That guy, Mandela

We woke up in Jo'burg airport hotel, opened our screw top champagne (note I say 'opened' and not 'drank'!), had breakfast, caught a plane and was in Port Elizabeth before you could say 'dead as a dodo'!

The weather was pretty grim, we hoped this wasn't it for the next two weeks. We headed to the Boardwalk, which was a very monumental occasion - after knowing each other for 5.5 years this was our very first visit to a coffee shop together! How about that? We celebrated with a cookie and realised how cheap South Africa is!

Next stop the Donkin Reserve which looked okay but nothing special in our 2009 guide book. Not anymore. The reserve has been made into, what we can only guess, a memorial park for Nelson Mandela and has beautiful sculptures celebrating his amazing work for the people of South Africa.

Pictured is a small section of a sculpture called 'the voting line' which runs up a hill with Nelson Mandela at the peak.

The other side of the hill are mosaic steps with 67 quotes of Mandela, one for each year of his life in the public eye. The very first is at the end of this blip.
A beautiful memorial to a man who I admit
I know little about, but will hopefully know much more by the end of this trip.

We jumped in the car before sunset heading for Knysna, locking our doors as all tourists should!

Lovers of seafood, especially when by the coast, we were recommended a restaurant called Jays Jays which did not disappoint. We tried kingklip for the first time, calamari and three types of prawn. Finished off with South African singing from the waitresses, some old Afrikaans who thought they could do better and a piece of paper and a box of felts to decorate your finished wine bottle and hang from the ceiling for all to see. I did the task justice I must say!

A fabulous first day in a beautiful, welcoming country.

"It has been said a thousand and one times that what matters is not so much what happens to a person than the way such person takes it"

Nelson Mandela 1971.