Travel day!  We woke up early at our little b&b, and our hostess had English breakfast served to us in our room, which had an amazing view!  Don’t believe me?  Check it out.

There was a curtain dividing our sleeping area from the breakfast area, and when we pulled it back, the whole spread was waiting for us.  Pretty fun!  No dolphins frolicking in the durf like we’d been hoping for, and I’m going to leave that last little type there cause it’s cute.  Post brekkie, we hit the road.

We returned the car, where they thankfully didn’t notice the dent in the food from the Karoo.  Whew!  As we turned in the car, Becca asked the gentleman from Avis where we could pick up the shuttle to the airport.  Which is a pretty good question to ask, but maybe a little silly when you’re literally 20 feet from the airport.  The Avis fellow was kind though and he treated it like it was a reasonable thing to ask.  The airport was small and quiet, but the little cafe had a fantastic muffin.  So that’s pretty cool.

Easy flight to Durban, whose airport had a pharmacy and a grocery store, so we were able to pick up all we needed there.  Got another Ecosport, this time blue!  Fantastic!  The drive to the little place in the Drakensburgs was a few hours, and we stopped at the Nelson Mandela Capture site.  The exhibit was nice, though presented in a non-linear fashion that was a little hard to follow, but well worth it! The site is run by the same folks who run the Apartheid museum in Johannesburg.

After the museum, we got a tiny bit lost, but happened upon a weird, weird little tourist attraction.  Minigolf, a zipline, and a couple dozen tiny shops selling…  stuff.  But there was a wine store, and we needed wine, so it was perfect!  Oh there was also a tiny train running around the inside of the park area.  In case you wanted a tiny train ride.

The rode to the cabin was fine, but as we got closer, traffic got slower and slower due to the increasing prevalence of goats on the road, plus we’re tourists, so we had to stop or at least slow down to take photos of the goats in the road, as if they were remarkable.  (They were!)

The road up to the cabin wound through a state park, mostly cement tracks, with a couple bridges that were just logs with sheet metal across.  It wasn’t quite harrowing but it was in that genre.  We were greeted by the owners- a couple in their late 40s …  no early 50s?  Hard to say, especialy if you’re terrible at that.  The gentleman was originally British, a self-proclaimed ex-Charlie Champers (I think?) stockbroker who escaped to his mountain retreat with his Afrikaaner wife.  The property was almost entire self-sufficient, with its own water and solar electricity, but they must have had propane brought in, cause we didn’t see any cows on the property.  The guy was super passionate about “the Berg” and super knowledgeable about everything- even the DIY wildlife posters in our cabin.

Also! Two giant Great Danes, which were indeed Great, though likely not Danish.   They were the type that wished they could be lapdogs, and one in particular took a liking to Becca, or at least really wanted to eat her hat.   Becca was barely tall enough to stop her from getting it.  Maybe our next dog will be a GD… The cabin had a king size bed, a beautiful deck overlooking the valley we’d be exploring over the next few days, and a little set of stairs with one stair taller than the rest, which I tripped over nearly every time I was going down the stairs.