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| Erin's South Africa Journals - 11-20-02 For this last day in South Africa, we'd made a list of little chores to accomplish. We wanted to try to find a guide book for Australia, do a little internet time for emails (to see who'd gotten our news), confirm tomorrow's flights, etc. But as we were leisurely getting ready for our day, Guenter came by and offered for us to join him on a trip to Addo Elephant Park. Figuring our chores could all be done later, we accepted his offer and took off in his rental car around 11am. The drive out to Addo takes about an hour from Port Elizabeth, and once leaving the coast, becomes very monotonous. We passed by several 'townships,' the local name for the shanty-towns that house the majority of South Africa's poorest citizens. Some of the townships set up by the government have running water & electricity, but all around these prefab settlements you'll find expansion in the form of small aluminum shacks covered with plastic tarps and surrounded by fields of trash. Very depressing, and reminiscent of Kenya. Finally we arrived at the park, and paid the 20 Rand (about $2 each) per person to get in. We drove through the scrubby underbrush, and quickly realized we wouldn't be seeing much of the other hooved wildlife that inhabits this park, as they were well camoflaged in the bushes and not stirring much in the afternoon heat. We followed signs to several waterholes, though, and managed to find several large groups of elephants at one hole. We sat and watched them for almost an hour, as there were lots of young ones and some fun playfulness going on amongst the herds. Quickly driving through the rest of the park revealed only a group of warthogs and a couple of Hartbeast, so we drove back toward town with the intention of finding bookstores. Guenter had no agenda for the day and was happy to accompany us, which was nice as we got a free ride! :) We didn't have much luck with the book search, though, and had a very late lunch of fish and chips at 4pm. Afterwards, Guenter wanted to explore the city a bit more, and we went along for the ride. We stopped first at a brand new shopping/casino complex on the waterfront, but it was totally dead! Hardly anyone was there, and we quickly walked through and headed on. Next stop was the historic part of town, where we saw the old fort that protected the only safe port in the eastern cape and the old lighthouse & monument to Lady Elizabeth something-or-other, wife of the British governer, for whom the town was named (although she never went there!). By this time we were pretty tired and getting cold, as the brisk wind that had been blowing all day turned into gale force gusts. We asked Guenter to stop by the hairdresser near the hostel and drop us off, but he ended up joining us there as well, and both men got haircuts. I'm still good to grow for a while, after my haircut back in Bruge. By the time we finished having haircuts and, for me, checking internet at a cafe downstairs, it was after 8pm and we wanted to get back to the hostel to prep for our long flights tomorrow. We did a little more internet to respond to some urgent matters we'd seen, and I showered, then went to bed around 10:30pm. Last night in Africa! |
| In Addo, we finally got closeup shots of warthogs, which had been notoriously shy throughout Africa |