Along the Coast

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Thursday morning some of us went quad-biking (4-wheeling) in the indiginous forest near Tsitsikamma. It was pretty cool. I liked the sand dunes in Namibia better for 4-wheeling but it was still fun! Drizzling rain and lots of mud. From there we drove to Jeffery's Bay, the surfing mecca of South Africa. However, it is summer and all the good waves are in the winter. So they were mostly non-existent. Our hostel, Island Vibe Backpackers, was quite nice and had a good atmosphere. Lots of people to get to know. There were tons of tents though, practically wall to wall on the lawn! On Friday we went surfing on the practically non-existent waves and hung out on the beach. Even just paddling around on a surfboard is fun and we were able to catch a couple waves, standing up even!

There isn't much in Jeffery's Bay. Factory shops (Billabong, Roxy, RipCurl...) with cheap clothes, some restaurants, some hostels, and that's about it. Not even that many restaurants. And you have to be careful on the beach because there are a bunch of pieces of glass. I enjoyed our time there though. It was nice to be on the beach for a day! After J Bay we went to Addo Elephant National Park for a game drive in the afternoon. We saw a bunch of elephants, some right near the road with tiny babies! And we saw a massive male. African elephants are smaller than Asian, but this one was massive! We also saw about 500 million warthogs. Even some warthog babies that look exactly like the adult ones, just miniature. Also some deer, kudu, other such animals. We spent the night at the Orange Elephant and Sarah and I made an excellent Thai Green curry for dinner. We didn't have a recipe or anything and there wasn't enough coconut milk so we improvised and it turned out amazing if I do say so myself!

Sunday was a drive day enroute to Lesotho. The landscape was more deserty, like some of the days in Namibia. Not sand dunes, but rocky hills, not much green, etc. We got to Aliwal North in the afternoon. Basically there's nothing there. It used to be a hot springs town but not anymore. We stayed at the old hot springs campground. There were a bunch of pools but they were all kind of dirty with floaties. It was hot so we went swimming anyway, but not for long. Then into Lesotho!

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