Thursday Oct 25th – Sunday Oct 28th – Mazeppa Bay

Firstly I have to report up front, while we have had a wonderful time over the last four days and took lots of “fishing” photographs, there are no photographs of an actual fish!
We arrived at Mazeppa Bay early afternoon Thursday after a 160K drive from East London via Butterworth, of which the last 60K is all on dirt roads and not particularly well graded – a bone shaking ride without a four wheel drive. We were renting a five bedroom cottage just a short walk down the hill to a sandy beach and also nearby rocks to fish from. There’s also a great view from the cottage of “the island” which is shown on a few of our photos, and reached by means of a narrow, swaying suspension bridge. We filled the cottage with our party of 10 + 3 dogs [ourselves, Barry & Anne, Shaun & Nikki, Miranda & Riaan, Miranda’s 3 yr. old (Nathan), Riaan’s 7 yr. old (Matthew), Shaun’s Rottweilers (Captain & Morgan), and Nikki’s Staffie (Chilli)]. On our arrival, the southeaster was blowing, the sea was wild and Shaun was pessimistic about our possibilities of catching anything. After unpacking and working on the philosophy that you can’t catch anything unless your line is in the water, we made our way down to the rocks and started to fish, all to no avail. We were up at 5.30 AM on Friday but the sky was gray and the southeaster was still blowing and didn’t let up all day. Nevertheless, we moved from spot to spot and fished hard all morning but still nothing. By lunchtime, the gale was blowing so hard we called it a day. In the afternoon, the tide was out and the two B&As braved the gale and walked to the island to “blow the cobwebs away” which it surely did. Alison had put her swimsuit on and said she would have a dip in the surf. She made good on her bold promise on the way back from the island.

Saturday’s weather was petty much a repeat of Friday except that the sky was blue, blue, blue. After our early morning fishing session and breakfast, Alison and I walked out to the island and took some pictures and video before continuing our walk a couple of miles eastwards along the coast to some massive dunes that come down to the beach and sea. It was a lovely walk and the views were spectacular. In the afternoon Shaun, Barry and I continued fishing while the remainder of the group swam and sunbathed in a sheltered spot below the cottage. A number of them got somewhat sunburned!

On Saturday evening, we were having a braai when we heard a helicopter overhead and then realized it had landed a few hundred yards to the right of our cottage, which are basically “cow” fields above the beach and certainly not a helicopter landing pad. (There is a helicopter pad almost directly behind the cottage we were staying in, used by guests of the hotel). Riaan went to observe without getting too close and reported that men in a pickup truck came to the helicopter and had a conversation with the pilot/crew. After about 30 minutes or so, the helicopter took off again and then with its spotlights shining down, moved around and landed at the back of the main Mazeppa beach. We all wondered what was going on but went back to our beer, wine & braai. During the evening, the southeaster had died down and then changed to a gentle westerly – things were looking up!

We woke up early morning Sunday to a glorious looking day and Shaun, Barry & Bob went early to fish from the island for the first time. As we walked across the main beach we could see the huge helicopter that had us wondering the evening before, sitting on the grass at the back of the beach. Although the conditions seemed favorable, there were no fish caught. We were walking back to the cottage for breakfast across the beach and Anne and Nikki were admiring the helicopter and taking pictures. They had also gleaned the story of the copter from a lady who was staying at the hotel. Apparently the helicopter and crew had been up in Swaziland fighting fires and were on their way back to Port Elizabeth. Due to the strength of the southeaster headwind, they had run low on fuel and needed to stop to refuel (they had their own 44 gallon drum in the cargo area of the copter). They also didn’t know precisely where they were as they were just following the coastline to East London and then on to PE. They saw lights on the coast and found a place to put down. The pickup truck belonged to the lady’s husband – they were staying at the hotel and had seen the helicopter land and he drove over to see if they needed any help. They refueled the helicopter in the field and then when they found there was a hotel, decided to stay overnight but first moved the helicopter to the back of the beach (don’t know why they didn’t use the hotel pad—we guess the pad wasn’t big enough for such a big copter). As we were hearing this story, the crew of the helicopter came onto the beach surrounded by a bunch of adults and children. The crew took off the helicopter doors and the people piled in, then one of the crew called to us “We’re just going to have a quick spin around the Bay, we can take two more if you’d like to come”. Five minutes later, Nikki and I are strapped into the copter with about ten other people and we take off and are hovering above Mazeppa Bay. What an unbelievable thing to happen right out of the blue. We flew over the cottage and some of our group were standing outside and waved to us as we went over. They could clearly see Nikki as she was on the outside (and the door was off!). We flew over the Bay and right up the side of the dune where I had photographed Alison the day before. It was all quite magical.
With the weather being so good, we abandoned breakfast around the table and decided on fishing and a picnic beyond “One Mile Beach”, which is a long walk in a westerly direction, crossing firstly the fields where the helicopter first landed and then a mile long stretch of beach to more rocks (where we fished from) and another beach past the rocks (where Riaan, the women, the boys and dogs paddled in rock pools and played in the sand, and Riaan, Alison and Nikki also swam in the sea). The conditions were almost ideal and it was just terrific to be there – but we still didn’t catch a photographable fish (Shaun caught a couple of small blacktails).
At 1:30 PM our allotted time was up and we walked back to the cottage, packed up and drove back to East London. It has been a fabulous few days that will be remembered for a long time.

