Nope, What?!?, Nope

Port Elizabeth is near where I'm staying and has a dive center, so I figured it would be a fun inclusion on the road trip.

It's also got a mall, so I figured I'd cut off my 3+ months of hair growth.

Neither went to plan.

The dive center doesn't run dives on Monday nor do they rent wetsuits besides to their divers. nope, and nope. I figured I could kick out anyway and snorkel around a pier just to enjoy the view, but I'd wait a bit for the sun to rise.

So off to the mall for a haircut. Boy did I get my hairs cut! I guess that's a yep, not a nope, but... Do I still have hair? Nope. I do not. It'll grow back. At least I don't much need to carry shampoo anymore. Bonus.

I strenuously object to racial profiling but have to concede that everyone else in the hair place had much darker, courser, tightly curly hair than I did. That may have been relevant to my experience. Also everyone else there was getting much shorter styles, which may also have had some relevance. At least I gained an experience! That'll be worth it, in retrospect. Call it a type II experience.

Shrugging off that experience, I headed for the water. When I spoke to the dive shop they said surface temps are about 20° (68F) and I figured I could tough it out for 30-60 minutes while Bruce ran some errands. Either 20°/68° is colder than I thought, or my cold-tolerance is even worse than I thought. I Noped out of that idea after about 5 minutes. Maybe it's the lack of hair making my head feel colder?

This is a little bit of a bummer as I love being in the sea. I even considered buying a nice rip curl wetsuit on sale but decided that hauling a wetsuit along on my journey is a silly idea just to do a brief snorkel in this particular bay.

And so here I sit, with an amazing view, planning the next stages of my adventure. Not bad at all.

Somewhere in there I enjoyed a delicious chocolate croissant and an almond dirty chai, scrumptious.Read more