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.