East London
Posted: 2/8/2005 11:45 PM (Permalink)
After a week of touring, and about 1000 kilometers of driving, it was time to meet up with my brother. The plan was to get up and have breakfast at our B&B and then drive to East London and meet up with Brian, Lynell and the boys at the zoo. It didn’t quite work out that way.
Before I go into that, I should say a word or two about our B&B. On the 9th and 10th we stayed at the Happy Lands Bed and Breakfast outside Addo. It is actually a citrus farm run by a nice couple. It turns out that the citrus harvesting season dovetails nicely with the tourist season so during the summer most of the farms around the area turn into B&Bs. It was a nice, quiet place to spend some time with a bunch of other European tourists. The only downside were the gigantic wasp things that kept invading our room. I killed at least half a dozen of those things. Yuck!
Back to our story, we had to fill up with gas in the morning so we stopped at the nearest petrol station. In South Africa, there is no such thing as “self service.” You have an attendant fill your tank for you just like in Oregon. After the guy had filled our tank, he pointed out to me that we had some fuel leaking out from the bottom. I got out and sure enough, there appeared to be a small leak in the fuel line. I’m not sure how it happened. The roads we drove on in Addo weren’t too bad. I called the rental company and asked them what to do and they said we needed to come to the airport in Port Elizabeth to exchange the car for a different one. Port Elizabeth is about 50 km from Addo, but it approximately the opposite direction from East London.
We really had no choice, so we drove down the Port Elizabeth. It didn’t too long though. We got a new car of identical model and year (different color though) and then we were off to East London.
The delay caused us to miss feeding time for the lions at the zoo. The East London zoo has a couple of little lion cubs. Zoos in South Africa appear to be a little different than the ones here in the States. “Feeding Time” meant that everybody gets to go in the pen with the little cubs and feed them. You are allowed to hold them and carry them around just like kittens. No, their momma wasn’t in there with them.
We did finally meet up at the zoo though. They let you get very close to the animals. Ever been this close to a giraffe?
No? Well how about this angle?
That’s one of my favorite shots of the whole trip so I had to put it in there.