Port Elizabeth and Garden Route Part 1

After playing another round of let’s dodge the potholes, we managed to get back onto the main highway without any problems (they should make a game based on this road because it was a lot of fun minus the fact that you are playing with your own life and a car which you could have to pay for...thank goodness for car insurance). Before leaving Coffee Bay we had found out from Lee and Thomas that we would be hard pressed to make it all the way to Tsitsikima National Park (Storm’s River) in one day without burning out. They had suggested that we spend the night in Port Elizabeth and take in a nice beer and a garlic mussel pot at Barney’s pub and stay at the Hornby Lodge. What really convinced us was the fact that Port Elizabeth had a cinema where we could catch Valentine’s day although it was a little overdue (Feb 18th rather than the true lover’s day). The drive to Port Liz was pretty chill with nothing crazy enough to mention (scenery always nice).

When we arrived in Port Elizabeth we were greeted with great scenes of the coast and large dunes surrounding the coast. Port Elizabeth was another big city so we just checked into our accommodation (which was a room that could easily sleep eight people with no complaints, and was the same price of our hostels) and headed to Barney’s. It was a nice place to catch a meal and a beer as it overlooked Shark Point. We were a little disappointed with the mussels after having been treated to the fresh ones in Port St. John’s. The Valentine’s Day movie was not what we had been expecting but it was nice to feel normal for two hours (normal because that is what Katie and I thoroughly enjoy...movies yeah!) so the night was a success.

The next morning we headed to Addo Elephant National Park for a day of elephants and in the hopes of seeing some cats. We weren’t fortunate enough to see any cats but we did get to leisurely drive and spot herd after herd of elephants. So many babies and even a little elephant playtime caused us to relive our early picture snapping habits in which we must have captured every angle of the elephants. We figure that the park should be named carcass safari because we encountered many dead animals. For the most part it wasn’t hard to pick out what the remains had been...we are becoming pros at animal spotting. All we need to work on now is how to identify the different types of spoor and we are set to become guides (okay a little over the top but I am just implying that we have been to a lot of game reserves).

After staying much too late in the game reserve we decided that we needed to get going. We had to fight with the GPS to guide us to Storm’s river (we didn’t realize that it was set to avoid freeways...and didn’t for the next week!!!) and kept rerouting us to a road that had been closed for almost four years We decided that because the pioneers could navigate with only the stars we should be able to do it without the GPS. However, while enroute, we spotted an exit to Jeffrey’s Bay (Jbay) and realized that we had almost forgot one of our most highly anticipated destinations. So we jetted off the highway and headed to Jbay which was a relief because it was getting real late and we still had hours to go. We had some difficulty finding accommodations but got lucky and landed a nice spot on the coast...little did we know at the time that we were at the Supertubes on Pepper St. (location of one of the biggest surfing competitions in the world). We booked our surf lessons for the morning, chowed down and passed out!!

Being the idiot I am (definitely Jeremy here) I managed to leave the lights on in the car for the evening and killed (I mean killed) the battery. In our haste to make our lesson I asked the receptionist at the place next to us if she knew if anyone had some booster cables. She called her ‘man’ (side note-people here refer to their hired help as man and lady...no names are used) to come and help us despite the fact that we weren’t staying in her lodge. It was easy to see that a boost was not going to work because the battery was flat out dead. Little to say we had to cancel our surf lesson and tag along with the ‘man’ to midas to get the battery tested to see if it had to be replaced. After finding out it was going to take a long time to charge (very dead) we went with the ‘man’ to check up on the shops he manages. We were to learn that the woman who owned the lodge that we were getting help from, was one of the first people to reside in Jbay (besides the locals) and now owned four lodges on Pepper St. and nearly an entire street in town which our man managed all of them including acting as her body guard (she had been attempted to be robbed and killed recently because of her wealth). We did a bit of shopping (quite a bit) while our man went about his rounds. Sheran (the owner) had at one point owned a billabong shop and a similar shop called Country Feeling, which is entirely local, that had been started before she had purchased billabong.

When our battery was finally brought back to life we headed back to pick it up and to make sure that we could get our car started. Everything turned out for the better because we got to learn a lot about Jbay from our ‘man’. We never revealed that we weren’t staying at one of Sheran’s places. Although we ended buying a greater amount of goods than we would have spent by staying more than a couple of nights, we didn’t want to get the receptionist in trouble as it was very kind of her to help us.

The rest of the day was spent chilling out on the Supertubes beach reading and trying to spot some pro surfers or at least some fantastic locals but the waves were not willing to cooperate so we headed out to a local restaurant where we were treated with some awesome wood cooked pizza (delissio!!!).

The next morning we went for our surf lesson first thing in the morning. Our instructor Andrew was, as he had been praised, chill and a great teacher. Despite the whipping sand it was a lot of fun. Katie was by far the best of the group and managed to stand on her second try and continued to make the rest of the group look like goofs as we struggled to stay up even a tenth as long as her (which was great because Katie always complains that I am better at everything even if it isn’t true). I think only one other girl managed to stand up besides me and I was nowhere near staying on as long as Katie. After the lesson we decided to head out of Jbay although it would have been nice to stay in this laid back town and exceptionally clean room for another week.

Our next stop was Storm’s river. We were disappointed, that as we headed in the right direction, we began to encounter rain...something unfamiliar for the last few weeks we had been travelling. When we finally arrived in Storm’s river we were completely surrounded by rain clouds with what looked like no hope of clearing up. We had decided in Jbay that we should try and finally reach a plan as to what we would do along the Garden Route as we were quickly running out of time to spend in Cape Town. This was also a problem as we were really hoping to be able to hit up Zimbabwe on the 28th as it would be a full moon where we could catch the lunar rainbows at night in Vic falls (one of only two places in the world to see). No matter how we arranged it, it was hard to give ourselves really any time in Cape Town. We were extremely confused as to what we should do. The list comprised twenty tourist attractions planned into four days with each couple of hours being dedicated to one activity or another whether it was just eating at a renowned restaurant.

Despite the rain, Dijembe backpackers in Storm’s river was a four star hostel and was very unique. We managed to see about twenty very creative things that we would definitely want to do to our future home. After wandering around for some time we decided that we should put some thought and effort into booking Vic Falls. Despite our effort we discovered that getting to Vic Falls wasn’t going to be cheap but figured we only live once and needed to see the falls. We never made any head way and were almost more confused after sifting through endless combinations of flights. Although, we had considered doing the bungee our first night there, we had spent so much time trying to sort out flights to Vic falls and figured it would be too late. But when we called to book for the next morning the receptionist told us that if we left immediately we could make it before the end of the day...so we hoped in the car and felt our blood pressure rise.