I got to visit the Sea Otters Lodge in Kini Bay just west of Port Elizabeth today and was stunned by its perfect setting. Walking out onto the back garden you are literally on the beach. At the bottom of the garden is a two seater swing with the perfect view. I could see myself spending a day sitting there with a drink, a book and lots of peace and quiet.
A vygie growing between the sandstone rocks on top of the Maitlands dune field
One of the giant sand dunes at the mouth of the Sundays River
I popped down to the beachfront last weekend to have a look at the guys (and gals) from NSRI Station 6 here in Port Elizabeth doing an airlift rescue exercise. With summer season at hand and more and more boats out there (both commercial as well as recreational), it is important for their guys to be sharp at all times. I have the utmost respect for the NSRI crews as all of them do it purely on a volunteer basis…
The southern coastline of Port Elizabeth from Cape Recife to Schoenmakerskop is generally knows as the Wildside. It's mainly because the coast is rugged with lots of rocks and little sand. Its also open to the prevailing south-westerly wind which means that it can become quite stormy out there outside the shelter of the Bay.
The Colchester Dunefield is situated at the mouth of the Sundays River which is the eastern boundary of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan area. The Colchester Dunefield is part of the Alexandria Dunefields which are the biggest coastal dunefield in the Southern Hemisphere. The Alexandria Dunefields was put on the UNESCO World Heritage Sites' tentative list as a possible future UNESCO site. I got the following information off that list:Alexandria Coastal Dunefield is the largest, most impressive and least degraded…
A couple of chokka boats at anchor in Algoa Bay at sunrise. Chokka is the squid that calamari is made from and the coast around Algoa Bay and St Francis Bay are the main fishing grounds in South Africa for it. Locally it is known as white gold. The chokka boats normally come into the bays to shelter against strong winds before heading out again.
The National Sea Rescue Institute is for South Africa what the Coast Guard is for the USA. The difference? The NSRI is purely a volunteer organisation. Port Elizabeth is services by Station 6 which is situated in the Port Elizabeth Harbour. I feel the the volunteers of the NSRI are amazing guys and gals. They are divided into crews and each crew is on duty for a week in a month. This means that they are on standby 24 hours…
While we are in the area, we might as well take you along Marine Drive between Summerstrand and Schoenmakerskop. We featured the beacon the other day. If you travel away from town from there, you enter a Marine reserve, which, until recently, was covered with alien vegetation. However a concerted effort has been made to clear the Port Jackson Willows and now there are views across the dunes to the sea where you could previously only see scraggly bushes. The…