Late this morning Debbie and Patrick picked us up in their SUV and drove us over to the Mpongo Game Reserve. This was to be our introduction to seeing some of the wild animals that roam throughout South Africa. This reserve is known for having lions, elephants, buffalos, rhinos, hyenas, hippos and giraffes amongst other grassland antelopes and many bird species.

The day was windy and cold and Patrick was concerned that the wind would keep the game down and hidden in the grasses. As it turned out, at times he was correct but, nevertheless, we were able to spot and capture with our cameras a number of the animals. A few we were able to get rather close to but many were only seen in the distances. No matter how close or far away they were, Mary Margaret and I were thrilled with what we saw.

We kept on oohing and aahing at the remarkably beautiful scenery as Patrick drove us through the green rolling hills of the reserve. The dirt roads were not in too bad of shape but we were glad that it was not raining as they would have been all mud in a number of places. We were also thankful that we were in a SUV as we bounced over and around some deep ruts and rocks.

It is much easier to let the photos do the talking regarding what we saw so I will keep this blog short and, instead, post a number of photos that we took. Mary Margaret was deadly with the Nikon camera as she had taken over 300 pictures. I got to wean them down to the precious few that we will be posting and it was not an easy thing to do. It may take me a bit more than a day to get them all posted.

Afterwards, we returned to East London for a late afternoon meal and while in town we watched the huge breakers rolling into shore. They were massive. Yesterday, East London was the site of an international sea canoeing completion. The seas were so bad that 6 people were initially reported missing. Seas of 6.5 meters and winds up to 60 knots were encountered by the contestants. Five of the six missing contestants were discovered together on a beach while the sixth was never found. It was very tragic and sad. I will post a photo I took of the beach area so you can see how violent the seas were when we got there.

We continue to keep a sharp eye on the weather hoping for a window to open up so we can continue our journey to round the Cape. A possible 24 hour window looks to be forming for Tuesday that could get us to Port Elizabeth by Wednesday morning. Port Elizabeth is only about 130 nm away. Even though the winds would be in our face, they would be light and we could motor that distance in under 24 hours. A second window looks like it is approaching and could be here by the weekend. This is a longer window with winds that would be in our favor. It may be a big enough window that would allow us to get around the Cape and into False Bay, which is about 520 nm from here. Tomorrow, we will make a decision as to what we will be doing.