Alsguth Travel Blog

Hello from the Cape Town airport!  We are headed home on an overnight flight later today!  But first, rewind to last Tuesday .... We headed off to Tsitsikamma National Park for a ziplining canopy tour.  The national park system in SA is wonderful, we bought the "Wild Pass" which gained us entry to all of the parks.  This was a good decision as we hit many of the parks during our stay. While we waited for tour we observed a small Troop of Baboons near the road. The ziplining was fun (of course), 10 zips of various lengths/speeds.  They gave us a glove to brake but, as usual, I am unclear on that concept - I was always coming in HOT! LOL Some of the trees in this forest are upwards of 600 years old!  After ziplining we grabbed lunch at a 60's themed restaurant - think Elvis and Marilyn Monroe, and headed to Stormsriver to hike to the suspension bridges. The suspension bridges span the mouth of Stormsriver on the Indian Ocean. Just kidding - that is not the real bridge! I ca

Hi!  We had three nights in George, SA at the most gorgeous cliff-side house - the view was amazing and the roar of the waves crashing against the cliff was loud! One of my "top-5" was to star gaze and this was the place for it with no light to interfere!  We had a couple of cloudless nights and the stars were abundant!  So cool! One of the funny things about this house was the road to get to it.  I took a video but you really cannot appreciate how crazy it was ... one-lane (remember, left-side driving), switchbacks and, in a couple of spots, the switchbacks were straight UP!  Here you can kind of see the road on the other side of the canyon we had to cross.  It was crazy!  Carsten did a great job driving ... as always! We did decide to spend some time enjoying the house but there were many things to do in the area. The first day we went in the direction of Oudtshoorn for the Ostrich Safari. We got up close to many - including a one-day old baby! This is what my feet look lik

 hi! Our last stop in Cape Town was Table Mountain.  We checked the weather apps (also known as the Magic 8-Ball) for clear skies and grabbed some tickets for the cable car to the top. It is a quick 5-minute ride to the top.  The floor of the cable car rotates so that everyone gets a view.  The top is 1,086 meters above sea-level (about 3,000 feet). These are some of the views from the top. We hiked around a bit, down a gorge and back up. The micro-climate was interesting because of the clouds/fog that sit on top of the mountain much of the time.  This moisture provides about 2/3 of the precipitation on top. On Thursday morning we got our rental car and started PART 3 of the trip - the Garden Route.  This driving trip starts in Cape Town and finishes in Port Elizabeth (if you are following along on a map).   Driving in South Africa is challenging in that they drive on the LEFT SIDE OF THE ROAD and the driver sits on the RIGHT SIDE OF THE CAR!  The driver has the added challeng of not t