Jeffery's Bay

This past weekend, several friends and myself traveled to Jeffery's Bay, which is about an hour west of Port Elizabeth on the coast.  It is kind of known to be a "surfer town" because there are such big waves, and so much shoreline since its a smaller town compared to Port Elizabeth.  Including myself, the nine of us rented two cars and a hostel for the weekend.  Driving here is crazy!  As you probably could have guessed, they drive on the left side of the road here, and all of the cars are manuals.  SO, driving was interesting to say the least!  It is also normal here to blow through stop signs, ignore speed limits and just basically do whatever you want.  This is probably extremely alarming to my parents, but ignoring the traffic laws isn't a big deal, because I haven't seen one road police officer yet.  Since there arnt much for traffic laws, we made the 85km trip in about a twenty five minutes to a half hour.  On the way, we visited Seaview Lions Park, which is a nature reserve that has, obviously, lions, giraffes, impala, zebra and meerkat.  We were able to see everything while we were there!  My favorite was obviously the giraffes!  We were able to get within about ten feet of several giraffes, so that was exciting since I had always wanted to see a giraffe!

After Seaview, we arrived at Jeffery's Bay, where we met the hostel owner, who was anybody's definition of "an old surfer dude."  He has long, wavy hair, tan, wrinkled skin and you could tell he has lived a large percentage of his life in the ocean, surfing.  He had owned the hostel his whole life, and as he told us, his life has always been very simple.  He has never used or owned a computer!  He told us he loves the small town life of Jeffery's Bay, loves surfing, and dosent want anything else.  It was interesting to sit and listen to him talk about his life in South Africa, and it was enjoyable to just enjoy the night life of a small surfer town.  On Sunday, we visited the beach, where it was incredibly windy!  Its not even surf season yet, and the waves are too big for me to even attempt to fight.  They are at least two to three times my height!  Unfortunately, while attempting to take a picture with some friends in the water, I stepped right on a jellyfish and it stung me!  Instantly, it hurt pretty bad.  Some of the beach lifeguards gave me vinegar to pour on it, but that only helped for like a minute, and then it just went back to stinging.  It stung and throbbed for about eight hours and left sort of what looked like a burn mark on the side of my foot.  Overall though, it was an enjoyable weekend with good company and I'm sure we will return to Jeffery's Bay again soon!