Day 4 in South Africa! After a delicious breakfast we packed up the car and made our way to the next destination...Stellenbosch. The land of vineyards.

Our next hotel was only 45 minutes away so not a long drive for us. As we drove out of Cape Town we passed so many Townships. I'm so intrigued to know what it's like to go through one of them but also too scared. I'd like to know how they live, but crime rate isn't great there so we will stay away for now.

There were townships either side of the road at this point and we were passing a number of hitchhikers waving their money at the passing cars. It didn't fill me with much confidence that the sat nav was saying that we were 10 minutes away. But as we got closer to the destination we realised where we were staying was actually quite a big resort. You know it's a big resort when they take you around in golf buggies.

As we pulled up Morris, one of the buggy drivers took our luggage for us. We were too early to check in so while we were waiting for our room we went to see the bird sanctuary and do some wine tasting. Both complimentary activities from the hotel. Yes we had the VIP treatment. Morris dropped us to the bird sanctuary. As we walked to the entrance we saw Pigs, ducks and goats, all in the same pen. They were all friends chilling together. Even weirder the pen next to that was full of rabbits and chickens. They either had no room to have separate pens for the animals (which is quite hard to believe since there was so much land) or they just want the different animals to mingle, which they seem to do very well. It's kinda strange to see rabbits and chickens play together.

Next up was the bird sanctuary. If I'm honest, I bloody hate birds. They are just pure evil, have you seen the film 'the birds' that's what i pictured this tour to be. I thought they would seriously sense my fear and maybe eat my nose or something.

It wasn't too bad though, most of them were chilled, some were evil and enjoyed staring right at me, but all in all it was ok. We saw herons, Hawks and even Eagles (which are just terrifying!)

One of the areas had some Owls. They were in quite a trance when we saw them, quite sleepy but were aware of their surroundings. We were told that they were very friendly and loved having a selfie. Of course we took the opportunity to have one with them. We were also told that they dance when music is played to them. Of course we had to try this. Liz played some Elton John, which they swayed slowly to the beat, she also played some lion king which didn't go down to well with the owls. As soon as soon as Smash Mouth - believer came on, it was a full on rave between the 3 Owls! They were loving it. Liz can now add Owl DJ to her CV.

Once we'd tired the Owls out with their dancing and posing for selfies we were taken into the owl den. There were about 7 or 8 big Owls just flying around. As soon as we walked in about 3 of them flew toward Liz landing on her head and arms. I was dreading it as I knew what was coming for me. One flew straight to my head and pitched itself there for an little while. Liz and the owl man kept saying that it had shat all down my head. And the more they said it the more I could feel something. Turns out they were having me on though. I'm such a gullible idiot sometimes. After a few pictures we decided to leave the Owls rest, plus we wanted some wine. It was onto the wine and chocolate tasting for us.

We were shown to our table for the wine tasting to commence. We were told that we would start with red wine. Not a massive fan of red but I gave it a go. The chocolates that we were given were also made to compliment each of the wines we were going to taste. First up were the 2 red wines with a dark malted cherry chocolate. We took a sip of the wine first after giving the glass a mix and then a sniff. I still don't really know what that's all about but thought I'd do it anyway. The first sip wasn't too bad actually, but then I bit into the chocolate, it wasn't great. The flavour was horrible but gave it another go to try it with the second red. The wine was worse than the first and the chocolate did not taste any better. Round one was not for me.

Round 2 was the white wine round accompanied by a white saffron, cardamom and passion fruit chocolate. We were given one sort of bitter wine and one sweet wine. I tried the bitter first as I know I like sweet. We did the same thing again, sipped the wine, which was actually quite nice, then took a bite of the chocolate. Well I thought the first one was bad...this was bloody disgusting. Liz wasn't a fan of this one either. It tasted like sick. I just drank both wines without the chocolate for this round ha. The wines went down well.

During our wine tasting we spotted a Family having a wine tasting session. They had 3 kids, must have been about 5/6 at the oldest, just downing their glasses of wine, we assumed they were non alcoholic drinks but it looked hilarious. I then saw one of the girls get up to take a sip of her parents wine...now that was definitely real. The kid took a sip and walked off with the glass. Early signs of alcoholism ha. The mum quickly took it back from her.

Our last round of wines were sparkling wines and they were accompanied by a white peppered plum chocolate. Shall we just take a guess now as to whether I liked it or not? Yep that's right...this was also not very nice. Liz liked this one. It was quite a weird taste...the initial taste was a sweet plum flavour and after about 4 seconds it turned to a hot pepper flavour. Again I just stuck to the wines for this one which were delicious. I do love bubbles.

We decided to stay for a little while and ordered a delicious cheese and meat platter to eat in front of the fire. It was raining quite heavily outside so we just ate and drank until it stopped.

