4th August
We arrived in East London a few days ago so here’s our first
impression…
Ghost town!
What, I hear you all saying?
Well, we got off the boat onto Latimers Landing to find it
derelict and deserted. No promised showers, fuel or water. An “Enter at own
risk” sign marks the dockside and we are pretty much alone.
On the other side of the river a small yacht club stands, we
headed over there and spoke to a few people, a surreal experience as they had
no real interest in meeting or chatting, a few words were exchanged and we
headed back to our boat.
Last night the yacht club actually had a function and from
over on this side of the river it looked quite festive, so we dressed up warmly
and headed across…but almost no-one spoke to us, we felt spare and excluded and
once we had decided to return to the yacht someone finally paid attention but
by then we had made up our minds and left anyway.
This morning we woke full of expectation once again as we
were due to be collected by some old friends of mine, friends I hadn’t seen in
nearly 20 years. We once again donned up and got ready, Ryun contacted us to
try and help with our failed navigation equipment and we got remote assistance.
We are currently testing it and will chat to him again before we head off to
make sure we can actually use the AIS and GPS for the next leg.
At 11:30 we left the boat and clambered across the boat we
are moored alongside to get to shore where we were being collected by Lorraine.
She arrived spot on time and took us on the official tour, passed Daisy
Demelco’s execution spot and the beach fronts before arriving at her mom’s
house.
There we had a most enjoyable afternoon catching up with old
friends, we chatted about our childhoods and the places we lived. We caught up
on the family news and the local gossip. We had a great lunch and giggled all
afternoon before heading home just before dark.
So here’s my actual impression of East London, if it weren’t
for great friends this place would suck…but since we know some people here it
turns out the place could just have some charm after all.
5th August
This morning we got back to school, Kyle began his Grade 7
syllabus having already completed Grade 6 before Rauen headed to Joburg and I
got busy with some computer work that had to be done today.
Once we were sorted we called a taxi and headed to town
where we did some grocery shopping, filled the diesel and posted some documents
to Johannesburg. We stopped at Wimpy for the special of 4 burgers, chips and
cokes for R100. What a bargain!
The taxi service here was friendly and efficient, yes my
impression of this small coastal town is improving by the day!
7th August
Yesterday we did the taxi trip again, to refill the now
empty diesel containers that we had refilled out tanks with.
On Monday, the driver, Sharon, had been the owner of the
company and had offered to show the boys her marmoset monkeys, so when the
driver arrived we were whisked off to Sharon’s house to see them.
She has 2 gorgeous marmosets and a houseful of parrots,
cockatiels, budgies and exotic birds. Some were tame and came out of the cages
others were not so friendly.
Once we had seen all the animals we went downstairs to see
all the cars, her husband, Raymond, loves car, hot rod cars. So there were
numerous of these in the back garden all in various degrees of completeness and
some race ready…they race drags on weekends.
We had a cold drink with them then headed on our way. We
managed to get the diesel, our cigarettes on the other hand were more
complicated and we only got 7 boxes…we will see if our trip to the museum
yields any success in that department.
