march 6 | main index | march 8

We were informed this morning that we would be leaving very early tomorrow morning for our coastal Garden Route tour, so we took it easy for most of the day. We slept in until 9 am, then enjoyed eggs and sausage witht he whole family for breakfast.

Around noon, we went to the Longbeach Mall to find me a safari shirt and pick up a few things for our picnic at Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens that afternoon. I wound up finding a nice light orange shirt at Woolworths for R180 just before the mall closed at 2 pm. I was also aware that grocery stores in malls are quite common and most of them also have clothing sections as well as your usual goods.

Veda wanted to get to Kirstenbosch a few hours before the start of the afternoon concert so we could walk around a bit, but we got a little lost looking for the back entrance. After parking, we lugged all the supplies to the front gate and got to experience our first reality check in South Africa, nothing is free. We had to pay for a map of the grounds even after the R40 entrance fee and they didn't have any English maps left, so I am now the proud owner of an Afrikaans map that I cannot read. This proved to be very interesting, as one can imagine, while navigating the grounds.

Cody and Courtney insisted they knew where the one waterfall was, so off we went while Veda staked out our picnic spot. After wandering around the garden for almost an hour, still no waterfall… but we did see some red hot pokers, a guinea fowl family, and other beautiful plants and flowers.

The concert was nice, a jazz band called 'Breakfast Included' played some old favorites and some traditional stuff. We snacked on patés, chips, bread, roasted red pepper spread, and smoked oysters with sauvignon blanc and juice to drink. It got a lot more comfortable outside once the sun went below the mountain. The kids kept wandering off leaving the adults to enjoy the music.

We took a different route home from the gardens, so we got to see some new beautiful scenes at sunset on the way home. After we got back, we packed up for our three day trek across the scenic southern coast and hit the hay for our early rise in the morning.

march 6 | main index | march 8