Addo elephant park and "town"

September the 24th is Heritage Day in South Africa and this year it meant a long weekend :) Liz, Laura, Sion (pronounced Sean) and I were keen to go to the Berg for the weekend. Unfortunately, being disorganised, we left it too late to book, so we couldn't get into the place we wanted to go. Liz's friend Jules was going to a wedding and staying at a farm in Addo, so she suggested we go to Addo.

So on Thursday morning Liz informed me we were going to Addo (and not the Berg) and we were leaving straight after work (instead of Friday morning as originally planned). So i obediently went along with the plan, not really asking how it was going to all work.

"Straight after work" turned into after 6 o'clock (despite the fact that we all left work early). So we drove to East London in the dark in Liz's hired car (because her car was still being fixed). We stopped at the Kei river Steers expecting it to be dead quiet as usual, but found the place packed. We were all starving as it was 10 o'clock, but we patiently waited and had a very welcome Steers supper.

Next stop was Jules's house (after driving past the church parking lot to peep at Liz's car) which was in darkness due to a widespread power failure. We didn't even go in, before Liz had contacted Sam to arrange to fetch her car. Sam had collected Liz's car from the panel beaters earlier that day. Sam's "I'm on my way" turned into a 20 minute wait in the church car park at about 11.30 at night. But soon enough Sam appeared and Liz was reunited with her car (after 4 painful months). Words cannot describe how delighted she was that the ordeal was over.

Then it was back to Jules's house were we were shown in by pitch darkness, somewhat reminiscient of that classic horror movie. Luckily, all the housemates were away, so Jules had the run of the house. Laura and I spent the night in Monique's double bed, during which time she managed to hit me in the face several times, but mostly i didn't wake up.

The next morning turned into a very leisurely cooked breakfast and generally chilled morning. Then we were back in the car - actually 3 cars this time as Liz had to return the hire car, and Jules was instructed by her parents to take her car so that they could use it off road. We had to fill up all the cars and then return the hire car to the airport. And then we were on our way to Addo. Sion and Laura both brought their i-pods which came in very handy since Liz's CD player is still broken.

Grahamstown was the agreed-upon lunch spot and after driving through the main streets we stopped at Cafe Dulce for a very civilized and delicious lunch. It had its entertaining moments with Sion and Jules reliving the previous weekend's sharing food escapades. And Liz going down the street to draw money without taking her card.

I was the route finder and decided to take what looked like the shortest route to Addo. Unexpectedly, the route ended abruptly with a closed road due to a collapsed bridge! couldn't have known that! So we took a detour through the park itself and saw some kudu.

Eventually, we found Addo "village" which didn't contain a Spar. Liz had told us that there was a Spar at the Berg, but for some reason Laura, Sion and I still had it in our heads that we were going to a place that had a Spar. So we hadn't really brought food with us. Ooops!

We stayed at Aardvark "backpackers" which was actually more of a guest house and got amazing accomodation for backpacker prices. I highly recommend it.

Since Laura knows Jules's parents, we all went over to the farm they were staying at for afternoon tea. Somehow, we had got the impression that it was a peacon farm. So when Laura said to the citrus farmer "so you grow peacons here", it was rather entertaining and provided amusement for the rest of the weekend.

Heritage Day has informally become National Braai Day, so we had to braai that night. Luckily Laura and Sion had brought some steak with them, and Liz some rolls, so we weren't completely stuck for food. Liz and Laura insisted we needed to have veggies, so they went off in search of a shop at 6 pm on a public holiday in a tiny dorp - i was not very assured of their success, to say the least. Meanwhile Sion and i were left to start the fire. Since Sion was the only guy, South African culture states that he is responsible for the braai. However, Sion is Welsh and had never made a braai before, so that left me to get the process going. We managed to hijack a braai from an Afrikaans family, and before long Sion was being taught how to braai steak by an Afrikaans farm boy - how embarrassing! Amazingly, Laura and Liz found a cabbage and a pumpkin, so we ended up with quite a feast! There were also some black Zimababwean guys around, so we had quite a multicultural Heritage Day.

The next day, we headed into the park and spent the day game viewing. We had some fantastic encounters with elephants who have no fear of cars and happily walk right up to them. Our favourite was the baby ellies who are super cute. It was fun initiating Sion into the game park culture.

On Sunday morning we had a leisurely breakfast and then were back on the road again. We had to stop and shop in East London since Uncle Tony had convinced Sion he was suffering from "post-salmonisitis" and desperately needed some salmon. Sion felt obligated to comply and spent R180 buying salmon from Woolies. We found some unexpected bargains in Hemingways: half price Pick n Pay wellies! and a colourful tea pot from Pep:)

All in all, a great long weekend :)