Apologies - the map is a bit elementary.

We left sleepy quiet Nieu-Bethesda descending the Karoo hills into the rising sun finding a lone windmill, kept company by sun speckled dust.

We motored into the broad ordered Graaff Reinet streets with old Dutch inspired houses and drove straight out again to find the Valley of Desolation National Park where you wind slowly to the mountaintop for a 360’ view of the Karoo plains.  Signs tell us not to hitch and to watch out for Kudu (a buck) as they can try and jump over car lights at night, causing a lot of damage as you can imagine.

Once finished, we replenished fuel and biltong (jerky)and hit the road to the beach the landscape fairly flat and featureless on the way seeing the locals finding an innovative way to utilise wheelbarrows. Jen took a shot that probably sums up some of the progress that we have observed on this trip so far, a BMW passing houses with small solar panels.  We skirted the edges of Port Elizabeth and onto St Francis Bay. I know this part of South Africa well having studied Geology at the University of Port Elizabeth (now called Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University) back in the mid-seventies.

St Francis Bay, with its many distinctive whitewashed walls and thatched houses, is now a spread out resort with a few thousand houses, an airstrip and two golf courses, one designed by Jack Nicklaus. Back in 1964, my Dad had the fourth house built in this seaside town and our family spent most December holidays here in the sun fishing and surfing.  The surf was loud through the bedroom window as we collapsed early, sunburnt and content, the gas lamps hissing in the other room. (No Eskom load shedding, no-one had electricity for the first few years).

St Francis now has a port and houses on the beach, along the rocks and on canals adjacent to the Kromme River, where we found an oyster catcher, seagulls, egrets and terns.

It was a shock approaching Jeffrey's Bay to see a motley array of windmills turning desultorily in the strong wind - what an expensive way to stuff up a landscape.

Tom's brother Reuben and his wife Jackie live at St Francis and we dropped in for a lekker braai (enjoyable BBQ) seeing Nicki their daughter with her two kids, Connie (Tom’s sister), Brian (brother-in-law) and Jenny (Brian’s daughter). They have a tremendous view of the St Francis Bay from their house.

The beach at St Francis has disappointingly more or less disappeared due to erosion and a lack of sand replenishment so we drove the 10 or so minutes to the adjacent Cape St Francis beach and wild rocky shore where we found  locals driving dangerously as well as a beautiful sunset.

We spent a week here before moving on to the Storms River a few hours away via Jeffreys Bay, where unfortunately the famous surfing waves were obliterated by an east wind. I managed to snap a picture of a local surveying the scene before taking the old road from Humansdorp wending our way through tree lined roads along the foothills of the Baviaanskloof range, dodging a donkey cart and some cattle, disturbing some storks on the way.

The next morning we struck out on a four hour walk through the forest in the Storms River National Park that hugs the rocky coast. We didn't see much except some dragonflies and a timid (luckily for me who disturbed him) boomslang that had just finished off his lunch while Jen had fun finding exotic fungii. We weren’t able to cross the well-known suspension bridge over the river as it was closed for maintenance. I didn’t think I would ever see this again – a “Pom” with a handkerchief hat!

In many of the self-catering cottages we stayed in we have found very useful mini - kitchen (two plates and an oven) something we haven’t seen in Australia.  You can buy one of these here for around 80 Aus dollars.

On our way to Knysna we stopped at the Storms River Bridge, Natures Valley, (the water in the rivers stained brown by vegetation,  and Keurboomsriver, where I recall our family having a holiday when I was very young. Here we found the next version of the Spaceship Enterprise, its sweeping lines incongruous in the beachside bush at Keurbooms.

Robin and Lynne, who we hadn't seen for close on 30 years, were splendid hosts in Knysna. They live in the Pezula golf estate on the eastern heads of Knysna.  The next day we dropped in to see where my folks used to live (white house the green roof next to the estuary) and then onto Brenton the local beach where we used to take the girls when very young. The views over the estuary are spectacular from this road. We ate at the waterfront on the estuary while Jen snapped a garden chair delivery lady.

We approached Wilderness via the back roads dropping down on gravel roads into a number of passes before exiting at its magnificent beach. The Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe steam train used to pass on its journey between George and Knysna over the Kaaimans River Bridge. It was interesting to see generally on our journey that SA authorities still condone adults and children riding in the back of an open bakkie (ute). Then onto George and Oudtshoorn where ladies sell colourful dusters made from ostrich feathers. The Cango Caves, an hour or so north are found within a limestone ridge where stalagmites (growing up from the ground) and stalactites grow slowly, occasionally merging.  

A heron snapped near Humansdorp a startled egret taking off over the  Natures Valley estuary a sleepy heron in Knysna and an unidentified brown bird dodging thorns outside the Cango Caves.

Although already 4pm when we exited the caves we decided to challenge the famous Swartberg pass, a gravel road climbing 1,246 metres up the Swartberg mountain then winding down the slope to Prince Albert. The pass is especially famous due to the spectacular geology that is exposed at its Northern end. The contortions in the rock display astonishing anticlines and synclines, and the vivid coloration of the surrounding quartzite.

The Prince Albert museum hosts Thomas Bain’s original design for the road (after walking the path a few times) and built the road in 1881 -1886 using 200 convicts as labour using only crowbars, sledgehammers, pickaxes, spades, wheelbarrows and dynamite. The pass is considered one of the most spectacular in the world and it certainly lives up to its reputation. The panorama below is the view behind us as we climbed.

The familiar church spire glinting in the setting sun welcomed us as we searched for our accommodation in Prince Albert, the ‘brakdakkie’ or flat roof indicative of the type of houses built in earlier times. It was one of the more original cottages that we stayed in with some interesting cacti in the garden. Like Nieu–Bethesda, Prince Albert also has a canal drainage system through town distributing water collected from the mountains above it. The locals have fun painting their refuse bins.

Interestingly PA has an Art Deco theatre headlining well known South African artists entertaining the local olive farmers. A local proudly showed us her magnificent gem collection that she and her husband had collected over the years from both local sites and overseas, particularly Brazil.

We climbed the mountains behind the town in the evening capturing the rising moon.