Next stop was Jeffreys Bay which is the surfing Mecca of SA and is overrun with surf shops (and not much else) such as Billabong, Ripcurl etc selling surf gear. Its winter there now so the place was pretty quiet but it seemed to be the kind of place where folk would get home from work and head straight out on the boards. The town centre is literally right on the beach and the beach looks lovely and it is but its showing wear and tear from the inhabitants with a lot of broken glass in the sand away from the shoreline. Having grown up running round barefoot on a glass-free beach, its awful to see. This is the view of the bay from where we were staying.
We didn’t see any spectacular waves unfortunately and it was kind of difficult to believe that the Billabong Pro tournament is held there every year. The surf spots are named and we headed down to the famous ‘Supertubes’ (cool name huh?) to see if there was any action. There wasn’t - the waves were clearly having some down time.
We were staying at a place perched high on one of the sand dunes and it was a perfect location. I looked up from reading a book one evening and there were dolphins cruising along in the waves really close to shore. The view from our veranda (no camping at this place!) was stunning
but the reality of the place was brought home when you walked along the beach and came across a sign that said ‘Danger. Mugging beyond this point’. Crazy. Its almost as if its condoned! We were in J’s Bay for two nights so had a chance to start booking accommodation in Japan (where we’re heading after Africa) and planning the trip through China. It was slightly crazy as it was a beautiful day and I was stuck making hostel bookings in China and sussing out airfares from China to Laos (pre-booked accommodation and outbound flights are a pre-requisite for a Chinese Visa).
We travelled from J’s Bay northwards to Addo where we arrived in time to fit in an afternoon of game driving in the truck (always good fun!) although we had to make sure there were no citrus fruit on board. Citrus fruits are banned from the park as the elephants are addicted to them after having been fed truckloads of fruit during a drought. The elephants started ambushing any vehicle that had any citrus fruit in it and there were quite a few accidents by all accounts.
Addo is about 165,000 ha and used to be solely an elephant park but has introduced other game over the past few decades. The park itself isn’t that great for viewing animals as it is entirely scrub and low trees with a few open grass spaces and is very exposed. The wind absolutely howled over the hills and my guess is that the animals stay in the scrub for shelter when its like that. Its amazing how an elephant can be disguised by a bush!
Addo is best known for its elephants and we weren’t disappointed – there are about 450 of them in the park. This chap was quite near the gate (the roads turn to dirt only a km or so away from the gate) and after a bit of ear flapping (the car should have reversed), passed by this car with no fuss.
There were plenty of warthog around who ran off with their tails stuck straight up in the air (they make us laugh every time we see them and seriously remind me of those troll dolls kids have).
The park staff claimed to have one leopard in there but they’d not seen it for a long long time. Once we saw the scrub, we reckoned that the leopard was either dead (killed by lions) or had shot the gap as there were no decent trees. What they did have though was loads of greater kudu, my favourite game animal so we saw plenty of those.
On the way out of the park the next day we were incredibly lucky and saw two of the seven lions that are in the park, along with one cub. We were on a downhill debating whether to ask Pat to stop for some zebra that were close to the road when all of a sudden the brakes went on and we all tumbled at least 3m forward, crash landing on each other (this is why game driving in the truck is great fun!). He’d seen the lions in front of the truck but unfortunately the weather was filthy so photos weren’t great.
We were heading up to Aliwal North, close to the Lesotho border, as a stopover before entering Lesotho the next day. The drive was a long, cold windy one. The truck was really buffeted by the winds and we felt it fishtail on the road a few times which was quite scary and when we stopped for a toilet break, we were amazed to find that it was snowing. Actually, we found out when our mischievous truck driver hurtled a snowball through the back door of the truck. That evening was one of those evenings where you just want to go to bed and get warm and comfy but everyone had to be fed. I had to cook that night and we had trouble finding our allocated chalets (the site was huge so we were driving round for a while which was comedy). Once there, I was stoked to find that they had proper kitchens and that we didn’t have to get a fire going, only to be disappointed when the hotplates didn’t work and turning on the oven tripped the fuses and plunged us into darkness. So, at 10pm, it was out with the single gas burner to cook a very hastily put together bowl of chilli and sour cream before hitting the sack. We couldn’t cook any rice as we only had one gas burner! Despite the cooking challenges, it was rather lovely to have electricity and beds and to balance it all out there was even a bath that we could use. So, all in all, the night ended on a good note but it was some of the coldest weather we’d experienced thus far in Africa.