Monday Oct. 22nd- Wednesday Oct. 24th – East London

Monday morning, after preparing our text and photos for a blog posting, we drove to the car rental agency at the EL airport and reported our incident at the traffic stop the day before. They phoned PE where we had picked the car up, and were told they had the new license and would fax a copy (which is now on the car) and overnight the original. From the airport we made our way back to town to head to the internet café but it soon became apparent that all the traffic lights were out and there was great confusion. It turned out that there was a city wide power outage due to a “failed” transformer. The outage lasted from 10.30am until after 3.30 pm – no posting on Monday so we returned home. Barry was already home and Ann came home shortly after due to the power failure. I went with Barry to watch him play doubles squash (similar to racquet ball) at the Beacon Bay Club then after a beer, we returned to dine at home and catch up on our respective happenings.

Tuesday we were able to make a five day posting which made me feel good if not anybody else! Barry and I did some shopping (beer and wine) for our Mazeppa Bay excursion, before we watched the Springbok cricket team lose a second one day international to Pakistan and they are now losing 2 to 1 in a five match series. While we were watching we suddenly had a very unusual occurrence – a hailstorm with hailstones of quite large proportions. It was over very quickly, but not before Alison had snapped a couple of pictures as proof of this phenomenon. In the evening, we went out to dinner to a local fish restaurant and Alison and I had a local SA fish that we used to enjoy, Kingklip – it was delicious. We returned home for coffee and after dinner drinks and watched a musical DVD, Celtic Women, recorded live at Slane Castle, Ireland – quite brilliant.

This morning, Wednesday, I arose to greetings, cards and phone calls for my 66th birthday. We’ll be celebrating this evening with a braai at Shaun & Nikki’s home (the newly weds). Tomorrow morning we leave for Mazeppa Bay on the remote Wild Coast until Oct. 29th, so there will be no posting for a while. When we next post, I hope we will have some pictures of fish, although dinner for each evening has already been planned and not one of the menus has fish on it, so confidence cannot be running too high!

Wednesday Oct 17th – Sunday Oct. 21st – Port Elizabeth (the Windy City!)

The south easterly gale had finally dropped about 11pm on Tuesday, but by 6am on Wednesday there was a howling Westerly gale blowing. Port Elizabeth is known as The Windy City but we have been reminded of just how windy it can be, especially at this time of year. Wednesday was a very busy day for us. Warwick had sent out an email to all the ZOBOs to report on the Sunday reunion and as a result, on Tuesday I was in contact with David Betheldo who now lives in Cape Town and whom we haven’t seen since he came to see us in Los Angeles not long after we moved there in 1985. He said he was coming to Port Elizabeth on Wednesday to visit his suture factory (news to us) on and he’d like to see us and show us around. We met him at the factory at 9am and had a tour of the facilities. I was amazed to find that they manufacture over 400 combinations of needles and “thread” for stitching up inside and outside the body, all manufactured in a completely sterile environment, so that part of the operation was viewed through observation windows. It was a very interesting experience. We are hoping to see David again when we get to Cape Town again in a couple of weeks time. From there we dashed to an appointment at the bank where we met Vic and then we dashed to meet Vic’s accountant for lunch. It was a long lunch. Wednesday evening eight of us had dinner at “The Stage Door”, a pub/restaurant that has been going forever and looked no different from the day we left SA. Vic joked that it was the same sawdust on the floor (I think it was a joke!). To give you an idea of how far a dollar goes in SA (except for car hire), here are the approximate details of the meal. We started with a few beers, seven of us had the fillet steak, chips & 2 veg special (one had fish). We had four bottles of wine with dinner, then a couple of after dinner drinks and the bill with the tip per couple was R260 or less than $19 each!
We went to bed quite exhausted.

