Port Elizabeth and the South Coast

Step back another step. Yeah!Right!

Port Elizabeth beach from our hotel room.



Jeffereys Bay, the next town west of Port Elizabeth. A great bay on which to collect seashells.


A bridge along the coast route - the highest commercial bungee jump in the world is along this route - 800 meters about 2400 feet - like jumping from an airplane!!



The "Heads" at Knysna Bay.


Beautiful flora



The "Heads" from the bay side at Knysna



Looking down from the Eastern Head - a wooden platform, over a couple thousand foot straight drop to the rocks and ocean below - built in Africa without the benefit of OSHA - I was sure that I was going to collect big on the life insurance policy.



A church on the route home going through the town of Graaff-Reinet. It looks a little like the Assembly Hall on Temple Square in Salt Lake City.

Bulawayo Zimbabwe

Yes, can you believe it a Holiday Inn in Bulawayo. Still nicely maintained in spite of the economic turmoil that the country is in. Hopefully, the last election will throw out a very bad (dictator) leader and let the country return to the "Bread Basket of Africa" that it once was. I don't want to get into the politics involved but needless to say the country is desperate straits. As I drove from the airport to town, I passed two other cars. Nobody can drive because there is no petrol to buy even if they could afford it. There is no taxi/mini bus transportation because they can't get the petrol either. There is nothing in the stores to buy if you had the money to buy it. A third of the population has left the country to try and find work so that they can send money home to their families. The life expectancy has dropped from 60 to 35 years of age. But it's not Mugabe's (the dictator) fault. He blames the country's woes on the Americans and the British.

This is a chain of family restaurants out of South Africa, kind of like the Sizzler back home in the U.S. The first day I had lunch and ordered a hamburger, decent by African standards, but I paid a $142,000,000 for it. That's right! I didn't make a mistake with the 0's. It was one hundred and 42 million Zim dollars - which was equivalent to about US$5.00 The second day I ordered a hamburger again but I couldn't get it (at any price) because they had no buns!!

The country is beautiful as is attested to by this picture.

And as you can see from this picture of the main street in downtown Bulawayo, there are hardly any cars.

Hiatus Explanation

Just a note to explain why there hasn't been a post to the blog in a couple weeks. Jan has been very ill. She started with a urinary tract infection which was compounded by a bad case of the flu, which then culminated in a bad kidney infection. She ran the whole gamut of "goomba" which had me scared to death. As a result of my sometimes overly attentive care giving other duties such as the Blog took a back seat.

I am pleased to report that Jan is on the mend. She is still weak but growing stronger each day. She is working half days this week and this morning even whistled on her way to work!!