Our last week in Wilderness

We really enjoyed our time in Wilderness. Although the village is small, there are many things to do in the surrounding areas. Also, this is a great place just to relax. Below are the photos from our last week here.

Morning exploring and lunch at Fancourt. As you will see from the pictures below, Fancourt is a beautiful course, but way too difficult for us. So we opted for lunch – very enjoyable.

**We took the interior pictures on the way to the patio where we ate lunch. I really liked the fresh flowers.**

On the way back from lunch we stopped at a strawberry farm. If we hadn’t already eaten, we would have tried one of the restaurants on the farm. The strawberries were delicious.

As I mentioned above, there is lots to do in the Wilderness area. We decided to visit friends, Ole and Linda, in Plettenberg Bay. We stayed with them for many years and always had a wonderful time. It was nice to catch up – we ended up staying overnight and going to Zinzi for dinner.

**Aquavit balcony – a perfect spot for breakfast**

**Linda and Ole have some wonderful sculptures**

**Ready for breakfast – Linda’s are the best.**

**Casual lunch at Peppermill which is on Monkeyland Road (hard to find but worth the stop) and then dinner at Zinzi.**

On the way back from Plettenberg Bay we stopped at Simola golf course in Kynsna to take a few photos – in the distance we could see East Head where we had lunch with Deb and Karen.

When we got back we headed to the beach – we try to do a beach walk every day.

**Beautiful flowers on the way back from the beach**

Friday night (Feb 24th) date night at ilali Restaurant – it is nice to be able to walk to the restaurants in Wilderness. Rhino and the Rasta (R&R) were playing at ilali- we loved their music. The owner of ilali said that R&R are so booked up he is lucky to get them 1 night a month – we will watch for them at ilali next year.

Beautiful sunset taken from our balcony.

Sunday Feb 26th – a gorgeous day. Larry and I walked 8km in the morning – mostly on the beach. The Sea Rescue team were training – they are so good at handling the zodiacs in the waves.

On Feb 26th Doug and Marg Bennett (friends from Huntsville) arrived in Wilderness. This is their first trip to South Africa, and we loved catching up and hearing about their adventures thus far. We had a relaxing meal together at The Girls.

The next morning we picked up Doug and Marg at 7:30 a.m.and we headed to George for a 2 1/2 hour trip by rail on the Outeniqua PowerVan. The PowerVan is a motorized rail bus which departs from the Outeniqua Transport Museum and travels through the Outeniqua Mountains to the top of the Montagu Pass. It travels along the railway line constructed between George and Oudtshoorn at the turn of the century. The Museum houses a large collection of very old steam locomotives and carriages. We hadn’t done the PowerVan rail before so we weren’t sure what it would be like – it was a very enjoyable morning.

**Great views of the Outeniqua Mountains and Montagu pass (the pass is a very narrow gravel road)**

**Train was all wood – definitely has seen better days.**

We had lunch at the strawberry farm and dinner at Joplins (Joplins has the best steaks). This was a perfect ending to our time in Wilderness.

Feb 28th – We flew to Cape Town today and we stayed at Hout Bay Manor overnight. We will leave our checked bags here and just take carry-on to Inyati. Our flight tomorrow (March 1st) should get us to Nelspruit in time to do our first safari drive tomorrow evening.