South Africa - Cape Town to Jo'burg

We've been ripping around the country for the past 2.5 weeks in our little "Marco the Polo" (VW Polo Vivo), exhibit A:

Starting in beautiful Cape Town we did a little city tour with a new local friend and ate some delicious seafood before making our way to wine country around Stellenbosch. One word sums it up: STUNNING... some of the most beautiful countryside we've seen on our trip so far. If we'd had the time we could've stayed in the area for a week! We opted to leave Marco at the hostal and jump on a wine tour, to ensure an optimal tasting experience :) We visited four wineries throughout the day throughout the Stellenbosch & Franschhoek regions - Simonsig Estate, Fairview (home of La Capra & Goats do Roam), Dieu Donne (amazing views!) and Boschendal. We had a great time sampling wine & cheese and enjoyed a delicious lunch in Franschhoek.

From Stellenbosch we drove back to Cape Town and up Signal Hill for a great view of the city then made our way around Cape Point spotting African Penguins, a few types of Antelope and Ostrich running wild. We spent a day in Hermanus watching the Southern Right Whales laze around Walker Bay and drove along the coast through little fishing villages, capping off the day with wine & a couple new friends from Calgary!
Our next stop was Oudtshoorn, home of the Cango Caves & numerous Ostrich farms, where we were able to sit on the ostriches but due to wet weather conditions, we couldn't ride them.

We stayed in Plettenberg Bay for a night then made our way to Addo Elephant National Park where we kicked off the animal-sighting-festivities with a Game Drive at night. We were lucky enough to see a sleepy Lion, who looked like roadkill on the side of a pathway, and was (luckily) completely uninterested in our presence. We also saw hyenas, buffalo, zebra, kudu, and a bunch of smaller animals. The next day we drove through the park for 5 hours in our little car which got a bit scary as the elephants (we saw over 150) roamed very close, among other very large animals - we saw three of the "Big Five".

After Addo we headed back toward the coast and ended up in a town called Bathurst at a restaurant/pub/hotel called "The Pig & Whistle" which turned out to be the oldest standing pub in South Africa- what a treat it was to socialize with the locals :) We took in the sights around Port Alfred the next morning before making our way to Coffee Bay, which was surprisingly lacking in good coffee but made up for it in cafe-side livestock. We spent the night in uMzumbe and the next day in Warner Beach where we sat in the sun and watched the local surfers from our great hostal on a hill, while reading and working on getting our tans back.

We spent a bit of time in St. Lucia where we went on a river-boat tour to spot crocs & hippos in the estuary, which was awesome. I just loved how the hippos twirled their little ears, yawned with their giant mouths, and trotted across the bottom of the river disappearing & re-appearing despite being terrible swimmers.

We then drove through the uMfolozi Game Reserve where we were lucky enough to see Rhinos & our first (and only, so far) giraffe!

Since then we've been making our way up to Johannesburg, stopping for a night in Shaka's Rock on the coast. Tomorrow we fly to Ethiopia and have no idea what we're doing there... the adventure continues!
(Here is a link to a full album of photos: Stunning South Africa)