Woody Cape

Monday the 31^st was our anniversary and we planned an intimate steak braai accompanied by a good red wine. What we did not plan too well was a location for all of this. We left Port Alfred rather late (as usual) but the reason was that we had a very good signal and thought it would be a good idea to do our internet related business before leaving.

Our first stop was at the impressive Bushmans River Mouth where we also hoped to spend the night. I wanted to go there because my father always spoke about the place where he went fishing as a young man. It is the second longest tidal river in the country and is navigable for 32 Km. There was however only one camp ground and Ufudu was too high to get in below the trees on the access road.

Next stop was Boknes where we wanted to walk to the replica of the Dias Cross at Kwaaihoek. The original cross was erected by Bartholomew Dias in 1488 and is now at the University of the Witwatersrand. The Boknes Vortrekker camping ground  was full. No sweat, we would go to Cannon Rocks and do the walk the next day. They had space but Ufudu was too high to get through the gate and there was no truck entrance! It was now getting quite late and we started to have concerns about where to spend the night.

We decided to abandon the idea of walking to the cross and identified a campsite near the Greater Addo Elephant Park’s Woody Cape section. Our ‘trusty’ Garmin once again misled us and we ended up doing a huge dog-leg trip via Alexandria, which was quite unnecessary, resulting in us getting to the Ocean view campsite after their gate closed for the day. There is zero cell phone reception so we could not contact anyone to open up for us. Result: we slept outside the gate. The anniversary celebration would have to wait. Our meal consisted of left-overs and we turned in for an early night. It was glorious; new moon and no electric lights. What a good night’s sleep we had.

Ocean View is a dairy farm, producing milk for Woodlands. It has only 3 campsites, each one different and all very quaint. We selected campsite 1 as the best fit for Ufudu.

The open air showers warrant special mention. We have had some interesting showers in the past but this was a first. It is called a ‘hot pipe shower’ consisting of a paraffin burner below a steel ‘chimney’ and water jacket sleeve. It provides a comfortably warm shower provided you have the correct flow rate.

Access to the beach is via a boardwalk, which also forms part of the 2-day Alexandria hiking trail.

The Alexandria/Woody Cape area is really scenic with many colourful shrubs currently flowering. The road winds through dairy, chicory and pineapple farms, towards spectacular dune fields at Woody Cape, and ancient coastal forests at Alexandria.

We had our ‘belated anniversary celebration at Ocean View campsite. It was great! A cloudless, star-studded sky, a bottle of smooth Laborie Cab and a thick, juicy rump from Kei Mouth. All of that together with the best partner in the world, what more could a girl want?

PS. Correction to the previous post: Ge’s farm is in Somerset West.