A little while later, we checked in and had a little afternoon nap, the wine had made us quite sleepy.

Later in the evening we got dressed up and went for a lovely meal in the hotel restaurant. It was time for some good food and even more wine.

Our waiter, Sylvester was the most adorable little man. I just wanted to squeeze his chubby little cheeks like a baby. Is that weird? He used his cuteness to sell us the most expensive wine on the list though, which we didn't realise until after we'd ordered it. Never mind, we were splashing out for the evening. And by splashing out I mean £6 for their most expensive wine... Bargain.

Once we'd finished the bottle we said goodnight to Sylvester and turned in for the night.

Morning 2 in Stellenbosch and we were heading to Hermanus for the day to hopefully see some whales.

Liz was driving for this journey and the road was very long and windy. It was a tough drive to be honest, cars were speeding and driving up our ass, but refusing to overtake. Pretty stupid and really annoying.

We passed so many hitchhikers again. They must think people are stupid to pull over for them. They can't all be looking for a ride somewhere.

The drive got worse as we continued to go up and up on a mountain but didn't seem to come down. Not quite sure how that worked really. Even the mountain had hitchhikers and townships. It wasn't a place I wanted to break down that's for sure.

We were relieved when we got to Hermanus, it was such a pretty little seaside town. We parked up and we went on the hunt for Whales.

There were so many of them close to the shore. We saw one which looked exactly like an orca jump out of the water which was incredible. We also saw some southern right whales swimming around, even a mother and baby playing in the shallow waters. Liz and I ran to get a closer view but as we got there they had started to swim away. I had my camera at the ready every time we saw one, but on the iPhone the picture quality was terrible and it just looked like I was taking hundred of pictures of the sea.

We worked up an appetite with all the Whale watching, so we went for a little lunch at a little cafe in the mountains right on the sea front. It was very beautiful and we could still watch the whales whilst eating.

We were trying so hard to get a great shot of the whales jumping out of the ocean but it just wasn't happening. We watched and watched for ages but we got nothing. It was time to head back to the car and make our way back. As soon as we got to the coastal walkway again a whale sprung out of the water, and as we continued to walk round other whales were doing the same thing. It was incredible. Liz got her professional shot in the end after hours of waiting for it. It was a shame we weren't around for the whale festival which started a day later...that would have been fun. I imagine the whales all know when it is and swim to shore for the festivities haha.

What an incredible experience we had, but it was time to make our way back before dark. I drove us back over the mountain. We passed a number of hitchhikers again, this time Liz caught 2 men hiding in the bushes just off the motorway behind the people hitchhiking. Do they think we will voluntarily pull over to help them when their aim is to just jump us and steal our things? We just drove on, away from everything. My concern is that what they do must work or they wouldn't continue to do it.

On the drive back through Summerset West (sounds like a nice place but it's far from it) we hit some roadworks. There was a white 4x4 in front of us at the lights and noticed that there were 3 men just sort of watching and looking at us. I thought nothing of it really. After a few miles I overtook that car and drove on. I noticed that every time I would overtake a vehicle they would do the same, they had their headlight on which were quite blinding behind me. They always seemed to know where we were. I was getting the impression that they were tailing us. I wasn't sure if I was being paranoid or if it was actually happening. I took note of their number plate in my head and continued to drive. Miles and miles later they were still behind us, so every small gap there was to pull out and overtake I did. I did this quite a lot until I'd lost them. Our turning off was coming up so I thought they aren't going to find us now. As I pulled the car up to turn off the motorway we heard a car slamming their foot on the breaks, as I looked in the wing mirror this car had cut across a whole lane whilst breaking and the car came right up next to us blocking us in. As I saw it pull up, I realised it was the car that had been tailing us. I have never been so scared in my entire life. I seriously thought, as soon as their car was next to ours they were all going to jump out and completely highjack the car. That was definitely their intention but we think something scared them off, whether it be the car that came up slowly behind us seconds after they slammed their brakes on, or whether they realised we were in a hire car that had a tracker...I have no idea. All I know is that we had an extremely lucky escape from a very scary situation.

Liz was extremely calm on the outside and completely calmed me down as my whole body was shaking but needed to continue driving. Although she was panicking inside she kept calm until we got back to the hotel.

We were pretty shaken up by it but thought let's not let it spoil the holiday. We were now going to be more cautious than ever. It just put a slight downer on the amazing day that we had had.

We decided to go and have some drinks and food in Stellenbosch town after we got back. We were keen to watch the Wales game but to also see another part of Stellenbosch. We went to a place called 'the oak' in the town centre. It was quite a young town, lots of students around, but we got to town it must have been about 6.30pm and most people were smashed. It must have been a thing to get drunk early in Stellenbosch. It was so cheap there...a glass of wine was 70p. How insane is that? The food was delicious as well and to see Wales get their third win of the tournament was a great end to the day.

