Settled in our Apartment in Wilderness

Feb 10th – 12th: I first connected with Ruan, the owner of Wilderness Waters, in October 2019. At the time we were planning our 2021 trip to South Africa and we knew we wanted to stay in Wilderness for a longer period of time than in the past. On our last two visits to SA, we stayed 2 days in Wilderness and a week in Knysna or Plettenberg Bay. Prior to that, we would drive by Wilderness on our Garden Route journey not even noticing the beach and small village.

From October 2019 to January 2022, Ruan and I exchanged many emails – first to plan our 2021 time in Wilderness, next to move our 2021 trip to 2022, then to cancel our 2022 trip and finally a month later to “un-cancel” our 2022 trip. Through all the changes, Ruan was extremely helpful and accommodating – he even held our reservation when I cancelled as he had a feeling we would somehow make it to SA this year.

When we arrived at Wilderness Waters, Ruan was waiting for us and I could see his smile through his mask. He was as friendly and enthusiastic in person as he was in his emails. Ruan was excited to show us the apartment and we loved it from the moment we walked through the entrance. The apartment has everything we need and more, plus Ruan made it special with a fresh bouquet of roses, tiny, fancy cupcakes and sherry, a bottle of champagne, two pieces of fancy tiramisu, and a rose and chocolate on each pillow. The actual apartment is much nicer than the pictures show. We have a sweet cleaning lady (Noomi) who comes daily. We made our bed ourselves the first day, but she remade it as we didn’t do it quite right – so we now leave it to Noomi. She also likes us to leave the dirty dishes so she can do them (even though we also have a dishwasher) – wow are we spoiled.

We can see the beach from our balcony – it is a 5 minute walk away through a tunnel under the roadway. There are numerous restaurants in the village plus a small grocery store, liquor store, pharmacy and shops – all an easy 5 minute walk away. George (where we flew into) is a 10 minute drive and they have a large, modern mall – today we did our grocery shopping for the week at Woolworths (like Whole Foods) in the mall.

The restaurants we have tried thus far have all been very good, and reasonably priced. All have outdoor dining which we love. Today we ate lunch in the garden patio at The Girls – the food, ambience and entertainment (a gal singing) were all wonderful.