Jeffreys Bay

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February 6th 2008

Published: February 20th 2008

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Jeffrey's Bay

I've just stayed 4 days in Jeffreys Bay which is basically the surfing capital of south africa, I stayed in a hostel called Island Vibe which is right on the beachfront and is the best place to stay. Unfortunately the first night I got there there was a mess up with the booking and they had booked someone else in instead of me so they put me in the adjacent language school accomodation which turned out brilliantly, had a whole apartment to myself with stocked kitchen and everything! So I made myself hot chocolate and watched The Bodyguard on tv which was a bit of a luxury. I've spent quite a few days relaxing on the beach but it's nice to sit down and just watch a film, haven't done that for a while!! I moved into a dorm the next day and met two girls called Olivia and Georgie who were great and we're meeting up again when I get to thailand in a months time so that will be cool. Also spent some time with some people I met in the Island Vibe hostel in Knysna which was fun. I went surfing yesterday morning which was cool although my

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Two girls I met in Plettenburg who I also met in Jeffrey's Bay, Ashley and Hannah

balance was pretty appalling (probably because I hadn't had much sleep!) There are loads of factory surf shops in J'Bay as well as the normal shops so I bought a few things although not too much as I won't be able to carry it!! South Africa is suffering from a bit of a power shortage at the moment due to a mess-up by the electricity company, Eskom, and power cuts are happening all over the country and we had one last night. It was pretty funny actually because the cut happened between 8 and 10 so they lit the whole bar up with candles and it was actually pretty cool!! It's not so fun for the country as a whole though and people are getting pretty fed up with it. A lot of big cities are experiencing regular power cuts in the evenings and the government is encouraging people to "load-shed" at peak energy consumption times - i.e. turn off all electrical appliances not being used. Anyway so tonight I met Jamie (my friend from Cape Town) and the two friends he's travelling with (Paul and Caitlin) and we have come to Port Elizabeth. We got to the hostel late

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Georgie on the zipline over a waterfall a bit inland from the coast

tonight so just watched England v Switzerland in the lounge area and now we are off to bed. Unfortunately we won't get to see the city because we are leaving early tomorrow morning for the next leg of our trip to Hogsback. We are running a bit short of days now as I want to be in Durban on Sunday and they need to get up to Kruger by the middle of next week. So we are cutting out Port Elizabeth which is just a city basically and apparently has the nickname as the "armpit of South Africa" so maybe it's not such a bad thing we're giving it a miss!!

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