16 May

16 May 2011

On Sunday morning we all slept late and then joined Marius and his family for a wonderful home cooked meal, it was really delicious as we have not had many home cooked meals in the last while.  During the afternoon we were taken around the local area and saw a castle, complete  with moat and all,  and some of the local scenery -Switzerland is really beautiful, green forests and lots of well kept fields. 

It was a sad good bye to the Hochstrasser family and back to the hotel later that evening.  Hopefully Marius will come and see us in December at the Fish River cottage.

Monday morning we said our last good byes and headed for Germany, this was about a 20 minute drive to the border, there were officials on each side of the border but they just waved us through on both sides.  We again followed small roads, through winding hills, and into the black forest area. Germany has also been a beautiful country so far, roads are really good and traffic very light (staying off the freeways is much better).

We had to make a slight detour to the Touratech Head office shop!  (One of the worlds biggest suppliers of bike gear) Eina!!  Lots of wonderful things that we could buy there, so you see Anna I can shop!  But no space to put anything so we only walked out there with one large bag with down sleeping mats and some pillows!  This shop does a lot of kitting out of bikes, for all sorts of expeditions, and it would be easy to spend many thousands of rands there!  The black Forest is famous for clocks, so the next stop was at the Cuckoo Clock shop, lots of clocks, all making different noises, all handmade and all delightful!! Then onto the next village where the biggest Cuckoo clock in the world is situated, the clock is on the outside of a building and is huge, unfortunately we went past there so quickly we had no time for photos.  My back was sore and tired, and needed to find a bed!

Eventually found a camp site for the night and will leave for Zweibrucken, through a bit of France,  tomorrow to meet up with Holga and Anja again.