Road trip to Franschhoek

Today we took a road trip over a mountain to Franschhoek, the St. Helena of South Africa’s winelands region.

It was a beautiful day for a drive, and traffic wasn’t bad at all, although downtown Franschhoek was reasonably busy, all things considered.

We had lunch in a pub in the restored train station.

And we found three of the Big Five wild critters - and they held very still for us. 😉

A Cape buffalo -

An elephant (a bit smaller than those we’ve seen in the wild on previous trips - must be a baby) -

And a rhino -

After lunch we continued our drive through the mountains on the far side of Franschhoek, pulling over several times to take in the views.

And we came across more baboons.  These aren’t great photos since they were in the shade.

These two looked like teddy bears - right after I took the picture, one shoved the other over.

This big guy sat on a rock and looked at me.

We continued over the pass and came down into a valley with miles of apple orchards where the ripe fruit was being harvested - unfortunately, there was no place to pull over safely to take pictures.

We are now the only people staying at the hotel.  As soon as we leave tomorrow, they’re closing until the coronavirus restrictions are lifted and business gets back to normal.  Staff were working on getting everything “buttoned up” for the closure today.  This evening as we went out for our nightly walk, it was eerie and sad.  We weren’t the only ones who were sad - Elze, the concierge who’s been so helpful and attentive, teared up when we saw her when we got back this afternoon.  (She also gave us a wine carrier filled with South African gifts.)

Our boarding passes are printed, and hopefully our trip home will be reasonably uneventful.  So far only one leg of the trip (the last one) has been cancelled and rebooked.  Fingers crossed!