Against the Wind

Today we left Outshorn early to return to CT. Our first official stop was at the beach at Mussel Bay where the Portuguese explorer Dias landed in South Africa. He missed CT and Table Mt b/c of a storm and landed here. Vasco de Gama also landed in the bay. On this beach was a Milkwood tree where a captain began a tradition--the first post office box in SA. He survived a horrid storm and wrote an account about it and left it there. Upon the return trip he stopped to pick it up and return the letter. Thereafter many ships began the same practice of leaving letters there for a ship returning to pick up.

This area is where a lot of natural gas production is done. On another note diesel is $4.50 a gallon. A lot of SA electricity comes from coal fired electricity stations. The infrastructure however is stretched b/c of the "informal dwellings" or shanty towns that pop up with permit and then are not built to code nor do most have access to these resources.

As we were driving along I noticed two things. The roads are in excellent shape but even the main roads are not four lane all the way. To allow for passing it seems that drivers usually hug the inside of hte emergency lane line so that other cars have more room to go around them. Also, buses are not allowed to carry cargo on top of them for safety reasons, so most of them tow a small trailer in the back. These sort of safety standards should be implemented in many other places. I also wondered how our bus driver was doing in the very strong winds.

The next stop was an Aloe ferox (the SA version of Aloe vera) store. Not only is aloe apparently good for the skin but they have stuff that you can ingest to clean out your system, products for your joints, and colds, etc. Afterwards we continued driving and witnessed yet another rainbow in the distance (second or third of the trip). We passed the bay where the SA British ship sank in the 1800s and the captain said "women and children first"--the first time that was supposedly ordered. The next bay was an area known for whales, but they weren't in today. Whaling of that species has been banned since the 1930s b/c htey were being killed off. part of this area that we drove through (yesterday around George?) is an area with a lot of golf courses. SA is a major producer of golfers outside the US (and Australia?). Jack Nicholas (sp) has designed a golf course here too.

Our last big stop of the day was a really cool penguin colony. African penguins were formally known as jackass penguins and that's exactly what they sound like. They mate for life and usually produce two eggs at a time. This was our second flightless bird of the trip. The bay was extremely windy, but not as cold as I expected. (yes, Dad) The area around here did get snow about a month ago. Once again the vistas were incredible as we drove towards CT hugging the cliffs along the winding road.

But that's not all. The whole group had our farewell dinner tonight at the African Café. It was awesome! They brought out food from many countries in Africa and then you could order more of the ones you really liked. I was too full to order more. They had chicken groundnut (peanut) stew from Ghana that was very good. Less spicy though than Ghanaians would make it. The restaurant workers sang/drummed/danced a couple of songs for us. I realized that I hadn’t had any Afrikaans dishes although that night I think they served some Cape Malay cuisine. I’ve definitely gotten my quota of fresh seafood. I bought two really good books at their gift shop including this recipe book: The Africa Café Experience < http://africacafe.co.za/merchandise.html>
I sat across from our bus driver and I asked him if he had to have a commercial driver’s license in SA. He told me yes and he showed me his. It sounds like a system that is very similar to ours.