Epic Adventure -- Day 18 -- 16/09/2012 -- Grahamstown

When I woke up this morning I knew we made the right choice regarding our accommodation. The sound of the birds at 6:30 was deafening. I could have done with some peace and quiet but the noise ensured that Jenny and I were awake bright and early for a Sunday of leisurely activities in Grahamstown. Jeremy had told us about a wonderful place to get venison steaks in the area so we packed the cooler box with freezer packs in case we picked up any food while we were out. When we headed up the dirt road we spotted a herd of impala and a small group of warthog crossing the road in front of us. We stopped the car and took some photos. Interestingly the animals were not afraid of the very loud land rover but scampered off as soon as we exited the car. They must be familiar with cars passing, but not people on foot.

Because it is a Sunday and we had no particular plans for Grahamstown we drove very slowly back to town to conserve petrol, doing about 80km/hr in a 120km/hr zone. There was no one behind us and we both really enjoyed the relaxing drive. Once we got to town Jenny was too excited to do anything but drive to her old school, DSG, and have a look around.

As it was before 9 in the morning on a Sunday, I didn't feel bad about taking Dan on a short walk of the grounds, to the old school blocks, the library, my old house and the chapel. When we got nearer the chapel we realised that it was full of DSG girls, so we high tailed it out of there :D

We drove to the nearest Bp and got R300 of fuel, and asked the fuel attendant to wash all our windows for us, as the stop at the beach at Mossel Bay had left a layer of dirt over them and it was hard to spot the springbok with them so dirty :) we tipped him R30 for his efforts, and found out from Jeramy later that evening that we had tipped him too much, for that much he would have washed out entire car! Maybe next time :D

We then drove the 200m to the Pick n pay shopping centre, as there was a little place there I wanted to have breakfast in, but we found out that basically everything is closed on a Sunday. The Home Industries was open however, so I eagerly ran in and bought mocca cubes, the worlds most yummiest dessert thingy ever! They are small squares, that need to be kept in the fridge, of a coffee, biscuit and icing sugar mixture that are scrumptious! Dan also chose some chocolate brownies, which later actually turned out to be chocolate cake, but they were really yummy too. We went to the cinema, Roxbury, to see if there was anything on that we wanted to watch on our lazy Sunday, but they had one movie we didn't recognise, Abraham Lincoln the vampire hunter and Madagascar 3, so we decided not to go. Our shop in Pick n Pay was very successful, salad for dinner, Dan convinced me to buy a sweet potato to cook on the fire, I got us some yummy biltong with lots of fat, and this really amazing juice called sunshine juice, it's made locally and there are still bits of pulp in it. I used to get one every weekend at DSG when we were allowed to go into town, I just love it!

Dan loves the size of the biggest JC, 1.5L !

We drove off in search of food and I directed us to Grahamstowns High street, aptly named High street :D Even though Dulces, a cafe that I used to adore was no longer there, there was one in its place called Delizzia run by the same people, so it was just as delicious! Dan had eggs benedict for R78 and I had French toast filled with mozzarella and bacon for R35. I'm clearly not the one who has expensive taste ;) we also abused their Internet, uploading three blog posts and probably looking to all the world like the most unsociable couple ever. That's the beauty of spending so much time together, is that if we don't converse before breakfast it's really not an issue :D

We then walked down the main street, in search of a butchers that Jeremy had recommended, but never found it. I took Dan along to Birchs, my old school clothes shop, but that was closed too unfortunately, so I guess we will postpone the hilarity of my school uniform till tomorrow :D

We decide that because so much was closed that we were going to head home early to cook an early dinner and relax in our wonderful accommodation. First stop was Pick n Pay again to pick up some venison steaks and also some scratch cards. We won R15 on them!  On our way home we decided to take a dirt road to the right, about 3 km's before our lodge, to go on an adventure. After driving down it for a while. we decided it was too tame for us and we turned around to take the side 'road' we had spotted a while back to do some real bundu bashing(aka, off road driving)! It was great fun, the lad rover really showing us what she was capable of, but I got a little concerned a ways down the road as we really had no idea where it went to we turned around and headed back to the lodge.

Just after we got home we decided to walk back up the dirt road with the long range lens on the camera, to see if we could get some good photos of the buck. Unfortunately our stealthy approach was wasted as they were all across the field, staring at us as if to say "yeah like we couldn't hear you" and the cameras lens can only get really decent shots at about 50m, so we walked back to the house. Dan started a fire whilst I prepared the sweet potato, wrapping it in two layers of heavy duty foil ready to be cooked.

Jeremy then arrived because he wanted to check on the water levels as he was concerned they were a little low. We convinced him to have a glass of J C Le Roux with us and we chatted about some of the things we were going to do in the upcoming weeks. He told us of a few really good restaurants in Kenton and Plett that we are looking forward to trying. After he left we checked the sweet potato, which definitely needed another 30 minutes, so we got the fire back up to roaring once again. Our dinner was really yummy, a venison steak each, some salad with feta cheese, some potato salad and sweet potato with butter and salt!!