[Seth] The good and bad about traveling in Southern Africa

We have spent the last week traveling along the southern coast of Africa.  We started by spending a couple of wet days in Cape Town (happy for them that it was raining as they need it, but we didn't end up seeing much of the city because of the weather).  We then drove south to visit the Cape of Good Hope.  Here we were accosted by a hungry baboon, but you will have to wait for Grace's blog post for the details on that encounter.

While the Cape of Good Hope is actually not the southern tip of Africa, it is still pretty spectacular

We then headed east away from Cape Town towards Port Elizabeth.  Along the way, we stopped to see some penguins at Simon's Town.  The are 2,000 to 3,000 penguins that live here in this colony.  We spent last Christmas in the Galapagos Islands where you can actually see penguins in the Northern Hemisphere (just barely, as the Galapagos straddle the Equator) so the kids were excited to say they have now seen penguins in both hemispheres.

Our ultimate destination was Port Elizabeth where my parents are serving a mission for the Mormon church.  Happily, the drive to Port Elizabeth is along the Garden Route, which traverses an ecologically diverse coastal area with numerous lagoons and lakes dotted along the coast. It includes towns such as Knysna and George, the Garden Route's largest city and where we stayed our first night.  In George, we met up with my parents and we had to take a picture of the three Georges in George.  

George Max, George Seth and George Cannon in George

The scenery, particularly when the road traveling along the coast, was stunning and reminded us quite a bit of the coast of the South Island of New Zealand.  Here are some of our favorite places along the Garden Route:

Wilderness Beach outside of George

Suspension bridge over Storms River mouth

Tsitsikamma National Park coastline

Jumping off dunes in Sardinia Bay outside of Port Elizabeth

Once we arrived in Port Elizabeth, we got a chance to visit Addo Elephant National Park where we had an unusual traffic jam.

My parents' car blocked by an elephant

All in all, our time in South Africa has been great – with one significant exception.  We have been constantly warned both before we arrived and while we are here about the need to be concerned about crime.  When you stay at the hotels, they warn you not to go out at night.  The houses and buildings are secured like miniature fortresses.  The newspapers are full of stories about house break-ins and robberies.  It makes it very hard to ever feel safe.  When we arrived in Port Elizabeth, the caretaker of the property that we are staying in handed me a key ring with half a dozen keys – each that locked a different part of the house.  There is not only a locked front door at most houses, but also an additional metal gated front door and often a driveway gate.  Many of the houses even have barbed wire above the high walls that surround the homes.  

House with gate, barbed wire, and alarm and beware of dog signs

As a result, you are always paranoid – particularly after dark.  Perhaps you eventually get used to it, but I think it would be very hard to live is a place that by its very architecture is constantly telling you that you are in danger.