Meandering around PE

I initially booked myself in at the King's Beach lodge for two nights so that I could spend a day in PE before hopping down the Garden Route. Although people generally say that it's an inferior tourist trap to the likes of Knysna and Storms River, I decided that it was worth a look anyway. Besides, I was only about 100 metres away from the beach: it would have been a wasted opportunity otherwise.

Port Elizabeth has some nice things, I'll grant you. I didn't get much of an opportunity to check out the night life, but during the day there are a few interesting tourism spots to head off to. The beaches are fairly standard – the water isn't as frigid as, say, the bloody freezing depths of Camp's Bay, but I'm disappointed by how small and rocky the shoreline is. What came to me as a pleasant surprise was a park that opens up on the beach – it's called “Happy Valley”, and possibly the most notable thing about this place is the inexplicable presence of a whole lot of cartoon character sculptures at various intervals along the path.

Holy crap, it's Asterix!

I had a nice long walk along some of the trails and inexplicably emerged near the Boardwalk Casino. I don't know why, but it was there. So I walked around a little bit. The casino's complex plays host to a whole lot of neat little shops and cafes surrounding a great big body of water. It had all kinds of stuff: a craft market, a nice and classy News Cafe (which for some annoying reason has a minimum age requirement of 23. 22-year-olds everywhere must feel pretty bleak about it) and even a miniature Oriental World (which is really just two restaurants and a Koi pond). It's also apparently the home of Algoa FM. Neato.

Oh dear. Somebody left the bath running again.

On my way back, I ran into a Sprite Zero pool party at the McArthur Pools. Hadn't heard about it – I was pretty much just in the right place at the right time. They had some music, some fancy commentators and a whole bunch of free Sprite, so I ultimately scored.

The spoils of war. Also, juggling sticks.

As a final note, the King's Beach lodge has a kitty. He is made of 90% fluff and cute. I'm gonna call him Mr. Snuffles. He practically launches himself at you for cuddling.

I dispatched the beast with a right hook to the jaw.

Anyway, that's all for PE. I'm currently sitting at Storms River (which is a tourism paradise situated in pretty much the middle of nowhere). More about this place in my next blog post.

Backpacking in Port Elizabeth

Okay, so now I'm on the road and pretty much backpacking for the first time (okay, not strictly the first time, but this is the first time that it'll actually count). Right now, I'm staying at a place known as the King's Beach backpacker's lodge, situated in Port Elizabeth. Amidst the towering hotels and fancy-schmancy complex buildings it seems not only homely, but remarkably out of place too.

A place to sleep that looks like a house instead of a business. Oh, the novelty!

The King's Beach lodge is a former family home which has now been converted to run as a full-time backpacker's establishment. Staying here is probably best described as pretty much like living in your very own house, except that it's ninety bucks a night and hogging the toast means that somebody will probably end up swearing at you in Spanish. Or French. Or Esperanto.

Beware! There's foreigners hiding behind the couch.

Heck, hearing a plain old South African English accent (or even a hearty dose of Afrikaans) addressing you here is something of a rarity. To my knowledge, I'm the only local aside from the owner who has set foot in this place for a while – the rest of my companions mostly hail from Europe and other far-flung environs. I suppose it's only foreigners who really have the money to maintain a lifestyle like this, but I still find it quite strange how I'm often considered the “odd one out” for engaging in a bit of domestic tourism.

The map is full of pins. Amazingly enough, they remembered to put one of them on South Africa.

Mind you, it's not as if I dislike the foreigners at all. In fact, it's damn interesting staying in this little slice of global heaven. I spent yesterday evening sitting in the living room and chatting with a couple of Swedish exchange students (who gave me some mad liquorice stuff to try), a cricket player from Holland and an eccentric old gent with a powerful Welsh accent who wears a nice hat and goes by the name of Robert.

Robert, like me, appreciates good headwear: this automatically makes him cool. I share a dorm with him and one other fellow who arrived on the same night as I did.

I don't have a fancy national flag by my bed. Everyone else does. I feel a bit naked.

The beds are pretty humble, but they make a refreshing change from couches. For a start, they're bunk beds, which is automatically cool. The furnishings one gets, however, are fairly Spartan: there's a single fluffy blanket to keep you warm and one fairly flat pillow to rest your head on. I didn't mind this all terribly much, but I hope that they provide extras during winter: it looks like it could get a bit cold otherwise.

I give it a 6.5 out of ten. Preferable to many couches, definitely, but I always have to be stricter when I'm scoring beds. And if you stay at a backpacker's, you can't expect royalty unless you're looking to pay for a private room.

