Monday 28 Oct 2013

L: I got up early, in the mist at Storms River Mouth, and decided that birding wasn't going to work so went back to bed until Steve was ready to get up. We had coffee and breakfast and put on a load of washing. While that was going, I went off to find the birds and was not disappointed especially with the little sunbirds which did not seem to notice how close I was.

Steve had started packing up the ground tent and all our goodies so we showered after the washing was done and set off to Storms River to cross the Van Stadens bridge. It was so high and really pushes the vertigo feeling. Steve turned back and I went on and took all the photos. When I got to the other side Steve had braved it and came and joined me. It is beautiful.

On the way back, a huge black eagle flew over our heads and I got a couple of pics. It has a really scary face.

S: We decided to go the rural route to get to Jeffreys Bay so we turned off onto the R102 and enjoyed going past all the dairy farms with thousands of cows in the fields. We could safely travel at 80kph without people and trucks coming up behind us at 140.

Nicole, one of our daughters had been sourcing places for us to stay in J-Bay and found a place and booked us in for 2 nights. We arrived an hour earlier than checking in time so we took the opportunity to visit the local Billabong factory shop. We shopped up a storm :-)

We arrived at our accommodation, called Aloe Again!! and settled in, having a self-catering place, the first solid structure in 10 days. It is a lovely place with all the amenities. Thanks SafariNow.com. We have a double room with en-suite and private courtyard plus kitchenette. We use an upstairs kitchen/dining area/games room which is shared and have access to the outside garden and braai. A backpackers with a difference.

We are about 50m from the beach which is right where Supertubes is, the premium surfing wave in the whole country or so we hear from the surfers. We took a nice walk along the beach enjoying the afternoon sunshine. We had been there for a while and we took a seat up on the promenade. I pointed out some “surfers” to Steve who had the camera and when he trained it over the “surfers”, discovered that they were ,indeed, dolphins!! We managed to snap a few shots of the large pod, swimming South. How lucky, are we? It seems that the dolphins swim up northwards in the morning and back down again in the late afternoon.

L: I popped into the garden to see the braai area and heard a “zaay-ter” sound (as described in my bird book) and quickly grabbed the camera. I was so excited to see my first African Paradise Flycatcher.

We had an early supper of sushi as we didn't feel like cooking and didn't really have a lunch today. It was great, right on the beach front.

We headed home and caught up on loading pics and blogged.

Bed......