Thursday morning I went back to the Virgin Active gym to work out (it was too windy go for a walk). The same day we met two of my old work colleagues from my Shatterpufe Saftey Glass Co. days. We had lunch with Mike & Felicity Campbell at Lavenders and then we went to an internet café to post Monday & Tuesday before a quick visit to Wout & Vilia Offerman (see earlier blog). Early evening we stopped off to see Mike & Felicity at their new home before we went off to dinner at Lawrence & Imelda Augustine’s home where we had a lovely curry. Lawrence recently celebrated 45 years at Shatterprufe. Both Mike and Lawrence were IT guys back in 1968 when it was then known as Data Processing! We keep in touch with emails but it was good to see them again.

Friday I started the day with a long walk on the beach and then in the evening we drove out to Amsterdamhoek where we had been invited to dinner at the home of Rob & Jenny McWilliams and then stay overnight. Their home had been devastated in the 2006 floods (they live on the banks of the Swartkops River) and they have had to rebuild a good portion of their home. They took the opportunity to make some improvements which included the building of a new guest wing, and we had the privilege of being the first guests to use it. Netty Green also joined us for the evening, as did other friends of the McWilliams, John & Myrna Mowbray. Rob cooked some magnificent prawns for the main dinner dish and a good time was had by all.

Saturday morning we were up very early (it is already light by 5.30) and we went to Bluewater Bay beach for a walk along the shore and to the mouth of the Swartkops River with PE around the bay in the distance. Breakfast at the McWilliams and then back to town where we met Brian Rainbow and Peter & Jenny Aston for lunch at Barneys, a sports bar on the beachfront. In the evening we went out for an early evening meal with the Wolffs and Hendersons before returning to the Wolff’s flat to watch on TV the final of the 2007 World Cup Rugby in Paris at 9pm, where South Africa (Springboks) were playing England. The Springboks won 15-6 with all the scoring being from penalties, no “tries”(equivalent to an American football team winning a match with no touchdowns – pretty boring!). There is much celebration going on in SA as I write this blog as the “Boks” have just returned to Johannesburg from France. We had a little pool for predicting the winning score, which Alison won as she was the closest. We were late to bed.

Sunday we were up early as we had a very full schedule and needed to get moving. We had to pack everything as we were vacating the flat and would be making our way to East London. We stopped off at the Offermans and left a suitcase there as we did not want to take everything to East London.

I had contacted the people (Meneer J.D. Steyn) who had bought our home in Bluewater Bay (in 2004) and asked if we could visit them to see how the house now looked. Danie Steyn was very excited to have us come and look at the house which we did. It was a very emotional visit for me as I had owner-built the house over a two year period in 1973-75 and it had been quite a wrench to actually sell the house. Fortunately, Danie has made some terrific changes to the house, completely remodeling the kitchen and all the bathrooms, retiling all of the living area, adding a lapa, and building what I think is about the nicest home “pub” I have seen. The house really looks great. I was also able to inform Danie about the double front doors and the oak paneling in the entrance hall. I have promised to send him a series of photographs of me building the house. Danie and his wife said it is the nicest house they have ever lived in and they are there to stay. We are welcome to visit anytime, but please be sure to come when we can sit at the pub and have a few “dops”. It was a wonderful visit and something of a closure for me to see how great the house now looks. Danie was very happy to let me viseo, so I have got good video of all of the living area and Melanie & Clare's old bedrooms.

