Friday night in Cape Town... The four of us, Guillaume, Myles, Anna, and I met at Zula, an "inordinary" and well-known bar on Long St., the main street where the action is in downtown Cape Town. Comparing the atmospheres, the night life in Cape Town doesn't quite match up to the "feversome" midnight Montreal, but it's still very lively. Zula bar has an authentic charm to it; its wooden interior gave it a warm finishing touch.
May 29, Saturday
After running into a bit of trouble renting a car, we managed to set out for our road trip before noon. We took the scenic N2 high way heading west, stopping by Hermanus, Mossel Bay en-route to Oudtshoorn where we planned to ride some ostriches.
Hermanus is a beautiful village ensconced on the southern coastline of South Africa, where we stopped for lunch at Two Oceans Seafood Restaurant. The village architecture is very European. The sea-shore restaurants reminded me of La Rochelle, France, both of which share a relaxing, laid-back feeling to visitors. What is different is that Hermanus struck me with its gorgeous rocky sea-shore and deep blue water, the view there is simply impressioné.
Our lunch break in Hermanus dragged on longer than we had expected, we settled the night in Mossel Bay (2 hours from Oudtshoorn). Mossel Bay was once a lively coastal village but has gone downhill and turned into an old town. The downtown main street has one club playing 80's house-music...I think you get the idea. Nevertheless, at Mossel Bay, we stayed a very unique hostel; it is like a huge house that one could easily get lost in. The inner-yard and gardens there are well-maintained and aesthetically appeasing. For dinner, we went to a Cuban restaurant/bar. The atmosphere and the food were very agreeable, but the place was basically empty besides us. Past dinner, we went for a walk down the main road to the Mossel Bay look-out point. It being dark then, there wasn't much to see.
May 30, Sunday
Oudtshoorn is only 2 hours away. Piecing together several very simple map on the back of brocheurs, I navigated ourselves to the ostrich farm to do what we set-out to do - ride some ostriches. The farm we went to was called "Safari". Our tour guide Charlie gave us a "tour" of the farm house and some interesting facts about ostriches I hadn't known. We then walked out to the farm to meet different species of ostriches, standing on ostrich eggs, and finally riding ostriches. I gotta say, these big birds are preeeeeetty fast; they run up to 80km/h, making it the second fastest animal on land.
Of course, the ostrich-theme of the day also involves eating ostriches, we did so a local restaurant. Ostrich meat is a red meat, looks kinda like steak, but tastes softer and mushier. We also shopped around for an ostrich egg to bring back; apparently the content of one of these eggs equal to 24 regular chicken eggs. Imagine eating an ostrich omelet for breakfast...
Before we were on our way back to town, we headed about 40KM north of Oudtshoorn to visit a destination called Cango caves. Cango Caves was once undersea. It has four chambers featuring million-year old rock formations - magnificent, as if carved by the hands of God. The end of our tour concludes our weekend road trip. From there we retraced our route back to Cape Town. Although not so scenic during the night, the drive was fun-filled; hours of traveling allowed us to know each other a lot better. What a great weekend...
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