We stayed in a spacious studio at the Old Cash Store in Sardinia Bay. In nearby Mount Pleasant somebody had taken a lot of trouble to bring Christmas cheer to the community.
We read about it in the local newspaper and went to have a look. They had even organised a security firm to hang around in one of their patrol cars. This reminded me so much of the Christmas we spent in Napier, New Zealand. There an estate agent had organised a Christmas light competition. To enter, one posted the address onto a web site and the rest of the community could go onto the website and plan a tour around the town looking at Christmas lights and voting for the best. Apparently the competitive element had got out of hand and when we visited, it was just an opportunity to visit the houses that had registered on the website.
This was not the only similarity we notice with Port Elizabeth and New Zealand. The beauty of the scenery and the drives along the coast were another.
3km from where we stayed is Sardinia bay Beach. We went early because for all it is the Friendly City, Port Elizabeth is also the windiest city in South Africa so if you don’t get to the beach early, the wind picks up later in the morning making beach activities less pleasant.
From the parking lot there is first a high sand dune to negotiate before going downhill to the beach. The view, of course, was stunning.
Although it is the height of the holiday season, the beach is not overly crowded as some of the more popular beaches are.
We had brought a portable shelter and spent a lovely couple of hours. We were about 500m from the official swimming area but when some other people started swimming in the waves I did too. I was very impressed with the lifeguard. While I went back to the shelter to fetch my inflatable pillow to more seriously ride the waves, he came all the way across from the swimming area to tell the 3 remaining swimmers to move to the designated area if they wanted to swim. He obviously took his job seriously.
The journey back to the car was daunting. The sand dune was much higher from the beach side.
However, after we had successfully completed the challenge, we treated ourselves to an ice cream.
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