Day 77: Cheese Farm and Fynbos Walk in Hermanus
The wind was so, so, so crazy last night. Unbelievably loud as it ransacked our flapping tent all night long. Metal clanging, canvas walloping, wind tunnels howling, all in great gusty unpredictable asymmetrical bursts, so you never when the next clatter and bang would come from. At one point it was so loud that I swear if you’d stood four feet from our bed and threw glassware on the floor as hard as you could, I don’t think we could have heard it. Deafening and stressful.
So, not a good night of sleep for the grownups. Somehow Willa only stirred a little, and James never woke up!
The next morning? Still as can be.
This place delivers “breakfast baskets” to glampers, filled with all the things you’d need to cook up your own breakfast: packages of bacon and sausage, half a dozen eggs and a jar of shredded cheese, a paper bag of fruit, some sliced baguette, a jar of jam, some mason jars of yogurt, etc. Super cute and fun to pretend we “rustled up” our own breakfast.
We did school on our deck after breakfast. Nice setting, no drama.
The afternoon was spent exploring the area. First stop was a cheese farm called Klein River Farm. Cute concept: You go into the little shop, grab a basket and a picnic blanket, “curate your own picnic” by selecting from their shelves — fresh bread, all kinds of cheeses and spreads and meats and olives, a drinks — then pay and head out to the lovely grounds. There was a meadow, a trellised picnic table area, a kids play spot, etc.
We loaded up and got comfortable for a while. Had a video chat with Claire and the kids back in DC while there too.
After that we drove into Hermanus, which is the beachside town closest to our camp. Lots of second homes. If it weren’t for all the (totally ubiquitous in South Africa) huge walls and barbed wire around the homes, it could be some American beach community in California or South Carolina.
We parked and walked a “Fynbos trail” on a clifftop along the Indian Ocean. Fynbos is a variety of low shrubbery completely unique to the Western Cape in South Africa. It’s so unique that its presence makes the Western Cape its own distinct biome. From a distance it looks like grass on the mountainsides, but it’s actually little bushes. Protea are a variety of fynbos.
So we fynbos’d it up. And we saw hyrax! They’re these adorable furry giant rodent things that are actually closely related to elephants and manatees somehow. Apparently they are called “dassies” (DUH-sees) by locals. I remember seeing them all the time at this mountain hotel my family stayed in back in 2005 in Kenya — and I recall the hotel staff telling us they like to eat hotel room soap.
It was a fun walk. We ate a meh dinner in town, then got home in time to see the sunset from our porch.
There was no wind tonight, and the grownups slept hard.
