Chapter Nine - From Knysna to East London with Valentino

Feeding cheese to the wagtail.

Valentino was fascinated with the little wagtail that walked around wanting cheese, and Mommy Lila duly obliged while we had breakfast in Knysna. With morning coffee under the belt (as well as a muffin and toast), we set off for a nice ride towards Plettenberg Bay on Monday morning.

Keurboomstrand

It being a week-day, the road works gangs were back on the job, and made their presence known before we even got to Plettenberg Bay. We arrive at road signs with the slow down message, and the speed limit gets progressively squeezed down to the 60 km/h limit before seeing the line of stopped cars. Love sitting on the Harley and slowly idling past all the cars while they watch us go to the front of the queue. The Harley sound reaches them first, then they turn round to see the burbling chrome and blue tourer pass by. We wait a couple of minutes with the road closed for traffic coming the other way, then seeing the message come through on the radio to the worker who opens the road for us, we start and loudly roar away, with an open road and no traffic until we reach the other end of the road works. When we got to Plettenberg Bay, we did a slight deviation to see The Dunes resort and a construction site from Whale Watching Spot at Keurboomstrand. We saw an amazing home there that looks like something out of Star Trek.

The Harley Dude

"I'll smack you" - in front of Storms River bridge.

We made good progress, stopping for a top up (and petrol) at the Storms River Bridge garage. The viewing site of the bridge provided a good photo opportunity. Then some snacks at the Mugg n Bean before heading down the road again.

Valentino orders Fish n Chips

The wind farm near Jeffrey's Bay (actually at Kouga) was eagerly anticipated, because it created such a surprise impression when we first saw it. We stopped again to take pictures of this wonderful show of "green power". Pity there aren't more of them.

Harley on P E Beachfront

Next stop Port Elizabeth beach front - Summerstrand. where we found a great restaurant overlooking the beach (and the Harley) for lunch. Once again, many stops had made us take many hours to do only 280 km's, so the accelerator was opened a bit more enabling us to get to East London in their afternoon rush hour. The traffic was quite bad and we saw a SAPS van just miss a jaywalking pedestrian. We also had a driver shout at us "Hey, where is your baby's helmet?"

I'm not tired - what about a beach walk.

After negotiating the heavy traffic to Gonubie Beach, we ended up at the Blue Waters Hotel, where after some haggling we ended up with the best room in the Hotel, upstairs nearest the beach. We needed a good rest before our last day's ride home. 580 km's today, 700km's tomorrow.