Thursday(and maybe Friday too)(Steaming along to Plett)

I did the Kingfisher walk, which had the excitement of walking through a field of very long grass which was a bit taller than me, and found my self imaging that I was the size a bug, and having a huge foot crashing down upon me, honey I shrunk the kids esque.

Later I saw the Outeniqua Choo-Tjoe Steam Train go past and looked forward to the ride I was planning to take on it later on Knysna.The rest of the walk was very pleasant, with unusual paving at one time, walking over pipes and at the end I was rewarded with a very nice swim in a waterfall.


Boarding the train involved having to understand the very strong Afrikaans accent of the conductor telling me I had to buy a ticket before boarding. The journey was great with the constant sounds of ‘clackety clack’, soot landing in my hair, the smokey smell, the sonorous sound of the whistle and lots of fun sights; huge steam releases from the engine, large numbers of birds flying away on the water, and from the fields as the train went past, crossing a lake with water on both sides. On the train I met an English couple from Cirencester who had booked all there accommodation before hand with Trailfinders and were paying 600R a night per person for accommodation, and they were starting to question whether it was good value.
The first backpackers I arrived at in Knysna was shut, so walked back down the hill to the Knysna Backpackers, which was quite pleasant, it had a huge garden, just off the dormitory.


I spoke to a really nice pair of medics from Amsterdam, who were trying to fight a parking ticket for parking their rear of their car in a slot as opposed to the bonnet. I also learnt my first bit of Dutch ‘Slav Lekker’ for good night, I tried to learn some more but other simple expressions seemed but more complicated
[The lady running it was having a dubious conversation with a window fitter from the UK]
I was vaguely planning to spend two nights here, but was offered a lift by a pair of BA staff(John and Claus) to Plettenburg, and had been planning maybe later to go to _Roberg NP__ but didn’t as I was relaxing in a incredibly comfy hammock, and then catching the tail end of a African dance in town.


I was staying at the __Plettenbug Backpackers___ which was really nice, with hammocks, a place you could barbeque your food every night, free body boards, and quite comfy beds, plus run by a really friend Dutch couple. I decided to take myself to __Roberg NP__ and so hired a bike and did the 18km return journey, which although not far, was along very steep hills and so very knackering, the walk was fun, seeing superb crashing waves, the layers of different rock strata, old cave dwellings, the hundreds of seals playing in the sea.


It was supposed to be a circular walk and had met a couple coming back the other way saying it was too overgrown and so turned back, so I took what I thought the path and it was overgrown, and had to crawl at times to avoid big spiky branches. It turn out to be the path to the light house, and so worked my way back down, and returned to the about half way along the path I started on. I went down the big sand dune to the other side to see if I could find the path on the other side, and ran into the Cirencester couple again, and found the path which ran just along the edge of the crashing sea, and was like scrambling over rocks than following a path.