Epic Adventure -- Day 24 -- 22/09/2012 -- Plettenberg Bay

So our first night in the lovely Dunes Resort was not as great as I thought it would be. Don't get me wrong, the house is fantastic, beautifully decorated and the bed is super comfortable, but we have the loudest and most obnoxious bunch of Afrikaans people next door, their main bedroom is next to ours and it may as well be sellotaped to my ear! We cannot blame them for being loud when we first lay down to sleep last night, it was only 19:00. But their loudness at 23:00 and at 6:00 this morning was a bit much, including their singing at 7:45.

Jenny was so irate that we went to see reception first thing after we had a shower. Reception was less than helpful, saying that they are very full so they would speak to the people and if they were not quiet tonight then they would see if they could move us; not the best of solutions. To take her mind off of the situation I convinced Jenny to head into Plettenburg for an early breakfast. Jeremy, our host at Coombs Camp, had recommended a place for breakfast called 'The Lookout Deck' with wonderful views of the bay and sea. Jenny had a massive omelette and I had eggs benedict. They were both delicious, but would have been better suited to a mid morning breakfast as they proved a little much for us at 9 am :D I noticed a sign outside the pub advertising a 3.5 litre yard of ale for R134! It's a shame we are only here for breakfast!

Once we finished our meal, we walked around to the other side of the deck and walked on the small beach for a while, looking out to sea in the hopes of seeing some dolphins or whales, but saw nothing. Oh well, we will see them before we leave I guess. We then attempted to drive back down to the shopping centre we saw earlier but instead stumbled upon their main shopping area so stopped for a wander around. We waked around the main street looking for interesting shops, nothing in particular. I found a bookshop where I could buy a copy of Michael Chrichton's 'Micro', the very last of his books. I had always enjoyed reading his books while on holiday and 'Micro' is the last one I will ever get to read. I found out a bit late (November 2010) that he passed away half way through the writing of this book in 2008.

There was a place down the way selling really interesting wooden frames, all with slightly different designs on them. I wanted to buy one of them but the lady who owns the stall was not around, so I guess we will go back. There was a little shop that sold cow hides, and one was a brown and white skin that was really beautiful, but Dan convinced me that we can probably find one at a later stage that I like just as much, but that we won't have to carry around with us for ages :) we poked around a few of the other shops and looked at what property we would want to but, before driving down to Pick n Pay to buy things for a braai; ostrich steaks, salad and haloumi cheese, some fire wood and some more J C Le Roux.

When we got back to the house I lay down for a nap, being still quite irritable and tired from being woken up this morning, and Dan sat outside to read his book. I'm not quite sure how long I was asleep for but it was a good couple of hours as once I resurfaced Dan had ploughed on through about 300 pages of the 530 so far! He graciously took a break from his reading to take an exploratory walk around the Dunes and found a road with a lot of dead sticks on one side that are perfect for kindling for the rest of our time here, so we grabbed some of that and came home to make a fire for our braai. I wasn't very hungry, so Dan ate three ostrich steaks and had some salad and haloumi cheese, whilst I just had the cheese :D