Friday Night

Friday night I ventured out for dinner, and Liz and Greg offered to lead the way since they were headed to Port Elizabeth for dinner anyway. The one problem with following someone when it is pitch black outside is that you don’t really pay attention to where you are going and focus only on following the car in front of you. I learned that lesson later….

We headed down to Port Elizabeth and I had dinner at the Salty Dog. I met a very interesting “retired” couple from England who bought land here many years ago while on a 3-year around-the-world sailing trip and have lived here for 10 years. Their now-teenage kids live here and they all spit their time between the home in Mount Pleasant, the 3 new villas they are building on the same land for the kids and their yacht. I really wanted to ask them what they did for a living but I refrained. I also befriended the Salty Dog owner, Andre, who gave me lots of good scoop about things to do. I’m sure I will see him many times in the coming weeks.

I was pretty tired from my travels so I headed home early, probably around 8:45. This is when the lack of paying attention to where you are going bit me in the ass. After about 30 minutes of unintentionally exploring the winding roads in the pitch dark in my little mini moke, I knew I had little hope of finding my villa and headed back to Port Elizabeth to start over. I made it back to the starting point, but how was I supposed to know that the red faded sign near the main road in Port Elizabeth meant “no entry” and I was going down a one-way street? After getting in trouble for that, I saw a police officer next to the church so I stopped to ask him how to get to Spring. Instead of giving me directions, he asked me if I was busy because there was a big party going on at the bar and they were getting ready to light up part of the island with Christmas lights and wanted me to come and have a drink. While intriguing, I just wanted to go home and he pointed me in the right direction. Unfortunately, I wasn’t so good at following them. After backing up into one ditch, almost running over the biggest crab I have ever seen, about 10 dogs, and 1 cat and freaking out everyone who lives in Spring, I made it home around 10. Thank God.