The boys are back at school.

Monday, March 13

Port Alfred

Packed up in the morning and on the road for East London.  The city was difficult to manouver in our search for a camp ground, and just was not a nice looking place.  Decision was made to move onto to West Chintsa after a recommendation from our Cape Town host Ciska.  Arrival at the Backpackers was interesting, as the camp site had many cattle wandering around, a nice cow patty in the middle of our preferred camping site, and some interesting residents.  We returned to reception to find out that we could get a small self catered house for the same price.  Camping is not always the most economic.  The view from our front porch is incredible.  The location is very isolated, but a fifteen minute drive had us arrive at an incredible grocery store, basically in the middle of nowhere.  Awesome!

View out our window

Tuesday, March 14

West Chintsa

Signed the boys up for school this morning.  They are to start today at 2:00 pm.  School was cancelled today due to high winds on the open seas.  Moved to our new house that was a little moist.  We walked through the winds down the beach to East Chintsa and checked out the big homes with steep drive ways.  On and off rain gave way to a spectacular lightning show in the evening over the Indian Ocean.

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

West Chintsa

With their teacher Antonio

The boys returned to school today after the Tuesday storm day cancelled classes.  Surf school seems to be decidedly more popular than the traditional school we are all use to.  On the beach at 9:00 am learning the basics, and by 10:00 am they were on the ocean catching waves.  The boys surfed until about 11:30 am, then had to take a break and warm up with some lunch, and then were back out for a couple of more hours in the early afternoon.  High winds and a long day finally packed them in for the day.  All three had pretty red looking knees, but they were all catching waves. 

Thursday, March 16, 2017

West Chintsa

Farewell to our little house with a view as we start making our way toward the northeast corner of South Africa. 

An entertaining drive through the former Transkei.  Instructions prior to departure from the locals, lock your doors, do not stop, and drive slow due to all the livestock on the highway.  Travelling through the cities was greatly entertaining.  The main drag fulfilled the true African stereotype.  Packed with people, lots of open markets on the side walk, everyone walking on the road way, and garbage everywhere.  Looked as though someone broke all the collected bags of garbage on the highway.  Construction on the highway added to the element of keeping the driver awake.  At one stop we had an 18 minute delay.  They queue vehicles and allow them through until there are no more.  Probably had 300 vehicles come through from the opposite direction before we could go.  Ended up being about a 2 km stretch, so guessing they could not communicate back and forth to stop traffic.

Our arrival at the Mantis and the Moon backpackers resort had the adults shuttering, and the kids thrilled.  We stayed the night in a tree house with lots of geco feces on the walls.