Mossel Bay

First stop. According to consensus, this is where the Garden Route begins. First we swam in the Indian Ocean...there's a local saying that you know you've made it when the water changes from tasting salty to curry, and that's a load of crap, but it's much warmer than the Atlantic. We spent the late afternoon driving around town looking for the township attached to it, but failed and ended up watching the sun go down parked in this little turnoff. We slept in an old sleeper train that's been dragged out onto the beach and turned into a hostel, for $7.50 each. It's a fairly modern train, all aluminum fixtures, not especially roomy or fancy, but the beds were comfortable and all the little kitchenettes and showers in the cars were fully operational. Ocean sounds were a nice shift in ambiance from the traffic outside our flat. We had almost the whole train and beach to ourselves since fall scared away the tourists and locals alike, and Bongs and I stayed up pretty late drinking brandy and Cokes with our feet in the sand.