With a hot breakfast in our stomachs we set off for Caledon and the bus that would take us up the Garden Route to Plettenberg Bay. The bus was a pleasant surprise with excellent seats, leg rests, a hostess and some very pleasant fellow travellers. We discovered the only downside a couple of hours into the trip when we learnt what the disclosure on the website 'Christian material used onboard' really meant when we were bombarded with an hour and a half ultra religious, high volume tv before the midday classic equivalent movie brought us to the end of the trip.
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| On the hunt for snacks for the bus I came across these… the name didn't make me want to buy them. |
Arriving in Plett, we were picked up by the Dutch owners of our hostel, Albergo for Backpackers and checked into our first hostel experience around the corner from the main street and up the hill from the beach. We settled in with an AMAZING pie (the pastry alone would deserve a chapter in the boys' Pieway to Heaven book), grabbed a couple of beers from the honesty bar at the hostel and hit a few balls at the pool table.
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| Even for an end-of-day pie they had an excellent crust. |
Being Valentine's Day we trotted down the street to this great restaurant that I'd been to with Mum on my last visit - a Portuguese/Mozambican placed that served steaks on swords, excellent potato chips and sweet rose at a reasonable price of ZAR140 per bottle. HAPPY DAYS!
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| At LMs in Plett |
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| Steak on a sword and my peri peri chicken with amazing rice and chips |
Wednesday, we visited the patisserie for both breakfast and lunch and sat about waiting for the delayed bus to arrive that afternoon. Not exactly sure what time the bus would get to us, we headed up to the bus stop/Caltex petrol station to wait for it early and were lucky to run into a Swedish couple we'd seen on Valentine's Day at the restaurant. They were waiting for the same bus and had just gone bungy jumping off the bridge Storm's River and hit up a whole heap of other activities in the area, generally making me feel like an inadequate tourist on our first two days of free-planning holiday. I resolved to be a better one in Jeffreys Bay.
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| Shopping at Plett markets - ingenious use of a tire. |
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| While Plett is a pretty up-market sea-side town I couldn't help but take a photo of these shoes in a shop that also sold a whole manner of wigs in shape, colour and texture. |
Jeffreys Bay (Wednesday, Thursday & Friday Nights
The Swedes, Anton and Lizette, hopped off the bus with us at Jeffreys Bay and we checked into Cristal Cove backpackers right off the Supertubes break at JBay. It was an EXCELLENT backpackers, essentially made up of five two bedroom flats. Our room was an en suite room on the second floor and we shared a flat with an older Canadian couple. It was excellent to only have to share a kitchen and tv with two other people! The Swedes checked in downstairs to a flat that had both a dorm room and a private room which they took up.
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| JBay - all's quiet at Supertubes |
The next day I made a plan. A surf lesson for the afternoon and horse riding along the beach for the following afternoon, then Jono and I hit the beach and headed the couple of kms to town for another excellent coffee at another place I'd been to with Mum called Die Koffiepot and watched a pod of dolphins swim past, then we hauled ourselves back up to Supertubes. I have never seen so many amazing shells in one place as I have at Jeffreys Bay and as we walked along the beach we saw plenty of people collecting them to make jewellery, probably to sell by the side of the road or at market stalls.
My surf lesson (at Kitchen Windows) was about as successful as the ones I've had with Jono at Manly. I've got the surf knowledge and the paddling power but the bad habit of riding the waves on my knees, potentially developed during my short nipper days in Moruya. I think I'm just going to have to get myself a paddle board and resign myself to the fact that any success I'm going to have on a board in the surf is going to be in that field.
By the time I got back from the beach a Kiwi and a Pom had checked into the dorm that Anton and Lizette were sharing and before long the six of us were heading out to dinner around the corner at Nina's, a restaurant that somehow succeeded in serving Thai, Portuguese, Italian and South African cuisine all in the one place. My Portuguese style calamari at $8 was terrific!
The couple of bottles of wine consumed there and the further cocktails had at the hostel's bar were consistent with the general post dinner activities for the next week or so.
The next day, Friday, Jono finally got a surf after some pretty blown out waves on the previous days and then we made our way out of town to an equestrian centre promising rides through the sand dunes and on the beach. Jono never rides, so he got Misty, a lovely grey lady and I was served up Max, a feisty grey boy. I was quickly told to give Max a loose rein and be prepared for a run on the sand. I haven't ridden for years and although I was a regular rider when I was a kid I was pretty nervous about these dunes and a bolting horse.
We plodded along for about an hour along the path to the dunes at a standard pace for these bored and poorly ridden, unshod, tired ponies, but Max was still adamant that he take the lead no matter how dull the track. Then, as the dunes got closer I realised that we had a real, near vertical climb up the sand to the top of the dunes. Up the top I had a hard time keeping Maxyboy from making a dash before the 'supervisor' was on the dunes to and in the end I gave up and let Max have his fun, while I held on for dear life wondering when the next turn or rise in the sand would come. AND I LOVED IT. I couldn't wipe the smile off my face - after all those years of not riding, this is what I needed Yeee HAaaa!
We roared through the dunes towards the ocean, up and down the hills and through the gullies, only slowing down when we got to the water at least a couple of kilometres later. I had another go at keeping Maxy in place while we waited for the others and inadvertently got the poor boy stuck in the wet sand. I think that just pissed him off with me even more and I couldn't even say sorry to him because he definitely spoke Afrikaans.
By the time the rest of the horses turned up he was really wrestling with the reins to get himself home and unsaddled, so we let fly again. We had the waves crashing next to us, the salt in my face, the wind in my hair - I just let him run, knowing that he would know the way home. What a moment, roaring along an African beach on horseback!
Of course, just when I was really settling back into the saddle Max and I were back at the farm (a good 15 minutes before the rest of the brigade) and the ride was over.
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| Max Power |
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Jono on Misty |
Saturday morning was devoted to hunting down some safari gear for the next expeditions, which meant lumping ourselves down to town and through the overpriced Billabong, Rip Curl and Quicksilver outlets. After lumping ourselves back to the Cristal Cove to get our bags and bid adieu to Lizette and Anton we jumped on the bus to Port Elizabeth and a hostel reminiscent of the Donaldson Street House Jono used to live in - but it was clean and close to the airport, the Brookes Pavilion and a Chinese Restaurant.
Next stop - Phinda Game Reserve
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