Feedback on The Baroness and The Franschhoek: 

I write this while sitting on our balcony directly overlooking the surfers ripping up the famous endlessly peeling “supertubes” wave of J-Bay.  We will not be surfing that wave - too big and too many rocks to crash upon when we inevitably screw up.   

Awoke this morning to a sea brimming with dolphins gracefully arcing out of the water as far as we could focus in every direction, with a few lucky surfers right in the middle of them. We will be renting long boards and trying to surf the friendly waves on the long, sandy beach just down the road.

After driving quickly down to visit the Cape of Good Hope and seeing some adorable wild penguins, we headed to the quaint little town of Franschhoek in wine country, which was Napa on steroids - valleys full of vineyards tucked between rugged, rocky mountains. 

I don’t think I’ve ever stayed in a nicer hotel room than at our charming little guesthouse, aptly called The Franschhoek.  As a matter of fact, every accommodation we’ve had has been pretty incredible.  It’s like there’s a “nicest guest house” contest going on in this country and everyone is trying to outdo the next.  And, they’re having a best breakfast competition, too, I think - my favorite part is the fresh fruit. 

Best of all, the prices are really reasonable, for a first world country. Beer and food is especially cheap.  So, we’re living large and playing hard!

After the winelands, we headed up the “Garden Route” and followed the mountainous jagged coastline several hours up to an area called Plettenberg Bay, where we stayed in the most amazing place yet – The Baroness Guest House on the Rhino Base Camp.   We were the only guests at this old farmhouse tastefully converted to a 7 room guesthouse, so we had an African farm all to ourselves for two days. 

This was no ordinary farm, though - it had recently been converted from cattle to a wild animal reserve.  So, when we opened the outside door to our shower or the french doors to our room, we looked out over a pasture of grazing zebras, giraffes, rhinos, wildebeest and countless other antelopes of all varieties and sizes.  And, we were the only ones there.  It was absolutely amazing! 

We even had a private game drive with the camp manager where we parked next to the male lion for about 15 minutes while watching him (carefully) and chatting away.  It will be great to see the animals in the wild in Kenya, but this was pretty magnificent to see them at such close proximity.

When we drove North from there, we had to stop at Bloukrans Bridge, home of the World’s Highest Bungy Jump (216 m/702 ft).  After sizing it up and mutually deciding we didn’t feel the need to do that, we both independently changed our minds - and we did it!  The tee shirt they were selling in the gift shop summed it up for us: “Fear is temporary; regret is forever.”  If not now, when? 

If we were ever going to bungy,we should do it off the highest one, right?   Yes, jumping off a 70 story building is as terrifying as you would imagine, but after the initial raw fear and visions of death by splatting in the creekbed below, it was really fun.  The rebound bounces of decreasing size (100m and down) were great!  Of course, we had to buy the video and photos!

Aspen and Ian Mc Kenna

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 5th, 2006 at 11:50 am and is filed under Client Feedback. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.