Jeffrey's Bay To Coffee Bay via Addo.

After my last entry where I slated the surfing community, (I should be clear that I don't want to exterminate all surfers, just some of them, there are some that are very nice people - Mr and Mrs Moffat for example!) within 5 minutes of logging out guess what I went and did. I went surfing! Oh, it gets better though as the board I had hired for Kieran was too big, so off I went, across the road into the little shopping precinct, fully clad in my wetsuit, to get him a smaller board. Then, I ran back to the beach, with the said surf board tucked under my arm. I had momentarily become one of those running wetsuit clad surf board carrying surfers I was so rude out about in my previous post. And not only was I running down the beach, my journey started in the shopping precint!

Jeffrey's Bay was great and we were sad to leave, but leave we did, taking in a quick lunch at SuperTubes and then onto Addo. I was so tired from the night before that although it was only a 3 hour drive, I was glad when we arrived. We did a very quick game drive around Addo which is a National Park, primarily set up to save elephants who were becoming endangered in this area. We did see some elephants, but not much else and I have to say that, having been spoilt countless times on safaris in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, Addo wasn't doing much for me, or the boys at all.

We did another game drive the following morning and after an hour of spotting nothing, we decided to call it a day and head off to Coffee Bay.

I was pleased to see the scenery had returned, driving through the mountains again, probably not as spectacular as we had before, but beautiful sights none the less and today's driving was much easier although some of the roads in places were a little hard at times.

We have invented some games to play whilst driving along, as well as the 'What am I' game, we are also laying, 'Guess The Road Kill' and 'Guess the Rockstar Grisly Death' game. At one point, roadkill was nearly caused by us. Often you see signs with a picture of a deer or some other creature, but very rarely do you get to see these animals, but on this occasion, the sign which read, 'Caution, wild animals for 150km' meant just that, and several times we had to swerve to avoid hitting a cow, horse, sheep, goat, dog, antelope etc etc. You expect to see the odd cow wandering along a country lane, but on the maon road? It was quite a funny site. The other game we play is the 'Game of Life' where if anyone says the word 'MINE' they have to do 10 press ups. We even pull over on the motorway for the forfeits where at one point both Dan and Kieran were doing pressups at the side of the road. Much to the amusement of the traffic speeding past.

Our drive took us through many towns and villages through what I call Black South Africa where, when we stopped for drink and toilet breaks, we were the only white faces around. Lots of people hitch hike to get around and we gave some people a lift. I thought it would be a good way to learn about the locals and their lives, unfortunately, language was a barrier. I don't speak very good Xhosi, but I do enjoy hearing all the clicks when they would talk back to me.

We did get lost at one point, turning off on the wrong road and what should have been an hours drive through a very bumpy road turned into a 4 hour drive through dirt tracks and mountain paths as we took a very scenic and at times very scary drive past many villages well off the beaten track. It was getting dark as well and trying to focus on where the potholes were was becoming a real job, and the car now has a few rattles that perhaps didn't before. There's also a little light that came on and has stayed on. I have no idea what that means. Maybe it will go away next time we drive.

Fortunately we picked up a couple of hitchers, Eric and his wife who were making there way back from market and they crammed themselves and all their wares into the front and directed us the 80km back to the right road before unloading themselves out in a dark country road where they dissapeared to God Knows Where!

This is really rural SA now, and by the time we arrived (eventually) in Coffee Bay, I had been driving for a straight 12 and a half hours.