The Garden Route

After having reached some semblance of normalcy at home in PE we decided it was time to venture out and see some other sights in this new country of ours. 

The Garden Route is the area between Hiedelberg in the Western Cape and Storms River in the Eastern Cape.  We decided to stop just East of Plettenberg Bay in an area known as The Crags.

This weekend of adventure will be multiple postings to cover the various sights that we saw.

First the trip itself.  The trip is roughly 200km from PE.  The highway is in great condition (recently fixed up by the looks of it) with only one toll booth, but the strange thing about it is the 3 lanes.  Here's how they work.  Most of the time the N2  is 3 lanes.  Sometimes there are 2 lanes West, one East.  Some times it's 2 East, one West.  Then there are times when it's 1 1/2 each way.  Yes, 1 1/2.  

The shoulders are clearly marked with yellow lines and the white line down the centre marks East and West bound traffic.   When there are 2 lanes you always drive in the left most lane, the right lane is only for passing.  So, what happens if you only have 1 lane? Well that's where the 1 1/2 comes in .  The shoulders are paved to allow someone to drive 1/2 on the shoulder, 1/2 in the lane.  This indicates to vehicles behind that they should pass.  Really slow trucks for example, drive with the centre of their vehicle on the yellow line so other vehicles can pass safely.  What really surprised me was that everyone, almost without fail flashed their hazard lights in a, "thank you for giving way" gesture to the slower car now behind them.

In Canada I used to give the wave to say thanks for letting me merge or whatever, but I'd never used the hazard lights except in inclement weather.  I kind of like the hazard light thing.  I'm glad dh was driving and knew what he was doing as I haven't done any highway driving yet, and wouldn't have had a clue.

The second thing that surprised me was the mountains.  Now, I knew that PE was hilly, but these really are mountains.  Not like the alps, but mountains none the less.  Those of you from Southern Ontario will appreciate the twinge of homesickness I got when I found out the B&B was overlooking Formosa Peak. 

Formosa Peak, South Africa

The third thing that surprised me was the pine trees.  As I mentioned the trip is about 200 km.  About 80 km in dh said "hey look a Christmas tree farm".  Of course we all looked out the window and sure enough little pine trees as far as the eye could see, similar to the farm not to far from us back home.  The thing is, it didn't stop.  Obviously, this was a commercial plantation, because there were pine trees of various sizes in large plots for the next 40 km.  We saw a mill and then they continued for another 60 km or so.  Out of our 200 km trip almost 100 km was a tree plantation.  There was the odd dairy farm breaking up the lines of trees, and some indigenous forest, but there were a whole lot of pine trees.  So there you have it, according to South Africa Online, South Africa has one of the largest cultivated forestry resources in the world. Production from these plantations was 16,7 million m3, valued at almost R2,6 billion in 2000.

I love that I learn something new about this country every day.

Next post - A B&B in The Crags.