Thursday 5^th October 2017

Bloemfontein to Somerset East

The ship with our container is now scheduled to dock tomorrow (it was to be 2am today) and the docking keeps getting put back. It has got to the stage that we cannot plan anything because we simply do not know when the car will be released. At least it has been confirmed that the ship is in the Port Elizabeth harbour (and hopefully our container is on it and wasn’t left behind when ship transfers took place in Sri Lanka).

We are now heading towards Port Elizabeth, via the N6. Good roads and trucks keeping to the left onto the verge to let cars pass. From Queenstown we went west across to Cradock (formerly a military outpost established in 1813) then down the N10 to Somerset East, which puts us in striking distance of Port Elizabeth tomorrow. Dried grass for hundreds of kms and lots of termite mounds again. Large groves of orange trees.

At Somerset East which is a pretty little town in the Karoo heartland with Cape Dutch and Victorian architecture we are staying at a deconsecrated Catholic church complex. Apparently Father Scully was skilled with electrics and would fix parishioners electrical problems for a meal and some whisky. The former 100 year old church is now the dining room with a bar at one end containing a malt whisky collection. Most people coming through here are interested in fishing, fly fishing and hunting.