Middle-aged flash packers

I think I ate the third most salty meal of my life last night.

The first was in a Chinese restaurant in Snowdonia about 40 years ago. The second was the revolting bacon ribs I made Steve eat when we were in Granada. This one was in the 1989 restaurant in Plett. A popular restaurant with excellent reviews , I don’t know whether the chef had an accident with the salt sack last night or just that all the reviewers like a lot of salt in their meals. Whatever, it made for a disturbed night, getting numerous glasses of water to try and assuage my thirst.

Today we headed off to Tsitsikamma Park to do some hiking around Storms River.

Before we left our accommodation, we had a bit of confusion as I opened the electronic gate to let our car out and someone else drove in. I assumed it was someone who worked here but it was someone looking to rent some accommodation. They were promptly intercepted by our host (CJ) who sent them packing quite quickly. I noticed on our return, CJ appeared and shut the gate immediately after we drove our car in, clearly not trusting me to do it. People sure are jumpy round here.

On our drive to Tsitsikamma, the most enormous baboon was at the side of the road. Honestly, it looked more like a gorilla than a baboon. There are signs everywhere saying don’t feed the baboons. Who on earth would be insane enough to want to feed one?

The weather deteriorated as we approached the park and it looked as though there had recently been a downpour. Normally prepared for anything, we were caught slacking as neither of us had packed raincoats. Cue an about turn and a change of plans.

We decided to drop by Bloukran’s Bridge, have a cup of coffee and watch any mad fools who were prepared to bungee jump off it. Unbelievably there were a succession of people willing to throw themselves off the bridge for fun.

We didn’t have a coffee but had made the mistake of interacting with some very charming locals on the way in who were then obviously on the lookout for us on the way out. I ended up buying a tiny wooden hippo for a ridiculous £10 (probably worth 50p) but I’m utterly useless in extricating myself from these situations and S is no better.

Still, I managed to hang on to our money at Old Nicks shopping village which was quite an achievement as the woven materials there were divine and a lot more expensive than my little hippo.

We celebrated with an early lunch at Nice Neighbours where I had a huge slice of marmalade and chocolate cake and S was more sensible and actually had a proper lunch.

Next stop, shopping at Checkers. It is the Waitrose of South Africa, with plenty of food to covet but not much that you actually need.

The weather still hadn’t improved enough to actually relax and do something fun like read my book and then snooze in the sun but we researched what we would do at our next stop, went for a chilly walk along the beach and generally tried to pass the time usefully.

Tomorrow we will try Tsitsikamma again, hopefully with a bit more success, weather permitting.