The year our family traveled the world: Plettenberg Bay, Tsitsikamma to the Drakensburgs

I'm going to combine about 5 days of stuff here because we don't have a lot of pictures and we just spent a few days on the best beach in the world according to Jen (or maybe one back behind Margaurita Island. We added a few days in Plett as we fell in love with the beach there. The waves were high but straight on with no rips, we were swimming with seals and/or otters and it was super clear. Its a Blue Flag beach meaning its one of the best in the world. Unfortunately we spent so much time playing, we didn't take any pictures until the last morning as we were leaving and it was a grey morning so they don't do it justice..

Then we decided we needed to make a run for the Drakensburgs so we would have time for Kruger (which was high on my to do list). It's about 1200 kms from Plett to the Drakensburg Mountains so we broke it up with spending the better part of the day hiking around Tsitsikamma National Park. We did a long 3.5Km hike down the very rugged coast to a tall water fall. We were hoping to swim there but the water was brown... and so was the falls. It was due to the iron in the water but it just didn't look appealing so we gave up on that idea. On the way, we saw a pop of dolphins playing in the surf. Very cool. Then we hiked 3.5kms back and drove to the end of the park and hiked another 1.5kms in to a suspension bridge and then back out for some swimming in Storm's River Mouth. Then it was into the car for a long drive to Grahamstown which was really just as far as we could get north before dark.

An early start the next am and then off past Port Elizabeth, East London and then almost to Durban before turning north and ending up in Underberg (under mountain). It was a very long day with almost 700 kms and tempers were a bit short by the end of it :-). (It isn't all sweetness and light when you are with everyone 24/7 - even in paradise).

Underberg is a nice little town right in the southern Drakensburgs and we ended up at a nice little cottage called Eagle's Nest. They had a little trout pond which the kids paddled around in a kayak and a couple of dogs which made them happy. The next am, we jumped back in the car and headed through the pass to our present destination - Wits End! The name was pretty apropos for how we felt after that long drive!

A few words about the pass... we are in a crappy little Toyota but we really would have liked to be in a hummer! When we got about 70kms in on a dirt road (typical African road with no guard rails, thousand foot drop offs and loose sand and gravel) up a mountain pass, we came to a spot where they were doing construction and had left boulders all over the road and a ditch about 3' deep. You'd never believe that little car could ford that but with one wheel on either side and scrapping some undercoating off the bottom, it made it up the the steep hill and over the other side. The scenery was worth it but I had to tolerate some pretty snappy comments from the cheap seats. The rest of the way, we went along the main highway to sooth some worried nerves.

I'll end this post here and talk about the Drakensburgs tomorrow.

|The3 left side of Plettenburg Bay. The town is on the hill the photo is taken from and the beach we like is on our right on the other side of the town

Jen's favorite beach... I have to admit the waves were pretty good but I like them a bit rougher.

The world's highest free standing bungee jump - 216m. Note the poor girl hanging by her feet. (This one is a LOT less safe than the one I did in New Zealand. If the rope breaks here, you are still 100m in the air so you WILL die... on mine, the rope would break at 18" above a deep river so you'd simply get wet. Note that about 10 days ago, some poor girl did this off a similar bridge at Victoria Falls and her rope broke.. luckily she didn't have far to drop either but fell into the Zambezi River (full of crocs and rocks) in full flood with 100m of rope tied to her feet. She was pretty banged up and lucky to survive).