Port Elizabeth

 

 

 

 

 

 

3rd April 2014: Before talking about our adventures in Port Elizabeth, I must mention the light show the previous night at sea. For we had the lightning storm to end all lightning storms and for us Brits who get the occasional lightning flash during a thunderstorm at home, God must have been repeating to us that Al Johnson saying “you ain’t seen nothing yet!”

Picture the scene, we are out at sea, it’s dusk, the sea is smooth, the air cool, then this large black cloud lazily rolls up and darkens the sky. Suddenly, it’s like the paparazzi have arrived at Oscar night and flashbulbs are going off one after the other nonstop. I kid you not, I just stood on our patio and stared up in awe, as through a small hole in the black cloud above, I could see God’s Van de Graph generator throwing out the lightning sparks like there was no tomorrow. And through all of this, it was remarkably and eerily quiet, just the sky lighting up, flashing away every couple of seconds. Of course, it did eventually rain, but being on a boat, we didn’t care.

So, Port Elizabeth, it’s a big port city right on the bottom of Africa in the Indian Ocean, come out of the Port and it’s turn right for America and turn left for Australia which makes it ideally suited for exporting goods and ores. Also, various car assembly plants are here. It also claims to have more sunshine than any other coastal city in S.Africa….(name a city NOT on the coast??) so of course, we arrived in a downpour.

Never mind, what’s a little rain to us intrepid white hunters? So very damp and cold we set off to explore the Schotia Game Reserve along the coast from PE. Once there, we climbed aboard the converted Land Rover, with three rows of three behind our rugged South African guide.

Unfortunately we brought the rain with us, fortunately it was only showers, fortunately we saw lots of wildlife, unfortunately, as we descended a hill on a muddy track we gently crabbed slowly sidewards and then slid off the road backwards into the thorny bushes.

Now, the one thing they tell you is NEVER get out of the Landrover, especially in Lion country, so it was with some trepidation that we disembarked our transportation and huddled in a nervous group as our driver finally got the vehicle back on the track and disappeared back up the hill leaving us standing ankle deep in sticky, wet, mud.

All the while predators started to move in on us!

From land,

and water….

The story has a happy ending though, we did eventually find our way back to our transport and our driver was as contrite as you would expect.

This was certainly an A plus day!