Today we had to wake up a bit earlier than the day before because we were due to meet Jeremy to hand over the keys and the payment for our stay at Coombs Camp. Our alarm was set for 8:00 and we spent the next hour frantically packing our suitcases and loading up the car for our departure. Our stay at Jeremy's accommodation has been one of the highlights of our trip so far and he has been very helpful and generous. 
Jeremy arrived a little after 9:00 to see us off. He mentioned that he saw quite a few of the animals on the farm near the alternate route to the camps exit and suggested we take that route to the gate to catch a glimpse. We heeded his advice and on the way back got some excellent views of the herds in the fields. We also spotted the strangest looking bird running through the field ahead of us at one point. It looked as though it was a dinosaur, standing about 4 foot tall and running much like a raptor Jenny and I were amazed by the birds colourful and unusual nature. As we got closer to it it took flight with a huge wingspan. We had no idea what kind of bird it was until we asked John Lardner Burke in Kenton, and he told us it was a Secretary-bird and that we were lucky to be able to see it!
We left the camp and headed into town to meet Kate Bryan at Wimpy for breakfast. We felt terrible because we told Kate that we would be with her just after 9:00 but due to our overestimation of swiftness we joined her just before 10:00. She assured us this was of no issue because she had plenty of university work to keep her busy while she waited. Kate has been studying physics and philosophy at Rhodes for the past 5 years and much of our ensuing conversation was based on this fact. Most of our discussion with Kate focused on the delight from both sides when we found out we all religiously categorise ourselves as Jedi. The 2001 UK census was the highlight of a dubbed 'Jedi movement' where all those incensed by the government asking their religion, or all those opposed to religion, were to give their religion as Jedi, nearly 500,000 people did. 
We had a long and fun chat over breakfast before Kate suggested we retire to her house a few minutes drive away to carry on conversing and catching up. We followed Kate on her motorbike to her house situated not far from her parents house overlooking most of Grahamstown. There we joined Kate in the sun on her front patio and chatted at length over coffee. I talked with Kate for quite a while about specifics of my physics course, much to Jenny's dismay, and encouraged her to ask her nuclear physics professor a question that I had asked Chris Hooley during my studies to see what their answer was. Mostly, why when you examine the hyper-fine structure splitting of an atoms energy levels can solve for the energy levels by approximating a stationary electron and an orbiting nucleus when this is clearly a violation of relativity (consequences involving the approximation cannot be valid because the acceleration of the orbiting electron defines frame of reference)? I think you can see why Jenny didn't like our chat :)We left Kate's after quite a long chat and promised her we would return in a few weeks. We then turned out sights to the drive to Kenton-on-Sea about 45 minutes away. About 30 minutes into the trip Jenny said she was feeling a bit ill and asked me to pull over so she could have some fresh air. I stopped along the side of the road and Jenny walked about for a few minutes still feeling ill, so she decided to get a thermometer out of the car. She momentarily forgot which way you pressed the door lock to unlock the car so proceeded to open the passenger door, press the lock button, and close the door. Thereby locking us out of the car on the side of the road with the keys still in the ignition and the car still running. Brilliant.
We tried everything to get into the car. All the doors were locked, the sunroofs were both closed, as were the windows, the keys were in the ignition and the spare keys were in a bag in the boot, our phones were both in the car and there was nobody on the road. The situation couldn't have been worse. After 20 minutes or so of trying somehow to get into the car I saw a car coming along the road, against Jenny's advice I decided to flag the car down to see if anyone could help us. The car was driven by a very nice man named Lance who works on the Kariega game reserve a few miles from where we were stuck. He examined the situation and agreed we were pretty fucked. His only advice was to try and open the locking latch with wire (the classic solution) and so he set off down the road to get some wire from his workshop. He returned 10 minutes later and we tried desperately to get the door open with this method. Much to our dismay the car has a central locking system and so even if the door lock is manually pulled up the door will not open. Great to know that other people can't break into our car if they tried to, really not so great for us in the current moment. We stepped back and regrouped, thinking at this point that the only way to get into the car would be to break a window. This however would involve changing our travel plans to find an auto-shop that could repair the window ASAP (you don't spend any time in Africa with a broken window you see, not unless you want all your belongings, or the car, to grow legs). We even got as far as discussing which window would be the cheapest and easiest to replace when Jenny suggested that we try the bit of wire through the door frame again, but this time with the objective of pressing down the automatic window button on one of the back windows. This of course was only possible because we had left the car running and we thought it was worth a try before breaking a window, hoping that the back child window lock was still on.
Somehow it actually worked!!! Lance managed to get the window down enough that I could climb back in the car and unlock it! Jenny nearly knocked him down in gratitude! So after an hour or so delay we were once again on our way to Kenton-on-Sea. When we arrived at the house we met the maid who spoke very little English. She showed us the way to our cottage and set everything up for us. Since we had some time to waste we drove around Kenton and found the local Spar, a very helpful bit of knowledge and headed back to the house just in time to meet Jenny's grandfather's friends, John and Di Lardner-Burke. They are both very hospitable and made us feel very much at home. Both of them had quite a lot to do during the rest of the afternoon so we agreed we would come to their house for lunch tomorrow to have a proper introduction for me, and catch-up for Jenny. 
Jenny was still feeling a bit ill, so we retired to our cottage and Jenny ran a hot bath for herself while I made some sandwiches for us and opened another bottle of champagne (Jenny HAD locked the keys in the car and I had been very nice about it, and at R49 a bottle -- why not!?) we had a very early and quiet evening because of Jenny's state and rested well for the next days adventures.
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