SandiSplash

I’m really not much of a holiday planner. I only did the Garden Route because the boyfriend suggested it and he also planned our itinerary. Knowing nothing about the route apart from it starting in PE and ending in Cape Town, I was blown away just by the short drive. The N2 is flanked by lush greenery. It seems like someone regularly mows the grass along the highway. Trees are planted along the road with such precision that they either neatly sit along the road or arch over the road. It was by far the prettiest long distance drive I’ve ever taken.

I highly recommend that everyone drives from PE to Jeffrey’s Bay. As we got closer, we were met with the most amazing view of the shoreline along the bay. There were stunning views all around as we drove around the bay which seemed so full. It’s deep blue in colour and seems like a really deep beach filled to the brim with dark turquoise water. We stopped at some of the unmarked viewing points.  I actually think those “viewing points” and walkways to the beach are for the residents but it was thoroughly awesome taking in the sheer beauty of it all before walking along the beach. I love beaches with rocks at the shoreline; it just makes the beach unique. The current wasn’t that strong so it didn’t feel dangerous to hop on top of the rocks further into the sea. There were tons of shells washed up to shore so it made it a bit difficult to walk but gave a chance to grab a handful of shells as a memento of my trip. I proceeded to collect shells at all my beach destinations on this trip.

If I knew how gorgeous Jeffrey’s Bay was, I would have totally stayed here instead of Stormsriver. Well we decided to make the most of the time we had by finding the beach the local surfers seemed to love frequenting. It was quite odd that there aren’t any hotdog vendors nearby. I would have preferred grabbing a hot dog and sitting on a bench at the beach instead. We had lunch at a cosy little fish joint with a sign outside that said they had the best calamari in town. Yoh! They were not lying about it. We snacked on a fish, prawn and calamari basket but in hindsight, we should have just ordered the calamari on its own.

We panicked slightly when we saw the time. It was almost 5 and almost closing time for the Billabong factory shop. We still managed to get there before the store closed although we were rather rushed to pick our items, pay for them and leave. I didn’t even try on my clothes. I know this is a small town but they should really consider extending their opening hours for tourists especially when it’s still bright until about 7pm. There are tons of other surfer type brands with factory shops and concept stores which were all closed by the time we were done.

We bid farewell to Jeffrey’s Bay and made our way back down the N2 to Stormsriver. It felt like we were driving directly into a storm. The weather looked really bad so we decided not to stop at the Stormsriver Bridge and headed directly to the At The Woods guesthouse. The lodge looks exactly as what was portrayed on the website: a wooden lodge in the woods. It started raining the moment we checked it to I was glad we didn’t stop at the Stormsriver bridge even though I was filled with the regret the further we drove from it.

For supper we tried out Tsitsikamma Village Inn which has one restaurant but essentially 2 locations not too far from each other. The one was a quite cosy restaurant which was packed. The other one was a quieter sports bar cum café which I preferred. We had a light meal and headed back to our room for a quiet warm night…excited about the next day and tired from the previous day.