Middle-aged flash packers

We had an interesting meal at The Girl’s on The Square restaurant last night – Wildebeest and springbok. I managed the wildebeest but couldn’t make it through the springbok. (Which S ate obviously.)I am now officially meated out and may become a vegan. It’s quite likely that S would divorce me if I did on the grounds of lack of interest in my leftovers.

Today was a blue sky day, warm and not a cloud in sight. After stuffing down a huge breakfast (omelette for me, full English for Steve) we decided to drive up to the viewpoint where we can apparently see the Map of Africa. It’s a piece of land shaped by the river into, well, the map of Africa.

Two entrepreneurial ladies have made themselves the Keepers of the Map of Africa, meaning that they give you a 5 minute talk about it and the area surrounding it, then ask for a “donation”. Watching people try to escape the ladies’ attention was quite entertaining.

One of the ladies had all her front teeth missing and I’ve noticed this quite a lot amongst some African people. I googled it and kind of wish I hadn’t. The “map” is worth seeing though, it’s a beautiful area.

Next, beach walk. Wilderness has the most enormous stretch of beach, it just goes on and on. Candy, manager here at Moontide , says it takes about 4 hours to walk the whole thing one way and advised us to get a taxi back.

This is not an easy walk, let me tell you. The wind is relentless and as we were walking into it, we were completely sandblasted. I feel fully exfoliated but the downside is I have burnt feet.

Interesting items on the beach were bluebottle jellyfish, a completely dried fish and a dead seal. S at first was convinced it was a rock so I suggested he kick it to find out for sure and it was definitely a seal.

The hills above the shoreline have many luxurious homes built on them. We played “hotel or house?” for a while. We ended up thinking most were houses as there seemed to be no signs of life in them. I imagine that South Africa’s super rich probably use them at Christmas and not many other times.

We made a detour from the beach in order to get a cold drink. Google said there were hardly any cafes or restaurants near the shore but we eventually found one on google maps called Augustus’s so our hopes were raised. I was thinking maybe a smoothie might be in order, no doubt S was hoping for some kind of meat.

Sadly Augustus’s was shut and it looked as though this was a permanent affair. Luckily there was a little shop next door that let us use the loo and sold us an ice cream.

We decided to turn back at this point and it was much more pleasant walking with the wind behind us, even though it felt as if someone was chucking handfuls of sand at us.

Tired, but needing to top up our grog stocks, we walked into Wilderness town where we had ice cold cokes and S ate a spicy chicken toastie. I didnot have this as chicken re-heated in a sandwich toaster sounds like tummy issues on a plate but S seems fine so far.

Grog bought, we clanked our way home, stocked up the fridge and showered off the sand that had embedded itself into us.

Apart from dinner tonight, that is Wilderness done.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Wilderness. It’s got it’s own hippyish vibe and feels like a place where people live relatively harmoniously. Definitely worth a visit should you ever be exploring the garden route.