The Highlights - trip to southernmost Africa.. best meal, sushi...

We've had some awesome moments, over hill and dale, mountains and skimmed treetops, through and around clouds, mist and rain, around Table Mountain and the furthest and highest from home I have been in our Sling since getting my PPL licence only a week before we left. We've used R4200 fuel, at an average of 14 litres of 95 unleaded mogas (car petrol) per hour, 25 hours of flight time, covering 3600 kms at approximately 9,7 litres per 100 kms.

Our Airplane

Our locally made top-rated airplane Sling registration ZU - ZDL (Zulu Delta Lima, short for KZN boys Dave and Llewellyn)

Here are some photos of the highlights:

Most scary moments - coming over the Baviaans Mountains and finding a blanket of clouds on our route forward... dived through a gap in the clouds and found rain and mist under, dropping to 200ft above the treetops of a huge forest and finding the sky was fast falling on us. Managed to make a dash towards the sea and a diverted landing at Plettenberg Bay which was fortunately still approachable.

Over the mountains and diving below the clouds

Best meal - Huge seafood platter for 4 for R300 at Angelo's, Cape Agulhas. Best quality and best value and great staff.

Best flight - Flight around Table Mountain and across the Cape Peninsular. Spectacular views at close proximity including Chapman's Peak Drive, Robben Island, Hout Bay, Sandy Bay (:-)) and Fishhoek.

Click on the link here for the video clip rounding Table Mountain to Camps Bay

Best accommodation - Self-catering apartments at the Knysna Waterfront, followed by the Villa @ Cape Agulhas where we had the light from the Agulhas Lighhouse just below sweeping through the room every few seconds. Kept the curtains open and absorbed the experience. Did you know that every lighthouse has it's own secret code (light pattern - Agulhas: one long, followed by two short bleeps of light) and it's own unique paint job... either thick red strips, thick white strips, red/white/red, white/red/whilte, all white etc - so that sailors can distinguish each from the other?

Highest Peaks - Baviaans mountains at Joubertina and Stellenbosch Mountains - climbing to 7500ft is not the higest our airplane can go, but the highest I have been in ZDL, scraping over the peaks and wondering where we could go and who could reach us if there was any problem!!! Not much chance!

Biggest mountains - yes, this big and thousands of feet to the bottom below us

Furthest over the sea - never been more than 500m out to sea, so flying out towards Robben Island in Table Bay and then False Bay to get to Somerset West under Cape Town International Airport Approach instructions at 500 ft above the waves, was the furthest out I have been. Can't imagine the guys from The Airplane Factory, who built our machine, flying for 29 hours across the remotest ocean and islands of Tristan da Counha (the world's most remote) from Rio to Cape Town - brave souls!!!

Best Sushi - definitely 34 South at the Knysna Waterfront. Amazing sushi crumbed and deep fried. Where has this been all my life!

Best Hospitality - Jaco de Vos (local dentist and son) in Port Alfred. This is what makes the aviation community so special. Close knit, friendly, helpful and hospitable. Thank you Dirk and Jaco for looking after us. And Tracey and Justine from Mossel Bay were incredible. All 6 of us squashed in the car and carted fuel to and fro and enjoyed 2 bottles of tequila over a braai, then rolled into bed there. Love you lots girls.. we will return!!!

Tracey knows how to cook, braai, drink and laugh

Best Beer - Kowie Gold, Pilsener (locally brewed in Port Alfred on the Kowie River) and Mitchell's Forrester (brewed in Knysna)

Best Attraction - Cango Caves, Oudtshoorn. You have to do the adventure trail!

Biggest cloud - leaving Oudtshoorn for Mossel Bay we were not sure if we would get over the mountains. Chatting to Marc in ETD behind us I said I think I can go around this giant cloud in the sky. So we sort of swerved right, missed the looming mountain top, swerved left again heading straight for another mountain then climbed around and up and we were past. Sjoe!!

Stongest winds - usually a 30 kts (55 kmh) wind is hectic, but this one reached 70 kts (130 kmh) en route from Port Alfred in the eastern Cape back to KwaZulu-Natal... but our little plane handled it. For some parts of the journey we put on the auto-pilot as it handles turbulance better than holding the stick yourself. Pilots tend to over-react whereas the auto-pilot makes smaller micro-adjustments which give you a smoother flight.

Best landing strip - must be Port St John's where you have this huge mountain with a tar runway on top, and on take-off Lee had to first chase the cows off.

Port St Johns

Best Airfield - Stellenbosch. Beautiful green grass and tarred runway in front of breathtaking mountains. Good ablutions and nice clubhouse and pub.

Best Mates - our good buddies Marc and Lee in their Yellow Submarine. It's not always easy to travel with other folk, but we had 10 amazing days of riotous fun, many drinks and good chatting around the dinner table and in the sky.. especially when I wasn't sure if we should plunge on through the clouds or turn back!!

Marc, Dave, Llewellyn, Lee at Stellenbosch

For the full story and all the photos, click on this link here, or carry on scrolling down the blog from the end to day 1. Thanks for reading. It's amazing that over 1000 people have read the blog this past month!!

