Day 5 Knysna
Today we head to Knysna. It’s in the Garden District of S. Africa and is famous for lush landscape. The sad news is they recently suffered a devastating fire. Most of the itinerary in Knysna remained unchanged for the first day. We did see some changes the next day.
We woke up early (earlier than breakfast is served) but they provided a boxed breakfast, along with coffee and pastries. We boarded the coach to head to the airport. Apparently you used to take a very long bus ride to Knysna… maybe 5+ hrs? But now it’s less than an hour flight. Our bags were actually sent ahead via bus. The airport and flight to George was pretty easy. From the City of George it was still a drive to Knysna. Along the way, we saw the beautiful coastline of the Indian Ocean.
From the airport we drove straight to Birds of Eden. This is a very large bird sanctuary. It was completely different from the bird rehab center of yesterday. Not to take anything away from yesterday's experience, but this blew it away. It’s a massive multi-level enclosure with walkways to explore and tropical, colorful birds everywhere.
After Eden, we headed over to a winery for lunch. Along the way, we found a Congress of Baboons.
The winery was awesome. We had a lovely lunch on their back porch overlooking the vineyards. They seem to specialize in sparkling wines. They have a Blanc de blanc (all Chardonnay) and a sparkling Sauvingon Blanc which is rarely used in sparkling wines. They were both pretty good. They had some other wines as well. A few guests and I asked one of the winemakers if we could have an impromptu wine tasting. So, while it wasn’t organized by ABD, we did ask the winery and they were happy to oblige. We also purchased several bottles to bring home.
After lunch the winemaker took us on a tour of the winery and showed us where they press the grapes and the fermentation area. It was really cool. I would have liked to do this and had a tasting in Stellenbosch, but at least we got to do it here.
After lunch, we headed over to Monkeyland! It’s an extremely expansive sanctuary for monkeys. They were beautiful and would walk, climb, jump, and swing right around you. It was very cool. The monkeys were spectacular and there were so many of them.
From there we went to the Conrad Hotel. Amazing hotel overlooking the Indian Ocean. The rooms are in bungalows scattered about the property. And the rooms were huge. You could request at the front desk for a fire to be started for you in the fireplace; which we did one night.
Dinner was on our own, but most of us ate at the hotel restaurant which was very good. I had a lamb burger, and we all sat around and split a few bottles of wine. The Jr adventurers headed to one of the rooms to watch The Force Awakens. Lovely finish to a great day.