Port Elizabeth

Three days at sea before our next port. The Captain must have thought we were far enough away from pirate waters as they started showing the Tom Hanks movie, Captain Phillips, all about his ship being hijacked by modern day pirates in Somalia. There was plenty of entertainment on board. I’ve already mentioned the Africa party. An Aussie party in the ship’s pub made us feel at home and about 100 of us rocked the ship. (Including a few interlopers that were interested to taste our fare, including Vegemite.) The crew and staff on Serenade of the Seas are absolutely fantastic! There are 753 crew that represent 62 countries and the ship put on an international flag ceremony to represent them all. The latest crew member to have family on board is from Zimbabwe and his two children are a huge hit everywhere they go. The cruise director is counting down the days until his wife and 11 month old come on board in Cape Town. The crew are all so kind and friendly and seem genuinely happy.

We docked in Port Elizabeth (Gqeberha indigenous name), a major seaport on Algoa Bay, South Africa and chose a shore excursion to Addo Elephant Park hoping to see more than elephants as we were in search of the big 5 (Elephant, Lion, Leopard, Rhinoceros and the Cape Buffalo).

The privilege of travel allows you to see the good, bad and wonders of the world. Leaving the port, the city looked very industrial and I’m not sure I would’ve felt safe walking about. Windows were barred and razor wire was abundant. It needed a good garbage collection. We were told that South Africa has over 40% unemployment and in this area it is even higher. Even if you can get a job you could earn as little as $1 per hour.

On the outskirts we encountered housing left over from the apartheid era in the form of shanty towns. Each shanty construction was different to the next one and it seemed dependent on what material you could scrounge. The only things in common were the sagging power lines and amazingly the television satellite dishes and solar hot water panels! It was certainly an eye opener.

As we moved further out huge citrus groves appeared. I found this encouraging as surely this would provide a lot of employment.

The weather here reminded me of a mild Melbourne winters day. As we left the city, the landscape changed to low to medium scrubs. It was noticeable there were no tall trees. This couldn’t have been the part of the jungle that Tarzan used to swing from tree to tree!

The first animals we encountered were giraffes and we weren’t even in the national park! It was explained that giraffes aren’t native to this region and were in a private game park.

The Addo Elephant Park was established to contain elephants as they were causing too much damage to the citrus farms. The park started with 11 elephants and now has over 1000. It covers an area of over 176,000 hectares and has plenty of room for other animals. To give you an idea, we saw Kudu which are the 2nd largest antelope and can jump 3 metres, Warthogs (one of what the locals call the ugly 5) Zebras, Antelope, Ostrich, Black Jackals, Buffalo, Elephants, Yellow Mongoose, Baboons, Ducks, Lions, Camels and various birdlife.

Our lunch was a traditional South African braai which is their version of a BBQ. It was so good but I wasn’t entirely sure if the meat wasn’t wild game.

Our entourage of several buses started off like a convoy through the park. As we ventured further into the park our eyes were so focused on animal spotting that if another bus was spotted we joked there was an endangered white bus. Unfortunately, one of the buses got bogged. Our bus didn’t show any sympathy as we drove by and in fact we blared out the music of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” Changing the words to The Lion Feasts tonight” as we passed. A lot more sympathy was shown when we drove past an hour later and they were still bogged. Passengers were only allowed off the bus briefly as it was wild enemy territory.

The drive back to the ship took us on a different route and the built up areas didn’t seem as poor. It had been a fun day with mostly Aussies on the bus. The music played were all Aussie classics and we gave our international friends quite a musical experience.

Mossel Bay in Afrikaans and Dutch = (Mussel Bay)

Overnight we sailed to Mossel Bay. As we had to catch tender boats to the shore, it was a bit hit and miss whether we would have a shore visit as the swell was up. The captain eventually gave the thumbs up! The harbour town has a lot of history relating to the spices and tea sailing routes from the past. It spread into very nice suburbs with superb ocean and lakeside views. Although the township looked safer than Port Elizabeth we did hear 3 passengers were robbed here.

Our shore excursion was a drive on part of the renowned garden route to Knysna. The 2 hour picturesque drive had the rolling surf beach breaks on one side and lakes and mountain peaks on the other. Finally I was beginning to see trees that had some size about them and forests started appearing.

After the previous day, I didn’t think I needed to see any more elephants but we ended up at the Knysna Elephant Rehabilitation Centre. They only have 5 elephants here but have rehabilitated more than 40 back into their native habitat. We were able to get up close and personal, feeding the elephants and also getting some great photographs.