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Jan
10
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Had a bit of lie-in and got up at 9:30am, had breakfast and went for a drive to into Port Elizabeth town centre. We ended up at King’s Beach where we parked and had a wander across the sand, it was a lovely day and the beach was fantastic although the age-old problem of putting your shoes back on without taking half the beach with you caused some trouble! After wandering down the beach we went for lunch in a little café called Tiffany’s – if we’d have known about this beforehand we’d have gotten up earlier! After lunch we drove around for a while down the main streets of P.E. including Govan Mbeki Avenue, we then went back to Ann’s and packed ready to leave.
From P.E. we headed to Addo Elephant Park through Uitenhage where we got a little lost but found our way eventually. On the way into Addo we came across a turtle just wandering across the road, he was big old chap as well, about half a metre long. By the time we got to Addo there was only about an hour of game-area time left but the guys on the main desk took our money and sent us on through. We stopped briefly at a specially designed viewing area where we managed to see two elephants at a watering-hole (an adult and a baby); we then headed for the main game area.
Despite the fact that the guards on the main gate had taken our money the guard at the game-area wasn’t going to let us in as there was only an hour left. In the end I managed to persuade him to let us through and promised that we wouldn’t mess him around by staying in for too long. Even though we only had an hour left in total we managed to see quite a few animals including Elephants, Ostrich, Rhino and a few antelope/gazelle type animals, it was worth every minute.
After leaving Addo we headed for Graaff-Reinet, a little town recommended to us by Ann in P.E. where Lou and her sister Gail had gone to school. Unfortunately during the journey we got caught up in a storm, not like the usual British storms, much bigger – in the end the rain was making it far too difficult for James to drive. After stopping to refuel at a BP garage in Cookhouse we headed for Somerset East, a town a couple of hundred kilometres short of Graaff-Reinet. Driving into the town during a storm probably doesn’t help a first impression but Somerset East seemed quite a dark and foreboding sort of town but we found a little restaurant/bar/B&B called Jacques which looked quite inviting. I went into the bar to enquire about the rooms whilst James stayed in the car, the price he gave me for the room was good so I accepted and we moved our stuff upstairs.
After freshening up and settling down we went back down to the bar where we had a few drinks and talked to two Afrikaaners at the bar who were asking where we were from and what we were doing in Somerset East. The two guys were fairly plastered but even so James and I had problems trying to work out what they were saying and they couldn’t always make out our accents either. Though still common I got the feeling that English isn’t as well-used out here as it is on the coast, after all we were staying in a little town hardly used to tourism. The meal was quite nice but a little unimaginative from a vegetarian perspective (the veggie option was a plate of cooked veg) but they server Windhoek so we were quite content. After eating and a few more Windhoek we settled-up for the meal, drinks and the room, the total came to just £17 for the two of us – quite remarkable by UK standards!