Blogs from Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Africa

After Durban we have two sea days until we get to Port Elizabeth. The night before we are invited to the Captains Cocktail party. This occurs every three to four weeks. Normally the Captain talks to us about our voyage and tells a couple of marine themed jokes. This time he tells us that there is a special guest on board and introduced Sir Bob Geldof. We are very surprised and Bob Geldof talks about his father who worked on the original Queen Mary. He is going to give a talk before departing at Cape Town. We will miss that because we leave the ship at Port Elizabeth to do a three day safari. We leave the ship and Port Elizabeth and a mini bus is waiting outside for us and one other person. So we ... read more

We had both had a good night’s sleep even though the bed was almost as firm as each of the preceding nights we have had since arriving in South Africa just over a week ago. At around 6am all of a sudden the mobile started ringing and at that hour you think the worse from home. Well it didn’t turn out to be anything bad, well at least for us. Rather it was a woman phoning to say she had found our dog wandering past her property and were we aware the dog was missing. After Gretchen took a moment or two to take in what the caller had said she realised that her mobile number is still on the collar of the dog that belongs to our daughter. Gretchen explained we were in South Africa ... read more

Here we are....the magic golf road trip! I did it in Scotland while I was 16 years old, and again a year after.....I did short golf road trips years after. But this is the kicking reality...good golf courses when you are not 15 years old are expensive to play...and doing them every day, even twice a day, in some corner of the world like the US and Australia very fast turn into an outrage to your credit card! Then the God of golf created South Africa. The country has over 500 golf courses...and Golf Digest is ranking every two years the top 100....all of them being pretty amazing. As of today, I have play over 40 courses of the current and last 100 top ranking in the country. Bear in mind, 3 of those are ranked ... read more

PORT ELIZABETH, SOUTH AFRICA - 19th April This was to be one of the highlights of the cruise as we were visiting a game reserve for the day. Port Elizabeth is known as the friendly city and has a busy commercial and industrial centre. On the way out of the city we passed numerous new car plants and the new container port, one of the most modern in the world. It has also earned the nickname "Detroit of South Africa" because of its automobile manufacturing. The main trips and tours were for game reserves, there are four close by including the Addo Elephant National Park where there are more than 300 elephants as well as other animals. It is one of South Africa's major tourist attractions. We opted for the Pumba Game Reserve because we had ... read more

Een nieuwe week begon alweer maandag, toen zijn we druk bezig geweest met ons verslag dat vrijdag klaar moest zijn, zodat we andere dagen weer leuke dingen konden doen. Dinsdag hadden we een les en daarna weer naar de township om met de mensen van de wasserette te praten. We hadden met ze afgesproken dat ze dit weekend gingen beginnen met handwassen om een klanten bestand een beetje op te bouwen. Nadat we met de mensen van de wasserette hadden gesproken, werden we afgezet in het centrum omdat we nog wat boodschapjes hadden. Daarna liepen we weer terug naar school en vanuit t centrum moet je dan eerst een stukje lopen, daarna stoplichten oversteken en dan een bult oplopen. Naomi en ik stonden inmiddels bij de stoplichten en links zag ik een kleine VW ofzo staan ... read more