Welcome to Knysna, South Africa

After three extremely long days of travel, we have finally arrived in Knysna, South Africa! Knysna (pronounced nize – nuh) sits along the Garden Route of the Western Cape of South Africa and is known as the “Jewel of the Garden Route”. The town is nestled around a lagoon that opens to the Indian Ocean, and has a population of about 76,000. This is the view of us driving into town. Nature completely surrounds us, and it is beautiful!

Driving on the Left

Dave was able to successfully navigate us to our Airbnb driving on the left side of the road. It was pretty disorienting at first, even as the passenger. He kept turning on the windshield wipers when he wanted to use the blinkers (everything is reversed), but overall it was a smooth drive! The views as we drove here were spectacular. It was our first glimpse of the beauty the Garden Route has to offer. We are very excited to explore this area!

Our New Home Away From Home

Our Airbnb is on the bottom floor of a condo complex. It’s small, but has everything we will need and the furnishings are nice and extremely cozy. The kids will share a bedroom, but they’re already used to it since they’ve shared more often than not this year. We were all excited to have drinkable tap water, and not have to brush our teeth from a water bottle. We haven’t had that in the last 4 countries we visited.

There is a beautiful outdoor patio that I envision us utilizing a lot. The washer and dryer are on the patio and I love this. If we ever moved to a climate that was warm year round I would want our laundry outside.

For the first time in over 8 months we are experiencing the feeling of being a little cold. The morning temperature is in the 50’s and our condo gets chilly. We were all happy to snuggle under our soft, cozy blankets to sleep last night. I also finally got to break out that puffy vest I’ve been carrying around – I’m so glad I brought it! If you’re wondering what the exhaustion of three straight days of travel looks like, it’s this – Ha!

Settling into South Africa

There’s a fantastic grocery store just a few minutes walk from our condo. So many familiar items greeted us as we walked in. The kids went exploring as Dave and I started in on our list of essentials. They came back excitedly reporting all the things they saw. Alexis’ best friend’s mom is from South Africa and she told us we had to try biltong, which is sort of like beef jerky. It was delicious!

We jumped back into school this morning after everyone had a good full night of sleep. Alexis started an assignment on a slideshow presentation “All About South Africa”. I know very little about this country, so I’m excited to learn from her.

Our First Glimpses of Knysna

After school we walked to the Knysna Waterfront, which was about 10 minutes from our Airbnb. It has a small outdoor shopping area, lots of restaurants, and is the departure point for water-based tours. We enjoyed the cool breeze and looking at all the boats.

We’re all feeling a little under the weather. It could be exhaustion from travel or we could be getting sick. There was a guy sitting in front of us on one flight that was coughing pretty much non-stop. On the bright side our Airbnb has a french press! Dave and I have been drinking instant coffee for almost 4 months. We’ve slowly started making our list of things to explore in this new country. I’m so glad we are finally here!