April 15, 2025
One last breakfast with Hein and Brydon at Jonkmanshof in Montagu.
Me and Len did a final check on the chickens and squirrel trap— empty handed on both fronts. We also spotted a praying mantis in the yard and we ran to tell Ollie. “Whoa a real praying mantis not like the mini one I saw in Cape Town.”
We took a quick stroll through the citrus garden and scooped a fallen finger lime. Kyle wants to keep the seed and send it home to grow so we can replicate the best G&T ever.
Our group has grown to be slightly more efficient at packing up. Ollie had the choice of doing school games or helping to pack and he was quick to choose packing. We’re planning to send a box home when we get to Plettenberg to lighten up our load before we fly to Johannesburg.
At breakfast, Hein recommended we take the scenic route to Wilderness. At just 40 minutes longer than the quicker route, we were happy to take the adventurous route. The M62 cuts through mountains and provided beautiful views that didn’t seem to interest the boys. Len napped on and off for the entirety of the ~4 hour drive but Ollie was up and listening intently to the audio books we played. We first finished Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and Ollie recounted all of the differences of the book versus the movie. We then started Harry Potter & the Sorcerer’s stone via a free podcast on Spotify. The podcast is two girls reading the book and releasing each chapter as a podcast episode. The production is pretty low budget but it was free so we gave it a shot. The podcast is good enough but lacks editing as the hosts leave in errors and will then lament, “Oh fahk, messed up there” or “shit, didn’t mean that”. Ollie didn’t notice these interludes but they had Kyle and I chuckling.
We drove past a few ostrich farms on the way. Hein shared that you don’t typically find wild ostrich any longer due to over hunting and inadequate ostrich defenses. I had thought ostrich would just speed away from predators/hunters so this was news to me.
Our lunch stop was at the Willow Tree Family Restaurant in Ladismith. There was a small children’s play area that excited Lenny greatly and kept Ollie’s attention for a few minutes. Ollie soon left Len to join Kyle and I at the table for a game of Uno. He has trouble holding all of his cards so he instead lays them out on the table and creates a wall to try and block our view of his hand. The method has had so-so success to date and we often have full view of his cards.
Len climbed non-stop and didn’t even notice that he had a ~6 inch long scrape on his leg. Our first aid kit has come in handy plenty of times so far on the trip and we were grateful to have the alcohol wipes on hand to tend to this nasty scrape.
The price of food continues to shock Kyle and I as my lunch of 6 large barbecued (braaied) prawns plus sides was just $8 USD.
We arrived in Wilderness close to 5pm and on arrival to Africamps, the kids were greeted with an offer to feed the chickens. Our accommodation for the next three nights is a glamping setup on a farm called Oakhurst.
Once again, Kyle and I had done little research about the next stop and assumed there would be a restaurant on site. The woman at reception alerted us there was no restaurant on site but they did offer lovely catering boxes and frozen meals to prep in your tent. We picked up frozen eggplant parm, garlic bread and pizza to have for dinner and were grateful for the easy dinner. We also picked up a catering breakfast box for tomorrow morning.
On seeing our tent, I tried to imagine what the woman at reception thought when I asked if there was a key or entrance instructions to our accommodation. We noticed a big door stopper with the phrase, “monkey free zone” written on it by our tent entrance. The door to the tent is just a large zipper where you are meant to place the stopper by the zipper intersections.
The tent has a kitchen with gas stovetop, sink, toaster oven and mini fridge. There are also two bedrooms, a full bathroom and WiFi. A different camping setup than what we were used to growing up. Our tent is next to a creek which must be full of frogs or toads as their noises are louder than any nighttime noise maker. We’re also nearby an impressive playground full of items that are definitely illegal in the US and there is a horse shaped tire swing on the tree by our tent.
The boys tried to prank me again with the fake snake in the bed but need to work on playing it cool. They could not have acted more suspicious, giggling and running through the tent and then walking by with folded arms looking to the sky.
The most exciting part of the glamping setup, though, is the fire powered hot tub. We bought two bags of firewood to get the fire going tonight so it’ll be warm for a dip tomorrow morning. The boys were both excited to take the paddle to stir the water and are excited for “people soup” tomorrow.
