Along the Garden Route

We're sitting at the Port Elizabeth airport on Monday, February 2nd, awaiting our flight to Johannesburg. Our vacation is over and our mission duties officially start tomorrow. 

We left Cape Town Friday morning the 30th, after checking out of the Peninsula Hotel, and drove the beautiful Garden Route along the southern coast of Africa through George, Wilderness and Knysna, a spectacular 5-hour drive, through green rolling hills and lush forests between the mountains and the Indian Ocean, stopping only once to take a photo of Wilderness Bay, which, as you can see, is anything but wilderness. 



A view of Wilderness Bay from the Garden Route

We drove straight through to the Knysna (NIZE- nuh) Elephant Park and arrived in time to take the last tram of the day, at 4:00, and we had a ball feeding and petting and otherwise interacting with elephants.

We had our photo taken with Kiesha, an 8-year young female elephant at the sanctuary, where they currently have 18 elephants (mostly orphaned in the wild) and a herd of 18 zebras (ZEB-ruhs) they added last year. 

 

We then drove to the beautiful home of John Mason, my former counselor in the mission presidency, and his wife Roz, overlooking a golf course at Plettenberg Bay, where we stayed with them Friday and Saturday nights. The Masons took us to dinner Friday evening at an amazing restaurant called Hunter's Lodge, on a breathtakingly beautiful property tucked away in the forest. The food was as incredible as the setting! We had a great visit, and Martha fit in so comfortably. There are a lot of parallels between our relationships and it was fun to share and compare our stories.

With the Masons outdoors at Hunter's Lodge

Saturday morning, we had breakfast in another especially beautiful setting at Global Village Earth Cafe, then we visited three nature/animal parks all under the same management; Jukani (large cats - lions, tigers, leopards, jaguars, etc.), Birds of Eden and Monkeyland. It was a lot of walking, but beautiful and educational, and three quite different experiences. Then we had a lunch of bombas and Kingklip Gamberi outdoors on the ocean at Ristorante Enrico. Exhausted, we returned to the Mason's for a rest and just relaxed and visited through the evening, as the overcast skies developed into a cooling rainstorm. 

 

Breakfast at Global Village & Earth Café

 

Jaguars at Jukani

Birds of Eden - Scarlet Ibises and Spoonbill

 

Martha in Monkeyland

On Sunday morning, Martha, in her robe, saved the life of a tiny, newborn mole that was drowning in the Mason's pool outside our sliding glass doors. We attended church at the Knysna Branch where Bob was greeted royally by the longtime members there, including the branch president, Jeff Atkinson, who Bob called and set apart almost 9 years ago, and Martha says she felt like royalty. Bob bore his testimony and shared thoughts that tied in with President Atkinson's testimony and shared the experience of calling him as branch president in 2006. We were so touched by the humble testimonies of several recent converts from the nearby township about how the Church has changed their lives. Roz had packed us an unbelievable picnic lunch to break our fast, which we enjoyed both during the 3-hour drive to Port Elizabeth and again today on our safari.

We stayed at the Port Elizabeth Courtyard Hotel, next to The Boardwalk on Summerstrand Beach, with a panoramic view of the Indian Ocean from our room, and we had a delicious meal at Squires at the Boardwalk.



The Boardwalk in Port Elizabeth

This morning, after a lovely, filling buffet breakfast at the hotel, we drove to Addo National Park, a gigantic game reserve that is home to over 500 elephants, plus buffalo, lion, leopard, rhino, zebra, warthogs, kudu and various other antelope, for a self-guided safari. But the reason for it's existence is to allow us to see elephants in their natural habitat. 

 

It costs $5 a person to drive your own vehicle through the park, following your own hunches as to where the elephants may be. We saw no elephants the first two hours, but spotted numerous kudu and other animals at very close range, including families of warthogs and several herds (dazzles) of zebra and antelope. 

 

We took a break and finished the picnic lunch Roz had packed, and as soon as we left the picnic area, we saw a huge bull elephant having his own picnic on the acacia branches near the road. We didn't see another elephant for the next hour until we decided to stop at a waterhole for the second time on our way out of the reserve. As we approached the waterhole, we counted a herd of 13 elephants, mostly adult females, that included 3 baby elephants and was led by a very conscientious matriarch. As we were observing them, another mother elephant, chasing her baby calf, came scurrying over to join the others. 

 

 

The mom and baby kept our attention, as the baby tried to get a drink but her trunk wouldn't reach all the way to the water. The mother elephant filled her trunk and fed the baby from hers. We were totally fascinated as we observed interactions among the 15 elephants. After the mom and baby joined the herd and made one complete trek around the waterhole together, the original 13 left them behind and headed away toward the forest. Refreshed, the mom and baby soon followed but took a different path by themselves. What a day! Having finally seen our elephants in the wild, we drove the hour's drive to the Port Elizabeth airport. 

 

We arrived safely in Johannesburg Monday evening and were picked up by the Heatons, who go home tomorrow and turn their apartment, car, keys and phone over to us, as we take over and start our service as full-time missionaries.