23 hours

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We left Midrand on the Intercape for Jefferies bay looking for some sun (not so hot that we would sweat everywhere we walked) and to rest properly (unlike Uganda and up in northern part of South Africa where we felt we had to look over our shoulders all the time). We got on the bus, found our seats and were amazed to see that the extra money we had paid for safety had also gone towards leg room and air-con, a must on a 17 ½ hour drive.

The bus was 5 minutes late but that would be the least of our timings worries, with the bus stopping 3 times in the first 2 miles of our journey each time stopping for 2 hours to look in the engine, just to move a little bit more and pull over again. We finally got the great news that we would get a new bus but this meant the healthy bus getting to us in the first place and then we had to transfer all of our luggage from one bus to the other. By this point we were a about 8 hours into our journey but had only drove a couple of miles.

We finally got on the way trying to get some sleep where we could so we didn’t have to catch up on it too much later, when we were near the beach. We made a stop at 6 30am to get some breakfast, which was nice although a little early. As we were due to be back on the bus, a guy had a fit on the top floor, hitting his head creating it to bleed. This meant we had to wait for an ambulance to arrive before we could get going again… another setback, although one we didn’t really mind waiting for. We left at some point in the morning after some complimentary teas, coffees and braai broetjies and eventually arrived in Port Elizabeth at 2pm after, what Megan called a gruelling 23 hour bus journey. We met Beth Elwell and her friend who drove us back to the YWAM base, where we were to stay, on Jefferies bay.





The evening we arrived coincided with the graduation of the DTSers that had been away from the friends and families for the past 6 months. This was really nice, an intimate worship time with each giving a little speech as to what they enjoyed about the DTS and a performance by them all. It was weird Megan and I being there, nether-the-less, we enjoyed the follow up party food and fizzy drinks.



The next morning we woke up to a very windy overcast day, which we tried playing basketball in the torrential wind and, when we realised that didn’t work, we then decided to find a café overlooking the beach whilst having a nice Oreo milkshake… we succeeded. The next couple of days have been a lot nicer weather, sunny, blue skies and not so windy. We haven’t had any ‘proper’ internet for a while now so we walked to the mall to upload some photos, update blogs, reply to lots of emails, ‘like’ peoples status’s, Skype some family and send the last of our Christmas presents to our family.



As random as it was being at the graduation of people we hadn’t met before, we also found ourselves attending a wedding of people we hadn’t met before. This was a bit of a crazy wedding. We were English and decided to get to the church 30 minutes early, this was a mistake. Add our 30 minutes onto the 45 minutes that the bride arrived late and you will realise we waited for a while. In all this the bride had arrived but the groom wasn’t, despite getting ready in the church hall across the road. The wedding procession started with the congregation singing something, not in English, in an up-tempo beat whilst the bride walked down the aisle. I didn’t seem like anyone had a plan of how the service was going to run (which was confirmed to me later by some real friends of the bride and grooms) as whenever the vicar had forgotten his next line then whole congregation got to their feet and starting singing something again at the top of their voice, this was until the vicar remembered his lines, put his hands up and they all stopped singing… strange.



It was a great wedding; the bride was beautiful, full of cheer, with the reception on the beach and lots of good food. It was a great day, a great occasion and I felt like I really knew the bride and groom after the extensive speeches numerous amounts of people made.



… the girls are coming soon, Megan and I are both excited.

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