Kynsna is Nice ya?

Knysna (pronounced NiceNa), is a beautiful little town in a large harbor on the coast about 90 minutes away from Oudtshoorn.  To get there, we went across a wide plain (the little Karoo) and then up and over some mountains that for the past few days we noticed had been holding back the clouds.  We got a slight sprinkle as we crossed the range but our zero full days of rain record in Africa remained complete.

We'd done a fair bit that morning in and around Oudtshoorn and were hungry so grabbed a chicken dinner at Nando's which is a South African version of Swiss Chalet only with Peri-Peri sauce instead of Swissy's.  It is very reasonable and we get a family 6 pack with fries and pops for about $21 all up.

After Nando's we arrived at our chalet at Abalone Guest Lodges.  It was a very nice three story Panabode cabin with the kids on a pull out couch, a full kitchen and a master bedroom upstairs.  They had wifi which Jen took good advantage of.  They also had a "Brai" which is an old fashioned masonry charcoal bbq.  South African's love their Brai's as much as the Aussies and Canadian's do...so we planned on that for the next night.

The next am, we backtracked to Wildernis which is another great little town on the coast with a beach we'd been told was one of the local favorites - Victoria Beach.  Where it starts and the next one stops is just about impossible to determine as the sucker has to be at least 15kms long!  We walked most of it!  It has great big dunes, lots of white sand, great waves (with fairly dangerous looking side currents and rips) and high cliffs with stunning houses over looking the Indian  Ocean.  It also had lots of neat little tidal pools so was a great walk.  Then we jumped in the car and headed about 5kms the other way and went to where the life guards were so that Jen/Shawn and Rachel could play in the waves... looked too rough for my hand so I stayed out an watched over the towels.  As we drove back into Knysna, we took a detour out to the harbour entrance called Kysna Heads.  You can tell it's a good harbour but with a narrow entrance that wouldn't be fun in a storm.  We saw some monster waves break against those heads.

Then it was back to the chalet for our first Brai...  we did traditional South African sausages which were quite good but man, using that charcoal bbq reminded me why we switched to gas... it takes FOREVER!  I'm convinced half the reason South African's love food on the Brai so much is because they are starving by the time it is finally ready!

The beach at Wildernis

Aw Mom... the rips don't look THAT bad!

The biggest jelly fish we've ever seen.  There were a few of these.  Note the little guys beside it.  They eat the jellyfish.

These are the coolest little snails I've ever seen.  They move around on that slime like a hovercraft and can bury themselves in sand in about 10 seconds.  Anytime we saw a jellyfish, we saw 5-50 of these little guys feeding on it.  They must have a good sense of smell.

There is another 5kms after this corner!

Yup, Shawn is now taller than Jen.

This is Knysna Heads- the entrance to Knysna Harbour and the only place in the world with the Kysna Horsefish's.. you may remember being able to buy them from Popular Mechanic's advertisements in the 70's...  they are now endangered.