South African Malibu

Blogging has been slow, not because I am dead, in prison, or in some remote part of Africa, but because the last few days have been 'a boring. We left Cape Town and headed for a place called Wilderness where we "rested" for about 3 days. Wilderness is a beach town with summer homes and B&B's and noting else. We were the only ones in the hostel one night. The place was dead. The best I can offer you in the way of stories is one day we made a sand castle (actually it was a giant penis) and the other day we stayed up shooting the breeze with a German dude with the coolest slang/accent of all time. He was a surfer and had a combo of south African and Aussie accents with a bit of a German accent. It sounded like Russel crowe if he played a german surfer. We spoke for hours and all I can tell you about him and that he has lived in Wilderness for 3 years, loves surfing and hanging out with hippies.

But Wilderness was boring and I did not pay money to come lay out on a beach. I came to see Africa. That being said, I think Nathan enjoyed the town and so the Bowles family and other members of "team Bowles" should take this with a grain of salt.

Now we are in Port Elizabeth and will be here for just one day. We are ahead of schedule a bit with both our timing and spending and so we need to slow down. Unfortunately, public transport is monopolized by a terrible company called Bazbus. They cater to so called "backpackers" because they provide safe transport directly to hostels. However, they cost nearly 4 or 5 times the price of regular transport. Even by US standards they are expensive. It kind of takes away the feeling of backpacking. But Nathan and I will probably give in because we don't want to arrive in a city at midnight, 3 miles from our hostel like we did in Wilderness.

P.E. is very nice and we have already met some nice folks, locals, who we will probably hang out with while downing pints of jemjam's (a local cocktail) and watching the Rugby championship where for the first time 2 South African teams are in the final!

Footnotes: I saw a wild ostrich. I have learned a bit of Xhosa. We played pool with a cool dude from P.E. that beat me with his eyes closed, literally.