We were a bit behind schedule as we had to drive to King Williams Town, where we would be having lunch with Lorraine Rudolph. Alison and Lorraine were working side by side as conveyancing secretaries at the Borman. Scharges & Solomons law firm in PE when Alison received the phone call from the adoption agency in late September 1977 that our long-awaited baby (Clare) was available for us, and could we be at their office to receive her the next day. Lorraine saw Alison start to cry and was really concerned that she’d received some bad news; but of course it was tears of elation, and within a couple of hours the whole office staff, organized by Lorraine, were standing around Alison’s desk giving her a baby shower! Lorraine moved on to KWT a number of years ago, but her friendship with Alison has continued. She prepared a most enjoyable Sunday lunch, and it was a lovely visit.
On the way to KWT we were stopped by traffic police at a random road check where they checked driving licenses and car licenses. It was something of a shock to be told that the car license of our hire car (picked up on Oct. 16th) had expired at the end of September! Fortunately, the female traffic cop was sympathetic to our situation and declined to fine us R500, instead telling us to visit our car hire company in East London as soon as we could. We finally arrived at the Murphy’s home in East London at around 5pm, just in time to watch the Brazilian Formula 1 Grand Prix, the last race of the season. Hamilton had another “incident” which resulted in him not winning the World Championship which he had looked set to do before the Shanghai Grand Prix two weeks ago. We got Chinese takeaways in for supper, reminiscent of the many Sunday evenings we shared with the Murphys at each others homes when we all lived in Port Elizabeth. We collapsed into bed after an exhilarating and exhausting day.

Monday Oct 15th – Tuesday Oct 16th (Bosches and Bosches)

I didn’t mention that on Sunday we passed by the PE school last attended by Melanie when we lived here, Collegiate Girls’ High School, and Alison took at picture for memory’s sake.
On Monday I finally woke up feeling well enough to join Christian on his walk again and was more than pleased that I was able to. We then went to the home of Mark and Amanda Bosch for lunch, and met their children Jenna and Andrew, who were happily playing with their pet rabbits when we arrived. However, when it came to photograph time, as you will see, Jenna didn’t want to cooperate!. Mark is the son of Kenny & Lyn Bosch who also lived in Bluewater Bay all the time we were there. Mark, and his sisters Debbie & Kim, all went to the little Redhouse Primary School (at least 5 or 6 in a class!), as did Melanie for 5 years, and they were all in “Nippers” together (junior life saving club) and were friends and competitors. Mark is an entrepreneur and has a partnership in a large and well known game farm in the Eastern Cape area called Shamwari. Mark was off to France on Wednesday to watch the final of the World Cup Rugby – a last minute decision because the “Boks” got to the final. It was a nice visit.
After lunch we went once more to the internet café to post Sat & Sun on the blog. Alison bought a new pair of slippers as the Meyers’ Rotweiler had somehow got hold of one of hers and chewed it to pieces. Rather the slipper than me. In the evening, I joined the boys for “snooker night” and this time I was able to stay for the whole evening. This week we were joined by Brian Rainbow who had been overseas the previous Monday. We have known Brian and Gayle since 1968/69. A good time was had by all but I don’t think I played any better!

Tuesday morning, Christian had a bank appointment and did not walk. There was an absolutely howling south easter gale blowing, although the sky was blue, blue, blue. Alison and I braved the wind and walked along the beachfront towards Summerstrand. We noted that they are building Radisson time share units opposite where the old Summerstrand Hotel used to be (knocked down and replaced with other time share units). Perhaps I will get to use some of my Radisson points in the future as I earn plenty from my stays at the Radisson in Camp Hill, Pennsylvania.
After a quick shower and “leftovers” for lunch, we headed out to the airport and returned the Toyota Avanza and replaced it with a Renault Clio. We did not need such a big car just for the two of us. Renting cars here is one of the few expenses that cost considerably more than it would in the USA. The Avanza was $60 a day and if you want unlimited mileage there is no discount for a monthly rental, so $1,800 for the month.

Tuesday evening we had dinner at a lovely restaurant in what was an old house in Cape Road, “Wicker Woods”, with the senior Bosches, Kenny & Lyn. They also brought another old Bluewater Bay resident and friend, Lerina Scott. We all go back many years: Kenny and Lyn to when Melanie was a baby, and Lyn & Alison took Kim and Melanie to the local clinic for weighing, immunizations, etc.; and Lerina to Clare’s first days at “play school” with Lerina’s son Sean, as well as being involved with us with the Bluewater Bay Methodists. Another lovely evening of reminiscing and catching up with old friends.

