After a bit of a late start in Cape Aghulus, we headed out to explore the southernmost point of Africa, hiking up a very steep lighthouse, walking the coast, and taking the necessary geographical sign photos. Cape Aghulus is a cute little town with an edge of the world feel. It kind of reminded me of a cross between Ushuaia in Argentina and a beach town. 

We then hit the road with a flatwhite and headed for Wilderness, at the beginning of what is known as the Garden Route. After a gorgeous drive, we made it to the hostel just as it got dark. After a lot of driving the past couple of days, we booked ourselves in for two nights. The dorm itself was huge, at least 20 beds, but it turned out we were almost the only people staying there the first night. Welcome to winter/off season in South Africa!

The next morning we headed with the only other person in the hostel to rent canoes and explore the forests of wilderness. We paddled about an hour upriver, then had a short hike to a waterfall, where we mostly watched some high school kids from Saudi Arabia dare each other to swim in the waterfall. It was a cloudy and very cold day, so we did not join. They had a great time though, except maybe for the skinny kid whose teeth were chattering.

When we got back to the hostel, a tour group arrived shortly and pretty much took over the place, so we decided to make it an early night and get an early start the next day.

We woke up refreshed and drove up to a scenic viewpoint known as the map of Africa, as the view literally looks the shape of Africa on a two dimensional map. From there, we got stopped on the road by a couple of lazy baboons, before we made our way to Outdshoorn. Outdshoorn is known mostly for ostriches and soon we saw signs advertising ostrich farm tours and riding, which we couldn’t resist. We ended up on a super interesting tour of the farm for an hour, which included standing on ostrich eggs and then riding them, and for the first time in a long time, were sweating. This was the desert, and it was hot! A world away from the cold of Wilderness!

After Outdshoorn we drove to a place just outside of Montague, where we had reserved a caravan (South African fancy word for trailer) with hot springs for the night. We had been advised by a couple of people to stop en route at Ronny’s Sex Shop, a well known novelty bar just a few kms from our caravan. Unfortunately, we were soon accosted by a drunk white supremacist so we escaped back to the hot springs, where we found our caravan and relaxed all night with wine and hot springs and stars and reflected upon our encounter. South Africa is beautiful, but the scars of its history lie deep.