Today we both managed to get some sleep and after some slacking outside next to the pool we headed off for another breakfast. We went back to the Boardwalk and checked out their somewhat posh-looking café/bar called The News Café. It had very very nice fruit shakes, as well as pancakes with yoghurt and I had some fried Halumi cheese together with fried tomato slices to my perfect eggs sunny side-up, yummy!

Impressed and completely full we strolled back to spend some time in a park called “Happy Valley” where it was not allowed to drink alcohol (or burn fires, or five other things) according to signs. South Africans have a thing for signs. Not in the way you can see in Japan with cartoons for everything but it just seems very unorganized. Big placards with information about e.g. a Cafe – and then there is no café to be found with that name within a block. Not mentioning their fear for getting sued – signs such as “Use the Safe at your own risk” or “Use the Steps at your own risk” seemed somewhat over the edge. Regarding unorganized, these awesomely designed stairs deserves some kind of prize. The idea is that one walks up to … a wall?

We chilled in Happy Valley for a couple of hours and when I found a statue that more or less said “Climb me and ride me” I followed my gut feeling. Watching the photo from my phone after Mona snapped it I realized that I wore the exact same tank top, similar but not exact same pair of shoes, shorts and sunglasses as on a photo from Ulf’s and mine trip to Japan were I rode some robotic dog or similar. Feels good that me turning 30 didn’t erase all the personality traits at least 😉

As we went back to Lungile to perhaps try out the pool in the nice sunny weather it of course got cloudy and instead we made plans for the upcoming day and sorted out accommodation in J-Bay for the following days as well as the first three nights in Cape Town. It really helped that Bibbi in the reception called to all places (for slightly more than an hour) rather than us doing it from a payphone or using e-mail. We thought we would eat more than one meal today and when arrangements were finalized we headed off to a place called Gondwana Café for a quite nice meal as well as a couple of drinks. The bill ended up at 22€ for two people spending an evening there – very nice. The idea of leaving for Addo Elephant park tomorrow before 07 and pack our stuff before that seemed like a less ideal plan after the drinks than before but well well – no rest for the wicked.

After the long day yesterday it was nice to take a looong morning in the bed, in other words I woke up around 08 and couldn’t get back to sleep. Well well, some picture handling and blog writing as Mona slept on didn’t hurt. We decided to stroll down to the beach and see what it had to offer.

The beach didn’t have much in the direction towards city centre so instead we headed further down south. In our hunt for a nice breakfast place I spotted something very similar to blood on the street, in fact it looked like someone had dripped blood for quite a walk. Mona then said “It might have been that guy with his face totally smashed up?” I’d missed the apparently calm, bad-bleeding white backpacker – and of course I pondered to and fro during the rest of the day what could have happened to him without the possibility to ever question him.

We had breakfast/lunch at a cafe called Bella or something, located at Bay World – awesome omelets and nice fresh fruit-muesli. We then headed back towards Lungile to see what activities we would could find for the rest of christmas eve. We booked a massage and headed back to the southern shoreline for some more sightseeing/strolling again. We came across a place called Boardwalk which seemed to be a strange crossing between an amusement park and a shopping centre.

The Boardwalk offered among other things a cinema, showing Avatar which we decided would be fun to watch (in 2D). The schedule was a little tight though with the massage so we weren’t sure we would make it and were hesitant to book in advance until we were told about the price, 3€ per ticket. We booked the tickets, headed back and re-scheduled the massage.

The massage was OK, but since I’d chosen “Deep Tissue Massage” I expected to be heavily assaulted but instead got something very similar to “a basic massage”, slightly disappointing. The movie Avatar was very nice however, not the most original story but oh-so-sweetly graphics – it definitely raised the bar – similar to the way Matrix pioneered the moving-camera-frozen-scene style. And the fact that the tickets were a mere 3€ showed that apparently going to the cinema doesn’t have to cost 10-12€ like in Sweden.

The day started 0600 with a bush walk around the actual camp (still big five classified), and our guide Laurie was armed with an old school hunting rifle, .357 caliber. The walk was only an hour and the focus was the small things such as ant lion (which we were able to find), tracks, different trees and bushes. It was a nice walk although we would perhaps preferred something in the range of 4 hours and getting up close and personal with some of the big five.

We had our final breakfast at Marc’s accompanied by a bunch of monkeys eager to steal anything edible within reach. We then spent some half an hour waiting for some ‘tards who were late from the neighboring camp before we headed off towards Jo’burg again.

We didn’t go the exact same route as when arriving, but instead passed Blyde River Canyon, apparently the 3rd largest Canyon in the world. It was quite impressive sights, and the weather wasn’t bad at all, ~26° C, especially compared to what we would have experienced in Göteborg. A long drive with several naps later we arrived at Jo’burg airport.

While checking in we encountered a rare sight, a highly effective south african worker, a species that many thought were complete lost but apparently it is only an endangered species after all. With little more than 2 hours to kill it was time to blog and start the art of going from 500 photos to 50. The airport was also blessed with a Subway restaurant to our pleasant surprise and we decided that it would most likely be better than any dishes served on the flight.

As I gave the too-many-times-repeated string of words dictating my order in the correct way I was interrupted by “We don’t have veggy patty”. Oh, well ok then – I’ll have the …. seafood platter (?). “We don’t have any sea food left”. I saw that my old favorite Italian BMT at least had made it to the menu so I went for the old classic. I was a bit surprised when I turned back to see that the lovely lady had skipped the cheese but instead smacked on the salad before toasting the sub. This is akin to heresy, and I kindly pointed out that I would like it toasted. This was not possible, since they didn’t had a toaster, only in Cape town they had that. I kind understand that they have local variations on the menu such as halal meat, fewer vegetarian alternatives and such but removing the possibility to toast your sub is on yhe same level as opening up a Burger King franchise and rather than grill your burgers offer to microwave them. Which is exactly what they did to heat up the meat. Well well, it was cheaper than in Sweden but microwaved meat with cheese underneath and hell-of-a-strong southwest sauce wasn’t top notch on my (perhaps quite strict) scale for Subway subs.

The flight went well, and arriving in Port Elizabeth we found a pay-phone and called Lungile Backpackers who would sent a cab for us. I realized while waiting for the cab that my phone was not in my pocked and as I started moving in a blur towards my beloved gadget I cursed my sleepy head for leaving it at the pay-phones. I was very pleased to see it elegantly tipped looking at me as I got back there. We got to Lungile without more hassle than a rather amusingly malfunctioning gate and dropped dead knowing that tomorrow we could sleep as long as we wanted. Vacation.