View Larger Map
We didn’t see any spectacular waves unfortunately and it was kind of difficult to believe that the Billabong Pro tournament is held there every year. The surf spots are named and we headed down to the famous ‘Supertubes’ (cool name huh?) to see if there was any action. There wasn’t - the waves were clearly having some down time.
We were staying at a place perched high on one of the sand dunes and it was a perfect location. I looked up from reading a book one evening and there were dolphins cruising along in the waves really close to shore. The view from our veranda (no camping at this place!) was stunning
but the reality of the place was brought home when you walked along the beach and came across a sign that said ‘Danger. Mugging beyond this point’. Crazy. Its almost as if its condoned! We were in J’s Bay for two nights so had a chance to start booking accommodation in Japan (where we’re heading after Africa) and planning the trip through China. It was slightly crazy as it was a beautiful day and I was stuck making hostel bookings in China and sussing out airfares from China to Laos (pre-booked accommodation and outbound flights are a pre-requisite for a Chinese Visa).
We travelled from J’s Bay northwards to Addo where we arrived in time to fit in an afternoon of game driving in the truck (always good fun!) although we had to make sure there were no citrus fruit on board. Citrus fruits are banned from the park as the elephants are addicted to them after having been fed truckloads of fruit during a drought. The elephants started ambushing any vehicle that had any citrus fruit in it and there were quite a few accidents by all accounts.
Addo is about 165,000 ha and used to be solely an elephant park but has introduced other game over the past few decades. The park itself isn’t that great for viewing animals as it is entirely scrub and low trees with a few open grass spaces and is very exposed. The wind absolutely howled over the hills and my guess is that the animals stay in the scrub for shelter when its like that. Its amazing how an elephant can be disguised by a bush!
Addo is best known for its elephants and we weren’t disappointed – there are about 450 of them in the park. This chap was quite near the gate (the roads turn to dirt only a km or so away from the gate) and after a bit of ear flapping (the car should have reversed), passed by this car with no fuss.
There were plenty of warthog around who ran off with their tails stuck straight up in the air (they make us laugh every time we see them and seriously remind me of those troll dolls kids have).
The park staff claimed to have one leopard in there but they’d not seen it for a long long time. Once we saw the scrub, we reckoned that the leopard was either dead (killed by lions) or had shot the gap as there were no decent trees. What they did have though was loads of greater kudu, my favourite game animal so we saw plenty of those.
On the way out of the park the next day we were incredibly lucky and saw two of the seven lions that are in the park, along with one cub. We were on a downhill debating whether to ask Pat to stop for some zebra that were close to the road when all of a sudden the brakes went on and we all tumbled at least 3m forward, crash landing on each other (this is why game driving in the truck is great fun!). He’d seen the lions in front of the truck but unfortunately the weather was filthy so photos weren’t great.
We were heading up to Aliwal North, close to the Lesotho border, as a stopover before entering Lesotho the next day. The drive was a long, cold windy one. The truck was really buffeted by the winds and we felt it fishtail on the road a few times which was quite scary and when we stopped for a toilet break, we were amazed to find that it was snowing. Actually, we found out when our mischievous truck driver hurtled a snowball through the back door of the truck. That evening was one of those evenings where you just want to go to bed and get warm and comfy but everyone had to be fed. I had to cook that night and we had trouble finding our allocated chalets (the site was huge so we were driving round for a while which was comedy). Once there, I was stoked to find that they had proper kitchens and that we didn’t have to get a fire going, only to be disappointed when the hotplates didn’t work and turning on the oven tripped the fuses and plunged us into darkness. So, at 10pm, it was out with the single gas burner to cook a very hastily put together bowl of chilli and sour cream before hitting the sack. We couldn’t cook any rice as we only had one gas burner! Despite the cooking challenges, it was rather lovely to have electricity and beds and to balance it all out there was even a bath that we could use. So, all in all, the night ended on a good note but it was some of the coldest weather we’d experienced thus far in Africa.
View Larger Map
1 comment:
Snow and Elephants.....mmmmm somehow don’t go together in my book. That car did seem to be dangerously close!!!!
Never realised how ugly warthogs are.....
LAdi
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