Day 8

Day eight
Friday 24th January 2020
Current position
Seals Backpackers
Kouga Local Municipality
Eastern Cape
6312
South Africa
S 34°11.93904'
E 24°49.90788'
Apart from the poor weather a day or so ago we have enjoyed our stay at Port Elizabeth. The Treetops Guesthouse has been good and Steve the owner has been most helpful.
This morning he offered us a lift to the Airport get our hire car but we graciously declined as it was only a short Uber ride away.
The check out process for the car took a lot longer than expected but eventually it all got done and half an hour later we were hesitantly feeling our way in an all but new Nissan Almera. We had no instruction whatsoever from Thrifty other than it's in space number seven still it didn't take too long to work out what all the switches did. Finding out how to adjust the door mirrors took the longest. In no time we even had my phone's satnav connected to the cars speakers via Bluetooth.
They drive on the left in South Africa but on the motorways they can under and overtake. The more minor roads have strange crossroads with each adjoining road having its own stop sign. When there are four cars at each of these stop signs I have not yet worked out who has the right of way. At he moment I'm hanging back and politely letting the others go first.
We had an easy drive to tonight's Backpacker Hostel of course stopping on the way for coffee at a farm shop. We also visited a new Shopping Mall to get some cough mixture to help my cold which I must have picked up on the plane. Part of the afternoon was spent parked up watching the surfers trying to ride the waves crashing on a golden sandy beach. I have to say feeling rather groggy I pushed the seat back and had a bit of a doze. We felt like two old fogies as we snoozed in our non descript car.
Mid afternoon we made our way to what we thought was a Backpacker Hostel. We had an awful job trying to find the place as the directions via Google maps given by Booking.com were incorrect and even the telephone number was wrong. After about an hour of driving up and down Ros went into a local hairdresser's and was given directions to an hotel which was almost next door. It turned out that the hotel let out some of its chalets under the name of Seals Backpackers as they didn't want these lets to conflict with their other more lucrative bookings. Our room was a small self contained chalet which is fine but it means that we have still not managed to stay in what we would call a proper backpacker hostel.
Cape St. Francis is the back of beyond with no restaurants or cafés so we had no option but to eat at the hotel which was fine as the food and service were yet again very good.
Back in our room Ros spent more time arranging our itinerary for the next couple of days as we start to encroach on the Garden Route. My orders were to book somewhere to stay for a couple of nights in Plettenberg which I duly did hoping all will be well.