Birds and Monkeys
Today was a very early wakeup - 4:30 AM as we needed to catch a 7:10 AM flight to the South African Garden Route for the second part of our trip. Our flight was under an hour and much better than taking an 8 hour bus ride from Cape Town to George.
The early wakeup was worth it. Our two days in the Garden Route started with a bus ride along the coast. As we drove we caught our first glimpses of some beautiful Indian Ocean beaches. As we traveled along one of our tour guides said the bus needed to stop to fix a flap. When we stopped at a small parking area we were surprised to find the stop was actually planned and gave us an opportunity to walk through the sand and get our feet in the Indian Ocean.
While our guide Janeel and our bus driver Navine took our luggage to our nearby resort we spent some time souvenir shopping at an area on the Knysna River Estuary. Many of the shops sold goods made but locals.
When our bus returned it was time for lunch. Our lunch stop was at Bramon Wine Celalrs, a small winery that served an excellent Mediterranean buffet and some excellent sparkling white wine. Lunch ended with Malva Pudding, a traditional South African dessert which we’ve enjoyed after almost every meal so far. We also got to sample some pear gin that the Bramon had just began bottling. It is infused with herbals and has a distinct watermelon taste. We purchased a few small bottles for home.
The highlight of our day was to come, We spent the remainder of the afternoon at two popular local attractions, the Birds of Eden Bird Sanctuary and Monkey Land.
Prior to entering the bird sanctuary we had out first baboon sighting right behind our bus. He was minding his own business so we minded ours.
The bird sanctuary is one of the largest enclosed aviaries in the world. We saw hundreds of exotic birds and a few tiny antelope. Our guide Nelson pointed out birds high in the trees and as they flew by us. The entire path through the aviary is raised wooden walkways, some of which go above the trees. All of the birds fly freely through the aviary.
Monkey Land was just a short walk from the aviary. It is primate sanctuary where we got to see gibbons. caputian monkeys, ,howler Monkeys, llemurs and vervet monkeys who stalked people in our group eyeing their cell phones. We were told that vervet monkeys are skilled at grabbing sunglasses right off of guest faces.. Everyone enjoyed both of the sanctuaries.
We arrived at our resort around 5 PM and dinner was at the resort so we had a quick trip to our beautiful rooms at the Pezula Nature Resort and then enjoyed a nice barbecue dinner.
After dinner we returned to our rooms where we enjoyed the rest of the evening in front of the wood burning fireplace in our room. Our room also had a wood fired hot tub which I didn’t use but Ruth had one in her room and made use of it for a while in the evening. I decided to just enjoy the enormous stone soaking tub with some added bath salts before calling it an evening.