9-10th July, Jeffrey's Bay, Surfs Up!

Hungover. But the beach was 60 seconds walk away and we were a little tired of the constant moving so we decided to relax. James, Scott and I walked through the town in the morning in search of a towel, not to hard you would think in a surf town - wrong! The only towels we saw for an hour were 30 pounds from surf shops until we stumbled across the wonderful towel world. James and I raided the bargain bin, Scott picked up some flip flops and we hit the beach.

We met up with karaoke Duncan the Aussie whose girlfriend had now flown back to Canada, and his road trip companion Tyler to Bangkok. Chris and Duncan decided to try a bit of surfing and we left them to it for the whole day. Silver opted for a lye in and stroll through town in the evening. The beach beside where we were staying was infact where the tournament was being held in a few days time and the waves were immense. Apparently although not the biggest waves it is one of the best waves to score points on in the world. So we sat our towels down and bathed in the sun watching professional surfers do their thing on the Super Tubes stretch of the beach.

Whilst we watched the surfers we acquired a dog who we named Captain Pumpkin - I have no idea what kind of dog he was (a golden retriever perhaps). He was with us for about 3 hours and we noticed during the time we spent he had an odd habit of barking aggressively every time a black person walked past. That's right Captain Pumpkin was a racist dog! Luckily he was asleep when Silver found us at the beach. He was accompanied by a Brazilian guy we met in the bar the previous night with his cousin. His cousin was in the sea surfing and we asked if he was any good to which the answer was yah he's pretty good….he failed to mention that he was infact ranked number 34 in the world - but he sucked at pool!

We decided that night that we would do a big BBQ and it was a big success. There was Myself, Silver, Scott, Canadian Chris, Duncan, James, Greg, and we were joined by an American Chris who Duncan and Canadian Chris had met surfing good times. We chatted as we cooked and the meat was immense! American Chris had lived in Peru and was fluent in Spanish and taught Spanish in Korea. We bought and cooked far too much food so we found a security guard near by and loaded him up with a feast before heading out to the Mexican Bar. James, Silver, and I did tequila shots off a surfboard and the others played a betting game revolving around myself -unknowingly which kept them amused! Silver won! They accused Silver f stealing a Mexican hat which wasn't true and we soon left after that hitching a ride up the road with some people we met at the bar and returned home to sleep.

The following day Team England as we were known had to catch a flight from Port Elizabeth to Johannesburg at midday so we took the rental car we had and Chris and James stayed behind with Duncan. It was a tough goodbye after the best week in SA those guys made our road trip and maybe one day we'll trip again who knows! I drove to Port Elizabeth and we went straight to the airport. I gave our remaining CDs to the rental company man after telling him about our flat tire. We arrived at Johannesburg and got a taxi with our usual driver - Abe. Now Abe is an old man and isn't that familiar with the new airport so after meeting us he forgot where his car was parked. We must have done 10 laps of the airport total. We landed 3pm and we got into our hostel at 8.30pm it took that long! He was very apologetic and embarrassed but we didn't mind too much and after disappearing 3 or 4 times he finally found his car. He also got lost trying to find our hostel which we found out was owned by the same Jewish man that tried to get us thrown in jail on our first visit. Silver went to eat and Scott and I crashed our least favourite city - Johannesburg eugh! Tomorrow was the final!

Lots of Love

Daniel, Scott & Silver