Back at the hotel it was time for bed, we had an early start to Mossel Bay the following morning.

It was time to brave the driving again and we had a 4 hour drive ahead. We checked out and began our journey. We pre planned our route and knew we were staying on one road the whole way there. The N2 is one of the main highways so we felt pretty safe.

Most of the way was just baron land, or farm land, very picturesque driving passed. It's so weird driving here because it seems like all you ever do is go up mountains, and they're pretty steep, but for some reason you never seem to come down them. It's the strangest thing. I don't understand it.

The drive was actually pretty cool, we saw Monkeys just chilling at the sides of the road. There were so many of them at one point I almost mistook them for hitchhikers. There were ostriches prancing around the fields, and of course there were your standard cows, horses and sheep. Wasn't that excited to see them, although the sheep did look half sheep half goat. A shoat as Liz called it. They were bloody ugly.

Half way through our journey and we were starving, we should definitely not have missed breakfast. We couldn't decide where to stop. Every time we passed through a small town area the slightest thing that looked dodgy would put us off stopping. We were slightly over cautious I think. We eventually found somewhere on the side of the main road, there were lots of people so it looked OK. We refuelled and continued our journey. There were lots of police a bit further down the road and we were pulled over. At first I thought what the hell is going on, but it turns out they were doing a routine check. We passed the checks and were sent on our way.

After another 2 hours we had finally reached Mossel Bay. As we parked up outside the hotel, which was just off the main road, there was this creepy man stood outside the hotel, he was just watching us so we drove off and around to find somewhere else to park but there wasn't anywhere. We braved it and parked up in the same spot. Turns out the man worked at the hotel as a porter haha, he was actually really nice. I think paranoia had got the better of us.

We were too early for check in again so we took a walk to the beach. The roads were dead quiet, there was nobody around. It was very tranquil.

The walk along the seafront was lovely. The surfers were out in force, they all looked like bobbing seals in the distance. Mossel Bay is known for great white sharks so we were hoping there weren't going to be any attacks on our watch.

We saw some swings in the distance, so of course went to play. Liz made some friends there, two cute little girls, who sat with her on the swings for a while. She brought them over to say hello to me. They were adorable and very confident. They stayed with us for a while chatting away about how one is older than the other, their dads working at sea, how one of them eats sand for lunch. It was very entertaining.

On the walk back to the hotel we stopped at a cute little indoor market. There were some really cool stalls there. As we were having a browse one of the guys that worked there called us over to show us a demonstration of his grate plates. He only had to show us one of the foods that he grated and we were sold. We walked away from there with 2 grate plates...he was a very good sales man. We must have looked like easy targets.

When we got back to the hotel, we were shown to our room. Get this, it wasn't just one floor, or two floors...it had three floors. I didn't even know hotel rooms came in those sizes. It was huge, like a mini apartment. It had a living room, kitchen two bedrooms and a bathroom to die for. We even had two balconies. It was great. I felt like a celeb living the high life.

After some chill time we got ready and went for a cocktail in the hotel bar before our evening meal. Our waiter suggested lots of different meals which all sounded amazing. Liz went for ostrich and I went for a fish wrapped in smoked salmon and pastry. It was delicious. I had a little try of Lizs ostrich as well which was very yummy. Who'd have thought I would ever say I like ostrich? We also had a lovely bottle of wine with dinner which led to another bottle over at the bar.

We got chatting to 2 South African men, guess what one of their names were?... Surprise! And no that's not me just randomly saying surprise. That was his actual name! How amazing is that! We chatted with them for ages, they were giving us tips on where to go, even the bar men joined in. The wine was flowing and we had all made the decision to go on a night out with the bar staff.

As we made our way to the club, One of the staff was skateboarding. There's me thinking I'm cool asked to have a go. Big mistake. What did I go and do. Fall straight into a bloody wired fence and hit my head. I am such an idiot.

We got to the club and it was dead. We were literally the only people in there, but we just danced and had some more drinks. We challenged the guys to some pool. Liz definitely hustled a win. Every time the guy turned his back she potted a ball with her hand. When all her balls were potted the guy kept saying no way is this happening, he said 'I'm going to watch you pot the black now then!' Liz set up the shot and the black sailed on in the hole! He couldn't believe it. To be honest neither could she as she'd been cheating the whole time. That guy now thinks Liz is a pro pool player!

After a couple of hours a few more people joined but at this point I was pretty sleepy. That long drive had caught up with me and it was time for us to head back to the hotel for some sleep.

It's been a roller coaster couple of days but it's been fun. We've seen whales, played with Owls, almost been hijacked, and partied with some locals. All in all an eventful 3 days.

Now we are on the road again...it's time to visit Knysna. Let's see what the next few days have to offer.

Laters

JL
Xoxo