The first day of our long weekend away at Far Hills Country Hotel, just outside of George, saw us hit the N2 (and by hit, I mean travel slowly, thanks to the multitude of speed cameras and restrictive speed limits in the area!) and travel along the Garden Route all the way past Plettenberg Bay, until we reached the activity-rich area known as The Crags.

Our first activity scheduled for the day was a visit to the famous Birds of Eden sanctuary, touted as being the world’s largest free flight aviary and bird sanctuary.

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Now Chantelle and I have visited the bird sanctuary previously back in 2009 as part of our honeymoon roadtrip, and as such, were rather eager to introduce this great place to our little girls.

Monty and Cheryl opted to join us on this outing, and pleasingly, the weather turned out to be perfect for the day, allowing us to take our time and wander about the lush and overgrown aviary without a care in the world.

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Thanks to the cool weather as well as being in the middle of breeding season, the aviary wasn’t exactly overflowing with birds out in the open, which was a bit of a pity because it meant that we strolled the boardwalks for relatively long sections without so much as a single sighting!

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Despite that though, there was in the end more than enough birds available for spotting by our eager little girls, and despite the length of the walk (there’s 1.2 km of walkways covering the length and breadth of the 2.3 hectare large aviary) the girls seemed to thoroughly enjoy the adventure!

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(However, the novelty of a 1.2 km walk does wear off after a couple of hours when you’re little, so we did travel the last few meters with two rather grumbly and tired little girls!)

I thoroughly enjoyed the outing, and we had some great sightings of some unusual birds, with the trip being rounded off by the hilarious addition of people preparing for a wedding procession whilst being watched by a troop of baboons outside.

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I did snap a lot of photos with my Huawei P8 phone as per usual, but unfortunately the varying light conditions caused by all the foliage meant that the picture quality came out pretty uneven to say the least! Still, it should give you some idea as to what to expect if you yourself ever make the trip down there…

Related Link: Birds of Eden