Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

East London

From Port Elizabeth we travelled to East London, staying at a very nice hostel virtually on the (inexplicably deserted) beach. Whilst here, I made a simple request to use the internet terminal, which was situated in the owners office, which was locked. On trying to unlock the door, the lock broke. Luckily, the manager was resourceful and came back with a kitchen knife to open the door. When this failed, he found a small crowbar to force the lock with. No joy. Increasingly angry with the door, he tried a hammer, a swiss army knife and sheer brute force. Nothing. Finally, in desperation he returned with a heavy garden spade and battered the door frame into submission! The lengths people will go to so that I can update this blog...

Port St Johns

The next day entailed a four-hour drive to Port St Johns, and setting off early we arrived by early afternoon. The last 10km of the journey is particularly picturesque, and was further enlivened by the livestock blithely wandering across the motorway; having avoided cows and donkeys, we actually made an emergency stop to avoid flattening a goat!
Port St Johns is a charming, bustling little town and the hostel we stayed at - Island Backpackers - was very welcoming and provided a fantastic Khosi chicken curry for our evening meal. Once again we spent the evening getting outside of a couple of cold beers and looking out over the Indian Ocean.

DURBAN

Although not in our original plans, the evolution of our journey through South Africa suddenly necessitated a couple of days stopover in Durban.

The journey from Port St Johns to Durban was memorable to say the least, since the preferred route - the R61 - seemed to consist of a huge number of huge potholes loosely connected by tiny bits of normal road.

Shaken but not stirred, we arrived in Durban which is also huge. However, the hostel we stayed in (Gibela) was quite luxurious and close to all essential amenities (pubs). Thus we spent our time here on a trip to the beach - very hot, very pleasant then watched England drub Wales 43-13 in the Six Nations rugby and finally went for -another!- great curry at a restaurant called Vintage.

The next day, we headed off toward another unexpected stopping point... St Lucia.