Saturday Oct.13th- Sunday Oct 14th (Port Elizabeth)

I started the day still feeling lousy with my cold while Alison was feeling much better. We had a lazy morning in the apartment. At noon we picked up Sybil Jali from her flat in Havelock Street, PE, and drove back to the beachfront to have lunch at Café Dolce at the Boardwalk. We had an outside table as it was a sunny (but windy) day. Our connection with Sybil goes back many years to when she was still in high school, and came to work for us as a relief when our permanent nanny/housemaid, Patricia, had her annual holiday, usually over Christmas and New Year. Sybil’s own family weren’t interested in her continuing her education, and we supported her to the extent that she was able to attend Fort Hare University through grants we helped her obtain, and a bit of our own money. After student unrest at Fort Hare, we helped Sybil get transferred to the University of Cape Town, where she completed her studies and obtained a Social Studies degree to enable her to become a social worker. We’d already moved to Los Angeles when Sybil was at UCT, but with fundraising from members of the United Methodist Women group at our church, her last couple of years there were financed, and it was indeed a wonderful sight to see Sybil in her cap and gown upon graduation! Sybil married soon after she started work as a social worker in King Williams Town, not too far from her home village. However, the marriage ended after a few years, and Sybil has since lived and worked in PE. She’s at present working at the Retiree Help Desk at the General Motors plant in PE. Over the years she’s considered us to be her “parents” and calls us Ma and Pa. Not many people know we have a black African “daughter” aged 47! It appears, however, that Sybil was mixed up with an older sister when it became necessary for them to have birth certificates, because the paperwork reflects her older sister having been born in 1963, and Sybil in 1960. So it’s quite likely she’s only 44. Whatever her age, it’s been great to have stayed in touch over the years, and to see her whenever we are in PE.

After we had taken Sybil home, I had volunteered to see if I could help Christian with the music on his PC. He had a huge library of music on Musicmatch Jukebox software, but support for that software was recently discontinued and “turned off”. In the USA, we were able to automatically move it to Yahoo Jukebox. Apparently, this move was not supported in SA and so Christian could no longer play his “playlists” of music that is piped all over the house. I was able to find Windows Media Player in his “programs” and moved all his tracks into the library and he was back in business. We opened a bottle of champagne and Alison joined us in the celebration!

On Saturday night we went to Vic’s beachfront flat to watch the first semi-final of the World Cup Rugby, England v France. France were huge favorites and nobody expected England to win – but they did!

Sunday was another slow start to the day and I was still feeling lousy from my cold. At 11:15 we met Tandi Moni and her two sons, Paul and Wilson, at the Swartkops Police Station (just a well known landmark known to both parties!) and then we drove back to their home in Motherwell, another PE “suburb”. Tandi was married to John Moni whom we knew from the early 1970s when he was still a schoolboy and came to our house every weekend to help me in the garden and then ultimately helped me to build the house next door. Sadly, John passed away at 50 from the complications of diabetes. We have kept in touch with Tandi and are helping her to ensure that Wilson, with one more year in high school, gets a good education.

Sunday afternoon we had a reunion braai of the “ZOBO” club (Zwartkops Old Boys Organization), which is a name we gave ourselves for those “retired” members of Swartkops Round Table 195 who reached the age of 40 and thus had to retire as active members of Round Table. It was a fun afternoon and our host Arthur Ahlschlager had a detailed scrap book of all the various dinners, meetings, fund raising events, community service activities, etc., that we had been involved in over our active years. We were all laughing as we recalled different events from way back when!Sunday night we had planned to join Vic & Carol at Chippie & Pam Henderson’s to watch the second semi-final of World Cup Rugby – South Africa v. Argentina, but we were too tired and just watched it at the apartment. As expected, South Africa won fairly easily and will be playing England in the final next Saturday night. If you have followed earlier posts, you will have seen that South Africa has already played England because they were in the same “pool” of teams in the qualifying rounds (where all the teams in one pool play each other, and only the top two go through to the knockout section of the competition). South Africa annihilated England in this qualifying round, so England will have to play miraculously if they are going to stand a chance next weekend