Making Our Way To Mozambique!!

Durban beach front

Today we found a place to stay in Durban and headed out for Sunday funday drinks and food.

Durban 

 We were about a four minute walk to the beach, so we walked along the boardwalk where there was lots of activities, restaurants and people watching.  Many different cultures here in Durban made us feel right at home, which we loved.  We bar hopped, buying $10 bottles of yummy rose and got to relax and talk with some of the locals, everyone is so friendly here.  For dinner we got the popular Durban dish called bunny chow.

bunny chow

Border Line at 6am

The next day we hopped on a long bus ride from Durban to Johannesburg, about 7 hours.  3 hour layover in Johannesburg, then 11 hours  to Maputo.  This included waiting for the border to open for 2 hours, then we stood in line for 1 hour.  When it finally opened it took another hour to cross the border.  For traveling for almost 24 hours we handled it pretty well.

Mozambique We Have Arrived!!!

We got to Maputo and headed out to explore the town and grab some drinks and try to understand Portuguese, although most people think I'm Brazilian and assume I speak it.  We stopped by a cute little arts and crafts market, then had dinner at a popular local spot called Zambezia.  I got prego which is a popular Portuguese

art market Maputo

Maputo Streets

dish of steak fries and a salad. There wasn't too much to see in this town so we are planning our next moves for the next few days.

The Wild Route

The next morning we woke up very early to drive the "Wild Coast route" and wild it sure was.  Beautiful landscapes and countryside much more of an "African" experience which we had been told and were looking forward to, but very crazy roads.  Constant sharp turns, potholes, dirt roads with people and animals walking in them.

Also we drove through small little crowded towns with live markets and auctions.  It was quite the challenge to drive of course about 2 hours to Coffee Bay, where we made a pit stop for lunch.  Then continued onto Port St. Johns which was literally just a layover on our way to Durban to return the rental car.   That trip in total driving was about 14 hours, which should have been a lot less minus all the obstacles, but a great experience.

auctions 

countryside

It was an awesome experience seeing the locals in their traditional "garb".  It was crazy seeing them walk miles to where they needed to go, especially early Sunday morning all dressed up, walking miles to church.

How they lived and worked was incredible.

The next morning we safely returned our rental car we named Nala and our GPS we named Mufasa (obvious Lion King characters) after 6 fun days of driving the Garden Route and the Wild route over more than 1,016 miles !

sunday church

Self Drive Safari

After shark diving we drove to Addo which was about a five and a half hour drive where we stayed the night to wake up to head to a self drive safari.  It was a really cool experience.  We stayed for over 7 hours just driving around and checking out wild elephants, zebras, birds, ostrich's tortoise's, warthogs, kudu's and more.  We were kinda bummed we were searching for the lions, rhinos and leopards, but were told it may have been too hot for them today to come out.  Most of the time we drove in silence, but when we weren't finding animals we put on the "circle of life" song from the Lion King, which helped round up some animals for our viewing pleasure.

braai

At night we did a braai (South Africa version of a BBQ) at the place we were staying.  This local guy showed us how to cook the meat on the grill and brush it with delicious spices and sauces he also had made sides to go along with it and we enjoyed a nice bottle of Pinotage to go with it.

Shark Cage Diving With Great Whites!!!

Woke up today in the train car and heading out to shark cage diving, went through a half hour tutorial then headed out to sea about 30 minutes to a popular area for great whites.  After about 40 minutes of trying to bait the fish, a huge great white about 14 feet appeared and they asked for volunteers to be the first one in the shark cage... guess who was first in...? Meeeee... then Adrienne.

They said the water was cold and asked if we wanted wet suits but we were so excited we just google'd up and jumped right in.  The first time we went under the water and looked at the bait in front of us in the cage the shark was about a foot from our face.  We came up from the water so excited and didn't even mind the coldness because of the adrenaline.


Our first time in the cage we stayed in for about 25 minutes and had some close encounters with one large great white.  The second time we went in for another 20 minutes or so we were right beside the bait and had about 4 great whites circling our boat and the cage.  Not many people can say they came face to face with a great white but I did!  Mouth, nose, teeth, eyes, fins, tail and all just a few inches from me!

 A few times it's tail would smack our cage and rock it with it's power.  It was probably the coolest thing I have ever done in my life.  It looked like such a peaceful, curious, beautiful fish.  It was amazing and soooo worth back tracking our route!

Southern Cape Drive

Knysna Lagoon

South African Tapas

We decided to stay in Gansbaai for the night then head out in the morning and continue along the Garden Route to Knysna, then back track to Mossel Bay, which is supposed to be another great spot for great white shark cage diving.

So we drove about 6.5 hours to Knysna enjoying the beautiful rolling hills and countryside then arrived in Knysna.  We walked around the adorable little town then went out a bit in our green to celebrate St. Patricks Day.

Today we woke up drove around Knysna for a bit checking out the gorgeous views of the lagoon and various viewpoints along the way.  Ate their local snoek fish dish for lunch on the water, then headed back toward Mossel Bay to go shark diving.  Along that drive we stopped for a 45 minute hike to a waterfall at the Millwood National Park at Jubillee Creek, then drove about an hour and a half to Mossel Bay.

Hiking

While in Mossel Bay we decided to stay in this novelty train car hotel which is a hotel made out of an old passenger car right on the beach, it was pretty cool and a great view to wake up to.  That night we had the local hake fish, very yummy.

view from train car hotel

Hotel from outside

hake fish

Our Train Car stay

Driving the Garden Route AKA "Roadtrip of a Lifetime"

Today we picked up our rental car and took off for the Cape of Good Hope and Boulder Beach to see the African penguins.  Driving with the wheel on the right and driving on the left was a lot easier than I had thought.  I had it down pat!




Unfortunately when we got to the Cape of Good Hope, we were told there was low visibility for the fabulous views we were to see, so we skipped it drove to Boulder Beach and walked around viewing lots of cute waddling African penguins.  Throughout the drive there was warning signs for baboons and were lucky enough to see some that had us stopped in the middle of the road for their "feeding time".







We then headed out on the Garden Route driving up and down beautiful mountains with fantastic views, driving through cute little beach towns and past gorgeous beaches and dunes.  When the rain started clearing up there was the most amazing rainbow I had ever seen.  We pulled over many times and we even followed it and saw the end but there was no pot of gold, but still worth the beauty.

We stopped in the town of Hermanus but it was still a bit overcast, but this was supposed to be a great lookout for whales.  We continued on to our final stop of Gansbaai, (took us about 7 hours to drive stopping along the way, typically it's a 2 hour drive but that's the whole point of this road trip).  We were to stay in this town to go shark cage diving the next day.  Unfortunately for us because of high winds they cancelled so we needed to re-route and change some of our plans around. Which is what we are figuring out now, we may just need to cut out another part of our planned route because we both really want to do the shark cage diving!