Day 12 - Oudtshoorn

This morning we had initially planned to drive back half of the distance we traveled from Cape Town to Addo. This 4-hour drive felt faster and went smoothly. The 'smoothly' part was in question for about half an hour when our tank almost let us down. You wouldn't believe how many kilometers there are with absolutely nothing here. No city, no gas station, nothing... And that lasted until about 70 km before our destination. With our relatively small tank, you can start sweating a bit 😥 Thankfully, we made it to the next gas station! By the way, we encountered monkeys by the side of the road again on our drive 😎

Arriving in Oudtshoorn, we visited one of the typical ostrich farms for this city. However, it wasn't to see ostriches as you might expect - we've already had the chance to see them in the wild - but rather to pay a visit to two giraffes. The Chandalier Game Lodge is home to these two giraffes who were rejected by their mothers. Shorty was too small for his age, and Steila's mother was too old to produce milk. They were nursed back to health at the lodge. Since they were raised with a bottle, they are very tame and can easily be fed and petted. I got this tip from a travel blog. I'll tell you, Shorty was really greedy. Hmm yummy, giraffe slobber 😂 But super cute...! Hermann also fell in love a bit, as you can see in the photos 😍

As soon as we got back in the car, it started raining heavily for the first time during the day. So we decided to browse through a fairly large South African supermarket chain for a while. Unfortunately, the stores were closed today because it's a holiday here. We will relax for the rest of the day before embarking on the second half of the return journey tomorrow morning. This will be the last long drive. We're heading to the vineyards in Stellenbosch, about half an hour away from Cape Town. Another 3 days to get to know another side of versatile South Africa... I'm looking forward to it!