Journey to Jeffries Bay

It was very cold during the night and I struggled to keep warm even with all my sleeping layers on. I therefore slept fitfully but reasonably well and got up at 6am for a shower and some light breakfast from the truck with my fellow travellers. We left the hostel at 8am for a short and uneventful journey to our next destination at Jeffries beach, Surf Vibe Hostel, which was a surfer's hostel with a nice view over the long beach which is apparently one of the best places to surf in the world although there wasn't much sign of that big surf on the morning we arrived - apparently, the big surf happens in the winter season rather than the current summer season. We arrived early and had to wait for our dorm rooms to become available, so we rested in the hostel bar and had some lunch. I had a very nice greek salad and a bowl of chips.
I went for a walk along the beach with my fellow travellers Phil, Bro, Graham and Kristin in the mid-afternoon when the intensity of the sun had lessened. The beach was long and wide with bright white sands. There were quite a lot of local families on the beach, but there was still a lot of space on such a large beach. I went for my first swim in the Indian ocean and found that the waves were bigger than they looked from a distance as I rode up into the breaking waves or dived under them. It was good fun and the water was cool but not too cold. I returned to dry off and chatted with Kristin and Phil and Bro who had joined us from the local town. I went for another fun swim, with the big waves rolling in before we walked back along the beach to the hostel.
We rested in the hostel through the late afternoon and early evening and then walked past a local township and into the town to find a restaurant called 'Broohaha' that we had earlier identified as a place where we could eat dinner and watch Liverpool play against Norwich in the Premier League. One of the limiting factors in South Africa is that the electric power regularly goes off as part of a 'load shedding' programme to save electricity. Every part of South Africa is affected by these regular planned shutdowns which last several hours at a time. Everything is shut off including retail and industry. Apparently, the government is actually selling its electricity to Zimbabwe as part of a previous contract even though it can't provide enough electricity for it's own people. South Africans are understandably very unhappy about it. The restaurant we chose for dinner had their own generator so that we could continue watching the football when the power went off at 9pm. We ordered food and ate and chatted while watching the football. Luckily, Mane scored what proved to be the winning goal for Liverpool just before the electricity shutdown at 9pm and it took a couple of minutes to get the generator to bring back the tv pictures. We got taxis back to the hostel as it would have been dangerous to walk back in the dark. The surfers hostel was in 'party' mode with young people drinking around the fire pit and candles lighting the bar due to the lack of electricity. We got an early night in the dorm as we had an early start the following day. I managed to go off to sleep quite quickly considering the noise outside. Later at night I could hear big booms in the distance which I assumed to be distant thunder claps.Read more