Our cruise had three ports of call before we disembarked in Cape Town, and we enjoyed day trips in each of Richards Bay, Port Elizabeth (now known as Gqeberha) and Mossel Bay.
Our portside view of Richards Bay on the morning of March 8:
Richards Bay is a coal-mining town and the port is not pretty. We were taken by bus from the port to Boardwalk Inkwazi Shopping Centre. We had been warned that the ride could get quite dusty which was proven true. Although we weren’t snowed under by layers of coal dust, a truck that preceded us out of the port kicked up so much dirt that we had to shut all the bus windows and put on our sunglasses.
The mall was a rendezvous point where buses would drop off cruise passengers and take them back to the ship. After we looked around a bit we arranged for a lift to Alkantstrand Beach. We asked if the driver could pick us up after two hours and he did, and was right on time.
We ate our lunch at the beach, which we had all to ourselves, and then I noticed a group move toward the shoreline. They appered to be conducting a religious ceremony like a mass baptism. One by one a member would crawl into the surf while the waves broke over her. The robed clergywomen would then douse them, repeatedly, with buckets of water:
Enormous sand “pillows” laid out to prevent beach erosion:
Beware of sharks:
As we were leaving the beach we saw groups of uniformed schoolchildren and wondered if school was in session on Saturdays here. A group of about three boys greeted us. Earlier, while we were in the mall, I picked up a brochure about the town, and on the back was a Zulu language guide. I had by then memorized a couple phrases. I greeted them with “Sawubona. Kunjani?” which means “Hello. How are you?”. When I said that, the boys’ faces looked stunned for a second, and then they all broke into huge smiles and greeted us with fist bumps. How often would they expect white tourists to talk to them in Zulu? Our driver picked us up at the scheduled time and drove us out of the beach via a different route. It was along a rough stone road yet the parking areas by this area of the beach were packed. The driver explained that this was the area of the beach where drinking was permitted. The beach where we had wandered to eat lunch, and where the baptism ceremony had taken place, was along the dry section. No wonder we practically had the beach all to ourselves!
Our next stop, two days later, was Port Elizabeth, now known by its Xhosa name of Gqeberha. This time we were able to walk from the port into town. The first building we saw was the public library, which we did not go into at first:
It was in this vicinity that we saw uniformed guides whom we approached to ask for directions. They made it explicitly clear to us that walking around the city was dangerous–even saying in no uncertain terms that we could not go walking on our own–and that they would escort us. As it was we wanted to visit the tourist information centre which was not easy to find as it was at the top of a long staircase and although it was on our tourist map, there was no way we would have figured out that the office was located there. One guide escorted us and I took the lead by climbing the stairs ahead of her. She reprimanded me gently, telling me not to precede her and to have her always take the lead. Wow–what kind of a place was this?
While at the tourist centre we met other visitors, some of whom we recognized from the ship. After talking a bit about what we wanted to see, two guides agreed to take us, as well as another couple, on a walking tour.
The enormous South African flag unfurled:
Our ship in port, next to lots of new Volkswagens:
We climbed the Donkin Reserve Lighthouse, but only as far as the little balcony:
Our guides took us down the streets to several art galleries and to Fort Frederick:
During our walk the guides told us how to carry our bags and to keep aware of our wallets. Mark wore a money belt and before I left home I put together a phony wallet filled with expired cards and otherwise worthless plastic, to surrender to any thief. I realize that robberies can occur anywhere, and even before we left on this trip I thought why should I only consider carrying around this phony wallet while in South Africa? I could just as well get held up in Toronto. That said, Mark and I felt safe yet we wondered about the couple from Vancouver Island who had joined us on the tour. The man was wearing a backpack with a rear pocket left open (its zipper was broken) and the woman was carrying an oversize bag emblazoned with VERSACE, so I had a word with Mark in that if a thief wanted to target our group, this couple would be more vulnerable since the signals they were transmitting were more tempting.
On the way back we stopped into the library and since it used Dewey Decimal Classification I knew exactly where to look, however I couldn’t find the 400’s, the number range devoted to language. I usually am fine left to figure out where things were by myself, yet time was at a premium so I did not wander about and simply asked an employee where the 400’s were. She guided me to an area where I looked at the books and photographed some covers. The fiction section was entirely closed off as all of the novels were packed in boxes, however there were a few patrons milling about the nonfiction and newspaper area. We walked back to the ship.
We still had a little bit of time to get the free shuttle to the Boardwalk Mall and I got some roasted macadamia spread at Pick n Pay for R76.99, roughly $6 CDN.
The next day, March 11, we paid for an excursion around Mossel Bay arranged by the ship. Our bus took us first to Oudtshoorn, where there were plenty of ostrich farms. They are bred for their meat, leather and feathers. I saw ostrich steaks and biltong in the grocery stores in Cape Town and we saw plenty of ostrich souvenirs like dyed feathers, purses and (carved) eggs in stores all over South Africa:
Our tour drove to a scenic lookout on the outskirts of George:
