Day 1: Cape Town to Gonubie *Transkei Road Trip*

Day 1:

If all started when I looked at a photo of my gran and grand father under a palm tree on a beach. It looked like pure bliss. I asked them where the photo was taken and they said Coffee Bay in the Transkei. It was then, 15 years ago, that I decided I had to go!

A lot happened in 15 years. My grand parents passed away. Life went by, but the opportunity to go to Coffee Bay never arised. Until one day a friend, Jolize, told me that they are planning to go to Transkei this December and asked if I wanted to join. 

So we all had dinner together and discussed the prospects of the trip. It was going to be Jolize, her husband, Nico and their friend Jandre that was coming with on the trip.

Jolize is an events manager so she is super organised. Nico had his own plumping business, he is super keen on nature and fishing. Jandre is a construction site manager, he also loves fishing and I'm sure I'm going to get to know him better and can tell you more about him then. Oh and his got a Toyota Land Cruiser and we will be going up in that baby. Yeah!

After a whole lot of meetings, braais, bottles of wine, emails and lists we booked the following accommodation and finalised our itinerary:

Gonubie, Cintsa, Bacaneers, Mboyti, the Kraal in Port st Johns, Coffee Bay, Hogsback, Jeffereys, Home.

We are going for a total of 18 days. The first night we are staying in Gabubie with friends of Nico and Jolize. The second night we are staying of friends of mine in Cintsa. Then we are staying another night in Cintsa in Baccuneers as we heard we just have to stay there! Next stop is Mboyti where we will camp for 4 nights. After that we going to a spot called The Kraal which is near Port st Johns, but we were warned that there is no electricity and we should not even ask if they can charge our phones. Really looking forward to that place. We are camping there for 3 nights. Then we hitting up White Clay Resort in Coffee Bay where we will be camping for 4 days. Here we will be spending New Year's Eve. We heard that there is a lekker NYE trance type jol there not too be missed. Then we going to camp at Hogsback for 2 nights. Also heard that this place is magical. Sadly our trip comes to an end and we start heading back, stopping over in Jeffreys Bay for two nights.

We all got together on the 18th of December at Jandre's house and started packing the car. It was quite surprising that we managed to get everything into the Land Cruiser. We started driving at 9pm right through the night. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Never again.

The boys took turns with driving and swopped every 200kms. They barely slept and were knackered. Me and Jolize had about 4 hours sleep in total. By 7am we were ravenous and were on the look out for a Wimpy so we can have breakkie. We stopped in Graham's town, but only found a KFC and it was still closed. So we decided to keep on driving and look out for another breakfast spot. By this time we were starving and certain people were licking out the chip packets and we had a few beers cause we were desperate! Then a Wimpy appeared out of nowhere like an oasis! (King Williams Town) We chowed so much that we had to loosen up our buttons of our pants to make room for the food babies.

We arrived at Nico and Jolize's friends B&B, the Crowned Crane, in Gonubie. We showered and then the guys took a nap and Jolize and myself went to the bottle store to buy some champers. We went to the beach and had a little bit of a tan and champers. 

We went to the Bluewaters Hotel and had the most amazing mussels. We actually licked out our plates and then we watched Jandre finishing his food with our mouths watering. Afterwards we went to the river and drank some Sheri and just took in the amazing views. Jolize had a Lassie encounter which had us all in stitches with laughter. It was a Border Colley dog and he kept on barking as he wanted to play. Jolize was convinced that the dog was trying to tell her something. He kept barking at the water. She said that she thinks that the dogs owner drowned. Haha! She baptised the dog and called him Willem.

We bought these amazing starter rump steaks and grilled them on the fire.  NN (Nico and Natalie) went to sleep early and JJ (Jandre and Jolize) watched the movie Avatar in 3d.

Pretty long but good first day. Lessons learnt: don't drive 1000kms in one go, most dogs just want you to throw them a stick when they bark and stock up on booze in the Eastern Cape as it's cheap!

Word for the day: Sheri (noun)