Friday 6^th October 2017

Somerset East to Port Elizabeth then on to Hermanus

On arrival in Port Elizabeth we went straight to the container depot to make ourselves known and see whether there was any more news on our container. They were expecting the ship to dock at 5pm, unload on Monday with a Customs inspection scheduled for 9am on Tuesday. No hope of getting to the rally start on Monday morning so the current plan is to drive the hire car across to Cape Town, attend the welcome dinner on Saturday night, get our documentation on Sunday, stay the night and then head back to Port Elizabeth (740kms) early Monday morning, stay the night there and be at the container depot when the Customs people do the inspection.

Hopefully on Tuesday as soon as the inspection is completed we can head across country towards Namibia and catch up with the rally in Sossusvlei on the rally rest day.  It will involve long days on the road but not much other choice.

We changed the 4WD to a small Toyota Corolla as no more Lesotho type dirt roads planned. We then headed along the Garden Route towards Cape Town. Didn’t do much sightseeing along here as we will be joining the South African Morgan Club on a run in this area after the rally. There has been a serious bush fire through this stretch and clearing crews are chopping down dead trees and removing rubbish.

The landscape is much more prosperous through here with large cultivated paddocks, travelling irrigators and olive groves and vineyards.

Southern Right whales pass by this area on route to Antarctica but we didn’t see any even though Hermanus is considered the best land based destination in the world from which to watch whales. There was a warning on the radio to surfers and swimmers that a whale carcass was in the water off St Francis Bay and it was attracting large numbers of sharks.

Stayed overnight in Hermanus, a busy town with lots of local and overseas tourists.