East, West, home....

I have always loved the Cape, for the mountains and the scenery, but we have the climate, the warm ocean and beaches and it's our home. Our journey to the southernmost tip of Africa was largely an east/west trip with a little south thrown in. Flying west was best and coming home to the east we had the sun in our eyes most of the way. And the last stretch home from Port Alfred to Margate we had the highest winds I have ever flown in. Up to 70 kts (130 km/h) - mostly crosswind, with a 25 knots headwind component, which means we were flying sideways like a crab (if a crab could fly) just to be flying in the right direction. Also, a bit disappointing was the cloud of smog we were flying in as we reached KwaZulu-Natal. There were at least 10 fires I could see at any one time, huge billows of smoke that covered the eatth and went out to sea and there appeared to be a temperature inversion... a hot layer of air above a colder layer. This traps the smog down under and makes visibility poor. We encounntered this on one other day on our drive from Cape Town to Tulbagh and at one stage the car came over a hill and we drove straight down into this brownish layer of ugly smog.

The incredible Sling, our Red Rocket, had taken us on a journey and a half and had brought us back home safe and sound. Thank you guys for such a magnificent flying machine.

East London and the eastern Cape coastline

East London Westbank Cemetary and Lighthouse - family grave I clear every couple of years

East London West bank

The Port St John's runway on top of the mountain

KwaZulu-Natal South Coast

Landing at Margate for lunch - the scene of an ugly aircrash the day before.. RIP Rob and Hazel

Flying coastwise of the Bluff with Durban harbour in the background and haze

Durban harbour entrance as we round the Point

Durban's Moses Mahbida Stadium means landing at Virginia is minutes away

My daughter Kate-Lynn on hand to meet and greet as we arrive home in Durban on the 30th April

Port Alfred on the way home

Our adventure almost complete when the show ended in Steytlerville, we were now homeward bound. Our next stop was Port Alfred where 43 Airschool is based. We had soon passed through PE airspace and left the Karoo and found our way to the little town on the coast. Aviation website Avcom's Dirk, the local dentist in Port Alfred kindly offered us hangar space and accomoodation for the night and his son lent us his car so we could get out and find something to eat. What incredible hospitality in this town!! We were up early to see the sunrise and get up into the sky for our last push home.

Our friends Marc and Lee put in fuel and decided to take advantage of a tailwind and carry on home withour stopping over

Beautiful view of Port Alfred from Dirk's home

The local brew Kowie Pilsener was excellent

Sunrise and the last day of the incredible journey

Homeward bound

Mossel Bay to Steytlerville

The flight back from Mossel Bay over the mountains to Oudtshoorn and then along the valley to Steytlerville was largely uneventful.. except for the ticking off I got from the George ATC for an alleged infringement of his airspace.

The airfield at Steytlerville was unserviceable and a kindly farmer and fellow aviator allowed us to land on his bush-strip at Rooikrans, about 25kms from the little town in the middle of nowhere. It is sort of equidistant in a triangle inland of Plettenberg bay and Jefferies Bay.. the Baviaans nature area. Both the hotel sent out transport for us, and the local farmer was also quite willing to transport us too and even pulled out his million $ Beechcroft Bonannza aeroplane to let us park in his hangar for the night.

What attracted us to the spot was a delightful olde worlde hotel.. the Karroo Theatrical Hotel in Steytlerville whose claim to fame is careful restoration by the present owners Mark and Jacques and a Saturday concert and drag show which was highly entertaining. The town was otherwise very much a one-horse dorpie, or one-kerk dorpie in the middle of nowhere. I really take my hat off to the hotel owners for the exceptional multi-tasking. 2 guys and 2 maids running the 14-bedroom hotel having to do the cooking, cleaning, plumbing, maintenance, restoration, decor and show !! Excellent stop-over.

The Karroo Theatrical Hotel

Walking to town from the hotel

Piano Concert and Drag Show supper theatre

Oudtshoorn and Cango Caves

I last went to the Cango Caves in Oudtshoorn probably when I was a kid of about 15. I also never did the adventure trail up the tight crevices and crawling on your tummy. All this was to change with our Sling and Savannah trip to the Cape.

The Cango Caves are at Oudtshoorn, a short flight from the coast at Mossel Bay or George. Flying the route the George Air Traffic Controller reported an "Incident" saying that I infringed on his TMA airspace flying a tad above his 3000ft limit. My planning software says the limit was 4500ft at that spot, so will deal with it.

Anyways Oudtshoorn was awesome, we stayed at a great guesthouse within walking distance of the restaurants and took a taxi-tour to the Caves, about 30kms up the valley from the town.

The flight over the mountains, was also incredible and the next day we continued our journey between the valleys of the Klein Karroo and Karroo to Steytlerville... see story to follow.

Arriving at Oudtshoorn airfield

The entrance to the caves

Guesthouse Terra Blanche in Oudtshoorn

An evening on the town

I saw an ostrich first!

In the caves - 3kms of tunnels

Oudtshoorn

Over the mountains - again