Middle-aged flash packers

The Fear well and truly got me today. Details to follow.

The early morning foghorn from next door has gone thank goodness, so we managed to sleep past 6.30am.

Steve had plotted an alternative route to Cape Agulhas, taking us along some of the coast before arriving in Agulhas. Google said it would take 2 hours as opposed to going straight through the heartland of the Cape which would be 1.5hours.

The coastline is glorious and we also passed a huge lagoon just outside Hermanus. We saw a few baboons looking very docile perched on a fence.

All good, until we turned inland to head towards Agulhas. The beautiful tarmaced road we were driving on became an unmade one.

We have previous experiences of driving on unmade roads – none of them good – which may explain why I immediately felt The Fear grab me. The eerie loneliness of not seeing any other cars on the road was also making me uneasy. What if we get a puncture? What if some car jackers get us?

As we drove on, I did relax a bit but then I spotted a road sign – a red triangle with a hippopotamus on it.

I completely freaked out, especially when Steve said he really needed a wee and might have to pull over and have one. Google hippo attacks and you’ll see that very few people survive them, only a mad man would get out of the car, as I told S in no uncertain terms.

An uncomfortable half hour past for both of us before we joined the main highway and were back on the delights of a proper road. In that time we also had some ostriches cross the road in front of us. Again S wanted to stop. I’m pretty sure a kick from an ostrich can kill you and I did toy with the idea of just letting S get out.

On arrival in Cape Agulhas, we stopped for a restorative drink and restroom for S.

Having escaped the fear, we hiked to the point where the Indian Ocean meets the Atlantic -the very tip of Africa. There is a nice boardwalk which takes you to a physical representation of Africa.

After that, we walked on to see a shipwreck. If you ever go, and want to see the shipwreck, don’t walk along the road like we did unless you like eating dust. People don’t slow down for pedestrians.

One observation I have of Agulhas is that it seems a very laidback place. People of all ethnicities live there and there appeared to be little of the “fortification” of people’s homes that we saw in Capetown and (to a lesser extent) Hermanus – homes in Agulhas seemed more likely to have a picket fence rather than an electrified one.

Our journey home followed the Google recommended route with no mishaps. As we drove along, I investigated the likelihood of coming across a hippopotamus in the Southern Cape area. It seems it’s incredibly unlikely BUT it turns out that the great grandson of the man who shot the last hippo in the area in 1850, decided to atone for his ancestor’s sins and introduced a pod of 5 hippos onto his farm just a few miles from Agulhas. Which we drove past. A point to Fear – I may have overreacted, but in my defence at least there were hippos.

S has now given up trying to get me to go on a walking safari.