South Africa, standard. : Adventures before Cape Town Part Two: Addo Elephant Park & Jeffrey's Bay

After four days of relaxation and acclimation in Durban it was time to start the rest of our adventures on our way to Cape Town and that meant flying from Durban to Port Elizabeth and picking up our rent a car for our road trip. Our flight out of durban left at 6am which meant we got to Port Elizabeth nice and early around 8am, picked up our trusty rent a car (later named Bunga) and headed north towards Addo Elephant Park. When Tracie, Colleen and I were originally starting to plan our travels we quickly nixed going to other countries and decided the best thing to do would be to rent a car and drive along the famous 'Garden Route' to Cape Town, giving us the opportunity to stop in rural areas, be near the ocean and drive through the wine valley. The first day of our road trip started off quite eventfully, I was driving down the highway on our way to Addo when I saw something far ahead cross the road, I slowed down thinking it was a cat or maybe a squirrel and as we approached I realized it was a monkey. This was the first real culture shock (or environment shock?) I had since being in Africa and I was so surprised that I ended up yelling 'There's a f*cking monkey on the road!!' (sorry mom and dad). With this being the starting point of our road trip, we knew only good things could come.

Addo Elephant Park was an hour detour from the Garden Route but we knew this would likely be our only opportunity to experience a safari so we decided it was worth the extra drive. Addo is a massive nature reserve of over 630 square miles of rolling hills filled with a number of animals (including the big 5: elephants, lions, rhinos, buffalo and leopards) and has one of the largest populations of elephants on the continent. I was unsure of what to expect when we arrived but realized that besides the dirt roads we were able to drive on, the land was virtually untouched and the animals were roaming free. There were a number of moments that were surreal during our few hours spent driving around the park, but one in particular was when we sighted our second elephant, it was literally not more than 5 feet away from our car, snacking on some vegetation from the trees and otherwise ignoring us. I couldn't help but feel like crying sitting so close to such a massive animal and looking in its big eyes seeing how intelligent and beautiful it was. After driving around for a few hours we went to the lodge to get a bite to eat and ended up meeting a very kind man and his wife who lived in the suburbs of Cape Town, his name is Schalk (which I took as a good sign seeing as Schalk is the last name of one of my best friends), Colleen got his contact information in hopes of getting together at a later point during our few months in Cape Town (we did end up spending a day with he and his family but that's for another blog post). Addo was truly incredible and something that I'm so thankful that we did, it was also a perfect gateway into our time in South Africa, up until that point we had only been in a city, this road trip would give us the opportunity to get to experience South Africa in a way that many don't.

Our drive from Addo to our first stop at Jeffrey's Bay was a quick two hour long trip. It was on this leg of the journey that we had our first encounters with townships and the poverty of South Africa, while Tracie and Colleen had both been to places where they had encountered serious poverty, this was a new experience for me as I had only traveled around Europe. Seeing homes made of tin, tarps and left over wood was startling and something that I'll never forget. It was in this moment that I realized that part of being in South Africa would not only be processing the incredible wealth and poverty gap, but also would be processing the visions of these homes, of children defecating along the highway and of people carrying on with life as normal while being subjected to the worst poverty I had ever witnessed.

On a lighter note, on to Jeffrey's Bay, or as locals call it J Bay, is one of the most famous surfing sites in the world and is often the host of a number of competitions throughout the year. We had initially hoped to stay at a lovely little hostel that Colleen had found in a guide book but when we arrived there wasn't room for us, so we backtracked a couple of blocks up the road and found a room at Cristal Cove hostel. Because it was the off season the hostel was pretty empty, we were offered a lovely room with a shared kitchen and living room that we had to ourselves. After resting a bit and taking advantage of the wifi we headed out to get dinner and were disappointed that nearly all the restaurants we had wanted to try were closed for the season, we ended up grabbing food at a mexican restaurant and heading back to the hostel early still exhausted from our travels. The next morning we got up, got breakfast at a lovely spot in town and decided that horseback riding on the beach was the must do activity for the day. We stopped at a couple of surf shops first and check out the beach before heading back to the hostel to book our horseback riding. We showed up at the farm unsure of what to expect and a bit nervous, especially when we realized our guide would be a 17 year old kid. Our ride started through green lush hills and then quickly turned to climbing sand dunes and riding along the wind whipped, empty beaches. Besides a couple of unruly moments (my horse had taken to kicking Tracie's and Colleen's horse was simply not wanting to move at a reasonable speed), horseback riding on the beach was incredible and something I'm so glad we did. Once again we were in one of those moments where not only did we have to remind ourselves that this wasn't real life (i.e. we'll have to end this adventure one day), but we were once again faced with the incredible beauty of South Africa, standard.

Just as the sun was starting to set our ride came to an end. We packed up and were back on the road before we knew it, this time headed to Nature's Valley, not knowing what to expect and not realizing that we would end up at the most magical hostel that's ever existed in the most beautiful valley I've ever seen.