Grahamstown wrap-up

In the dying hours of my sojourn in the little town of G, I paused for a moment to reflect on my time spent there. Unfortunately, I couldn't really think of much because I've just whiled away the past weekend by working – and playing – pretty damn hard. So I'm just going to mention how that all went instead.

First of all – and I cannot do enough to stress the importance of this knowledge – but anybody who visits Grahamstown absolutely has to try out a Ginos pizza. Not only do they put on enough cheese to fuel the plotlines of a dozen Mills and Boon romance novels, but they have something every Sunday known as the family-sized pizza special:

Many brave souls have perished trying to eat a whole one.

For about R100, you can get one of these monsters and a 2 litre drink of your choice. It may sound steep just like that, but a pizza of this size could feasibly – nay, easily – feed a party of four, and the generosity of the establishment becomes evident in the amount of topping material that you get. Ordering a chicken and feta pizza, for example, will cause the pizza box itself to groan under the weight of meat and cheese inflicted upon it. To this day, it still stands as the most glorious pizza I have ever eaten.

The weekend has also been full of a reasonable amount of hanging out at random places and staying up until all hours just to mess around and screw about with our internal clocks. One particular night had me passing out on this delicious little couch:

It's hidden somewhere under all these blankets and pillows.

I had a really, really glorious night on this thing – to be honest, though, that's not very difficult once you've stayed awake long enough. The couch itself is rather spartan and may be less than comfortable in vanilla form, but the amount of cushiony goodness that they managed to cram into my temporary bed more than made up for it.

Ever jumped into one of those awesome little ball pits as a kid? You know, the kind where you swim in a sea of colourful spheres and hide from your parents when it's time to leave?

Neither have I, but I bet I know what it feels like now. 8.5/10.

So anyway, I've finally hauled my butt out of Gtown and am now sitting at the King's Beach backpacker lodge in Port Elizabeth. I'm going to spend a day or two here and see what this Eastern Cape coastal town is really like, then it's on to Storms River. More info with my next blog post.

Admin note thing: Blog subscription

Hey there, faithful readers.

I initially tacked on Blogger's "follower" app in the hopes that people could receive updates from my blog as they happened. Turns out that it doesn't strictly work like that, so I've added a subscription widget on the right.

Subscribing should allow you to receive updates directly. I think. You know, as they happen. Without you having to check the Website to see if anything has changed.

Umm, let me know how that works out.

A stroll through Gtown

To prove to people that Grahamstown really does exist (and because I needed to go do some chores for my very own graduation ceremony in April), I had a stroll about town yesterday and took some pictures during the process. The good old town of G is a pretty historic place, and it brings out what's possibly becoming my borderline fetish for fancy architecture (I have a tendency to talk about buildings quite a bit).

Grahamstown's main zone is High Street, a road which leads out of the University and through the centre of town. Halfway down this street is Grahamstown's impressive cathedral (which apparently makes this place an official city) and a bunch of really old buildings from a time before man even had the Internet. Truly the dark ages.

These pictures weren't actually taken in black and white. I changed them to make them look fancy.

One of these ancient buildings happens to be a local outfitter and clothing supplier known as Birch's. Not only is it the primary supplier of academic gowns to in the country, but it also holds a special place in my heart for its selection of really nice hats, which includes my very own beloved fedora. My appreciation of quality headwear is pretty much another borderline fetish.

They're locked in cabinets for a reason. That reason is me.

Birch's has a rather novel pulley system that it uses to get notes and stuff across the store quickly and easily. It's quite odd to see this system of ropes and wires hanging from the ceiling in this day and age, but the system really works. I've personally witnessed a few airborn post-its whizzing about, and I almost wish I worked at Birch's just to be able to mess about with this sweet little system a little.

Zip-lining, anyone?

A little bit along the main street is Grahamstown's primary bus stop and the Frontier Hotel and an interesting statue that I've never actually looked at before (I've only ever walked past it in my quest for KFC, anyway).

Dude. Dude, wake up. That angel behind you has your wallet.

The statue is a war memorial concerning the deaths of soldiers who fought here at Albany. I suppose these sort of sculptures have always been a bit of a delicate matter, since they generally herald war heroes from an age of colonialism and oppression, but I always find historical monuments to be charming interesting. And in case you can't see clearly in my piccie, there's a gentleman in the front of the angel who appears to be asleep.

If any readers know the significance of sleeping figures in war memorials, I'd genuinely be interested in hearing what it is. I'm quite sure that it holds a specific meaning, but I can't call it to mind.

... or maybe he's dead. Gee, I only thought of that right now.