Lesotho Infinity And Beyond: 16 November 2016: South Africa- Addo Park and Port Elizabeth

Note: After I posted about East London, I was asked by a family member how England was. Apparently it was not clear that East London is a city in South Africa. I did not go to London, England. Sorry for any confusion!

I left Fairyland (aka Hogsback) super early, rolled up my tent, and drove. On the road, I picked up a nurse first, then a lady going to the clinic. They both offered me money, but I told them to keep it. I’m trying to pay it forward for all the times I hitched for free. My destination for the day would be Addo Elephant Park, close to Port Elizabeth where I’d be staying for the night. The park is enormous, and of course I arrived at the completely wrong entrance (the one for people just passing through), so I had to promise the guard I’d drive straight through it with no deviations so I could get to the actual paying entrance. I did just that, but on the way I found a buffalo, and there was a cool turtle walking across the road where I stopped to pee. I exited the park only to drive to the official entrance and enter again. Still technically a resident of Lesotho, I was able to pay the SADC (Southern African Development Community- a collaboration of Southern African countries) price, which as like half the international price. Surprisingly (or not?), they didn’t even check to see if I was actually a SADC resident. I drove around the park for like 5 hours finding elephants (and baby elephants!), warthogs, an ostrich, meerkats, some kind of fox/jackal, different kinds of big deer types, huge tortoises, dung beetles (which, according to signs along the road, I must give the right of way to), zebras, and more elephants. Then I got sick of it and booked it back to the main gate.

Tortoise in the road

The actual entrance

Zebras

My rental car used to be all white...

Heyo

Elephant booties

The baby chilling under the mom

Line of cars waiting for the elephants to get out of the road

This may not seem very significant, but on my way out of Addo and toward Port Elizabeth, I found myself in the middle of a huge herd of ENORMOUS wild windmills. They were so big, slowly turning their blades in sync. I felt like the 2016 version of Don Quixote. Let me add here that I never read the book Don Quixote, just saw the Wishbone version on TV when I was little, and I distinctly remember him fighting a windmill and swiftly losing.

Anyway, coming into Port Elizabeth was pretty sketchy and trash heap-ey. It was pretty gross. I finally got into the actual city (much cleaner) and found my hostel called 28 Towpath (R100/night camping), a giant house and gardens with a super sustainable and hippie vibe. As he pointed out where I could set up my tent, the owner was like, “The [normal] bathroom is in there, here’s the compost toilet, and if you don’t want to go all the way inside, you can just pee in the garden.” Nice I love when people are that laid back. I spent the rest of the evening making dinner, chilling in the hammock, and snuggling up with a little dog. Hostel dogs are the best dogs.

The next day, I woke up in my tent, packed up, and headed to the waterfront. This hostel’s back yard is basically a strip of grass that comes right up to some kind of canal. It’s really peaceful, and I decided to go for a morning walk along the water as Little Dogs 1 and 2 followed me down the path. I took advantage of the grass to do a little workout and stretch out there. Then I peaced out and drove into the Port Elizabeth city center to explore Route 67, which is a series of 67 (more or less) works of art and quotations to commemorate Mandela’s 67 years of political life. It was really cool, from under-the-highway murals to this nice park with the second largest flag in Africa and pieces of art all around. One of my favorites kind of blended into the city and I didn’t notice it at first. It was the side of a combi (minibus taxi) on a rock face that, in several steps, looked like it was taking off into the air.