Vanilla Ice

By the time we reached Port Alfred the match was well underway. Jason and I hadn’t eaten since yesterday so we are hungry. A place that serves food and has the match on the TV would be perfect. We took the main road all the way to the ocean and spotted a restaurant/pub. Only you couldn’t eat in the restaurant and watch the match in the pub at the same time so food would have to wait. We walked into the pub, fully packed with excited patrons watching the South Africa Bulls play. Hm…everyone here is… white. We had just come from East London where the demographic was…hm….how do you say….NOT the same, as was the past two weeks. East London was a mere 120km from Port Alfred and yet we had turned a corner over some sort of invisible border. Strange. No more huts, just neat manicured lawns and farmland and cute bridges in a small port area. Where were we???
Certainly not in Kansas, I mean South Africa, anymore. But the rude truth is that we were still in the country taking in yet another reality created by the Apartheid.
At the pub we ran into the editor of the town’s newspaper who called a guy who picked us up and took us to his B&B. Awesome. Once settled, the gentleman took us to a place highly recommended for dinner, which was attached to yet another pub (I think the second of three in the whole town). We would spend the evening chatting with people we met and celebrating the Bulls victory to the Finals.
The next morning Jason would go for a surf as I collected more seashells for my collection. Since we are getting closer to the west the water was getting colder and with no wetsuit Jason wouldn’t be out too long.
While in East London we had stopped to pick up some airtime and managed to call Leon on our way to Port Alfred. We decided to spend the next evening there in Port Elizabeth and so we were off. We stopped to pick up a bottle of wine and were on our way.
Now Port Elizabeth would be a lot like Port Alfred, only bigger. We arrived a little early and headed to the neat, clean, you would think you were in America, Boardwalk and Casino of Port Elizabeth. Jason played a few hands of Blackjack in order to collect a few poker chips – something he had been doing for a few years now. After a little while Leon called and he and his wife came and picked us up at the Boardwalk and led us back to their home.
We had such a wonderful time with Leon and his wife, Sonnja. They were very warm and hospitable and easy to talk to. They served us a wonderfully home-cooked meal and watched some cricket with us. Since it ended up being Sunday we were all hitting the hay early since Leon and his wife had to be up for work early the next day. We were escorted to the room we would be staying and I noticed all the shells. I told Soonja that I loved her shell collection and told her that I was collecting some from our trip. She got so excited it became hard to understand her. Since Soonja spoke mostly Afrikaans, she did her best to explain that all the shells in the house came from Kini Bay, about 2km down the road. She said that at Kini Bay there was a “seashell mortuary”. Leon clarified that she meant more of a seashell graveyard, but nonetheless, there at the bay were millions of shells and urchins and that anyone could go and collect. Awesome! Since we had to be out of their home by 7am the next morning and it would take only an hour to get to our next stop; why not stop for some shell collecting? We said farewell to our gracious hosts and headed out for some shell collecting. We spent about an hour and a half walking and collecting shells. We collected so many shells that 1) I would have to hold a draft later to decide which ones were good enough to take up space in my already heavy and cumbersome luggage and 2) I would have to get a bigger vase when we got home. A much bigger vase!!

Days Traveled: 48
Distance Traveled: 32, 188km