-naturale?
Our first guided tour was going caving at the local beach. Quite fun actually.
The coastal outlook is quite nice... reminds me of down Warrnambool way.
Our guide, Nash, was very knowledgeable about the flora. He grabbed a piece of kelp off the sand, and showed us its composition. Here's Ruth showing us the thickness of a tube of kelp.
Here's the rest of the kelp piece dissected. Nash cut a hole into its root, and pulled out an orange coloured piece that I think he said made fantastic bait.
The trouble with Nash was that he wanted to tell us everything about everything - he delivered way too much information for my little brain to hold onto. So that orange pulp that he pulled out (upper left of the picture above) may have been have some extraordinary healing properties for us humans - I can't remember!
I don't want to sound critical - he was/is a lovely bloke; just an unstoppable motor mouth.
You can see the rock formation coming down to the sea, and you can see cave entrances too.
Here's Ruth at one of the cave entrances we explored.
This photo gives you a feel for the scale of the cave - quite large.
In fact, at this spot, over a period of thousands of years, humans sheltered here. You can see there is quite a lot of space in this cave.
They discovered many human and animal bones here, and eventually stopped the excavations out of respect for whoever was buried here.
Here's a close-up of a small area that they left uncovered just to show you their diggings:
A fascinating aspect was the bee hive in the roof of the cave. Here's a pic showing the hole in the roof, looking quite innocuous:
To the human eye while you're there, it just looks like a hole in the rock (as it does in the photo above). But with the aid of the latest photographic technology, zooming into the hole, look at all the bees in there:
We travelled to a town called de Kelders which is also on the coast and has more caves. Beautiful spot actually:
The cave we went into had the classic stalactites and stalagmites, making for quite a spectacular walk. Here's a pic:
And another:
Ruth and I thought we might go for a swim in here - the water is sparklingly clear.
A better pic of the swimming pool:
Moving on from caves to the fine forest (Fynbos).
Around the Grootbos area we find a rich combination of forest and bird life. One of the more unusual trees is the Milkwood which perpetuates itself much like a vine, twisting and turning, rerooting and resporning. Here's Ruth under a Milkwood tree which you can see is sprawling all around her:
"There there. Nice Milkwood tree" she says
Here's another interestingly shaped Milkwood:
And another. You can see how it re-plants itself here:
I hope you get as excited about the bird life as Nash did. He'd break mid-sentence to pint out a particular bird as it flies past.
I apologise that I haven't identified them yet. Instead, I'll just number them for you:
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
Whatever!
Maybe flowers is your thing?
1:
2:
3:
4:
5:
6:
7:
8:
9:
10:
Off to Cape Town tomorrow.
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