10 April (Day 25)

The main plan for today was to drive from Mossel Bay to Montagu. In Mossel Bay we were staying right near the beach, but Montagu is kind of in the middle of nowhere. Since it was Good Friday, we figured there wouldn’t be much to do in Montagu, so we decided to spend the bulk of our “day of leisure” in Mossel Bay.

Heather and I started off by ourselves to check out the lighthouse. We got sidetracked, though, and in typical South Africa fashion we accidentally ended up cliff side, overlooking the ocean. Not a bad detour. After realizing that we were not headed for the lighthouse, we worked our way back down the cliff and walked toward some tide pools. There we ran into Sandy, Emily, Jessica, and Jeff. Jeff and the other three girls quickly busied themselves with jumping into the pools, while I tried to take pictures of them. They actually turned out really cool, but once again my pictures cannot really do justice to how beautiful the ocean was.

Following their brief dip, Emily, Jessica, Heather, Sandy, and I all went over to a nearby restaurant for a quick lunch. We split seafood pizza and nachos, and each of us ordered a different girly drink. The food and drinks were really good, and we got to sort of debrief about the whole bungee-jumping excitement of the previous days.

After lunch everyone met up back at the hostel and we loaded the bus to leave for Montagu. After a couple of hours we pulled up at this beautiful bed and breakfast. The place only fit our group of people, so we had the entire thing to ourselves. Kristina and I shared a room, and we were lucky enough to get the pool house! There was another separate guesthouse in the back where Jeff, Jake, Anna, and Jessica were staying, and everyone else was in the main house. The rooms were awesome, with clawfoot tubs right in them. Kristina and I had a shower, but a very nice one.

We didn’t have too much downtime, but the backyard crew (minus Kristina, who was unpacking I think) decided that we would try to get a feel for the town before dinner. We stopped by the hostel next door because they had a sign that they were a microbrewery. Upon further inspection, we found that they were having problems with their licensing and couldn’t actually sell us beer. They pointed us across the street, where the pub sold a microbrew called Napier from a nearby town. We thought it would be a good place to come by after dinner, so we asked how late they would be open. The bartender told us they would stay open as late as they needed to be.

It was a good thing we told them we were planning on coming back, because our dinner took three and a half hours! But after dinner almost everyone at least stopped by the bar for a little while. We tried Napier, I am a fan. Jeff also bought us all shots, and then the bartender took it a step further by giving the boys a shot for free. Jessica and I were intrigued, so he poured us one half shot, which we then split into two quarter shots. It was a good thing we did, because whatever we drank was basically paint-thinner. It was disgusting. On that note, Jessica and I turned in for the night.