The Garden Route and Riding with Rhino's in the Karoo

After Hermanus, we headed off along the garden route towards Mossel Bay and Wilderness, where we stayed in a B&B in the hills overlooking the coast. It was a lovely drive and the next day we continued along the Garden Route to Knysna for a morning coffee, followed by a long drive through the mountains of another national park as we made our way inland to the Karoo.

After a very long day of driving, where I only managed to take over from Joost for a short while due to the high volume of roadworks and traffic (of all sorts! - see below), we reached the lovely Asante Sana game park/conservation area.

Asante Sana is a privately owned game park, not open to the general public, owned by our friend in Cape Town. We spent two days driving around the 12,000 hectares of land spotting game, including three white rhinos and a herd of elephants (which are under the conservation programme the game reserve is running).

The first morning we woke up at 5am to start an early morning game drive by ourselves where we spotted a white rhino, amongst other animals. We had the day to relax, Joost baked bread and banana loaf and I hung out with the animals including the large turtles that roam around as well as the local horse, Saddam (named so as he is a bit of a difficult one – not so politically correct!).

That afternoon we went on a game drive with the coordinator of the volunteer project that has recently been rolled out and spotted the herd of elephants that got as close as 5 meters away from us! Perhaps a little too close for comfort!

It was warm during the day but really cold at night in the Karoo and that evening we had dinner together by a large bonfire to keep us warm. We slept in a little the next morning getting up at 7:30am, packed up and prepared for another long drive, as we slowly make our way across South Africa to Mozambique.