2009-09-24 – marshmallows and ostriches

Guess when we got up this morning. Just guess. Six. Yep, 6 am, in order to watch the sunrise from the veranda at Wild Spirit Lodge. Of course Mr. Penguin went right back to sleep after that (since he was going to be driving a lot), while Ms. Penguin went out to stalk the birds. She hopes to have gotten a good photo of some kind of shiny emerald green sunbird; she also found a swallow's nest but missed out on getting a shot of the swallow in the nest... :-(

We had that homemade bread again for breakfast, along with the cheese that we bought yesterday and various jams and marmelades, including an awesome pineapple jam and an even awesomer melon jam. After we settled our bill and packed the car, we went back to the breakfast area to say goodbye to people, a horse wandered into the area, to drink from the fountain. One of the women who runs Wild Spirit told us the evening before that they had this male horse that was allowed to run around the place. But he suddenly fell in love with a mare at a neighboring farm, and this poor guy suddenly had to be locked in. For safety reasons and all. But he seemed to be on parole now... ;-)

Our next destination was Oudtshoorn, but we took a scenic route there. We drove along the N2 past Stormsrivier, and stopped for coffee in Stormsrivier Village, but we didn't stop at the bridge because of all the road work being done there (plus we had seen it in 2007 and already have tons of good photos). We then started driving Route 62, from the Eastern Cape part of it. We drove through some very scenic farm land, which was mostly fruit (apple) farms. A lot of the trees were in full bloom, but it was too difficult to get any decent photos from the car, and there were few places to actually stop and get out to take photos too... bah. Some of the road signs we saw indicates that the area is actually called “apple country” and there were even a pair of hawkers selling apples along the roadside...

Once we got to the Western Cape, we drove through a lot of very scenic mountain passages, and saw interesting scenery... and a dead snake on the road (and yes, we stopped to take photos of this). Later on, the scenery got even more interesting – we were driving through a valley, and there was rather heavy cloud cover on the mountains. Imagine mountains topped with marshmallow creme. That's exactly what it looked like. Fascinating...

Anyway, we eventually arrived in Oudtshoorn, and got settled into our room at Backpacker's Paradise, which is ranked as one of the top backpackers hostels in all of South Africa. Since Mr. Penguin was very thirsty after all that driving, we walked to a local pub (La Dolce Vita) for some cold Windhoek lager and relaxation. After that, we walked through some of the residential parts of Oudtshoorn; they have some nice houses here! When we got back, Mr. Penguin needed a nap before dinner. Ms. Penguin napped a little bit, but wasn't really tired enough for that, so she grabbed her book and read a little bit.

And then it was dinner time... ostrich braai! The perfect meal for National Braai Day :-) We each got a nice chunk of ostrich steak, an ostrich boerewoers, a potato, salad, and bread. We watched the staff cook part of the meal; the braaimaster was wearing a Springboks apron :-D The food was excellent! Nice, flavorful and tender meat, lovely sausage... everything was just wonderful. We washed this down with the following wine:

Vulkani Shiraz 2007
color: blue-violet

nose: plums, blueberries, pepper

palate: full-bodied, very spicy start (lots of pepper), flavor of plums, red apples, and raspberries. Excellent match with steaks.

Grade: :-D

There were quite a lot of people at dinner, including an Australian couple who were also at Wild Spirit Lodge at the same time we were there. We also had a long conversation with a 16-year old boy from Germany, who is an exchange student in Cape Town. It was a really nice conversation; he speaks excellent English and otherwise seems very intelligent...

In case you were wondering, today's weather was perfect – sunny and warm, with a nice breeze, aside from the valley of the marshmallow clouds, where the wind was stronger and colder...

Now it's probably a good idea to go to bed. We do have to get up insanely early tomorrow for our balloon ride! :-D