Long road to nowhere

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Usually I like to start my weekend with a nice glass of wine and a view of the city. But every so often (just like anyone else) I like to drive my little 1.3 VW Chico out into the middle of some ultra rural farmland and drive super slow to wave at the cows walking by my window.

But let me start at the beginning. After some exploring in Port Elizabeth yesterday (which you can read more about in Kaif's post) we were ready to hit the road for our next stop, Kayser's Beach (East London).

Leaving Port Elizabeth turned out to be quite a mission as we attempted to fill up our tank with petrol before the long journey to East London, but as we discovered after approaching our 5th petrol station in PE, the town was out of petrol. So unless we were running on Diesel, we were simply put, s**t out of luck. 

We assessed the situation and since we still had half a tank left we decided to start our journey to East London after lunch and try and fill up at one of the neighboring towns. About 30 minutes into our journey we stumbled across an overcrowded BP where the juice was clearly still flowing, so we filled up hit the road.

The N2 is quite a majestic highway, winding up between mountains and down through valleys. It really is a magnificent view, even if the weather was slightly overcast. We passed many farms and meadowlands along the way and many fruit sellers, the pineapple was the best. 

At one point while happily cruising along the smooth N2, our navigation tells us to take a right, into the middle of nowhere. We take a right into Peddie which is about as remote as you can get. Let it now be said, that Google Maps has been an absolute gem on this trip and so I didn't think it very wise to question it's integrity.

So off we went at a snails pace, crawling along a dusty dirt road, riddled with potholes and looking like two very lost tourists. Ha ha! At first the masses of cows, sheep and donkeys really excited and intrigued us, but after nearly an hour of inching along and dodging potholes and cow dung in equal measure we were beginning to resemble some of the characters of the Lost series. 

One hour and 20 minutes on we were convinced that we were completely disillusioned when just 100m beyond "nowhere" we saw a highway. Back on the highway we were convinced we had just paid for all of our retributions in this life and the next, but alas more terrifying territory awaited...duh...duh...duh! (Queue dramatic suspense music) 

Just as we thought we were back in the warm embrace of civilization, it hit us that sadly this was not the case. The highway led to even more remote areas with even more "little human sized potholes" which took some super human concentration and navigation.

After a nearly 5 hour journey, we finally arrived at the lovely Jenny and Dave's home in Kayser's. They gave us a warm welcome and after some much needed refueling we were ready for a nice relaxing evening and I was ready to finally start my weekend with a good glass of red wine.

The adventure continues...







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