On our way to East London we stopped off at Bathurst for a cup of coffee to wake us up after the previous night of little, if any sleep, thanks to our young neighbors after their night on the town. Bathurst holds many memories for us as we had spend many a great time there with our friends Carl and Toti as Carl’s folks used to live just outside the town. Carls dad, the Brig, was quite a character and well known in the Bathurst area. He bought and restored many houses and also the one where we stopped to have coffee, called Bleak house, now owned by a lady called Sue. She was ready to share the history of her life and that of the house, however, luckily for us, she was interrupted by some friends arriving. What made both of us giggle when we left, was the fact that she told us that in the late eighties or early nineties, the house was bought by “ Brigadier Nauhaus, who made a real botched job of it”. We did not let on that we knew him and we did not enquiry about the botchiness of the job either!
Well Good Friday in East London meant no or little traffic and with the assistance of the GPS we got to the camp site in the roundabout way that a GPS has the ability to take you. I am convinced that our GPS is a true blond. The camp site is situated at Nahoon beach, which is one of the most famous surfing beaches in the country. It is indeed a beautiful beach. The campsite clearly got stuck somewhere in the late eighties. Communication at the gate was a challenge, however we got through that one. Not sure if the lady could not understand why we were there, or how come we had booked to be there. We could choose our own site, which is cool, but the warning lights should have gone off when we spotted 2 sites on either end of the camp with quite extensive camp setups, plus a marquee tent on each. Well the reason for this was extremely clear on Saturday night. The one group was celebrating the 40th birthday of twin brothers and the other group was celebrating the birthday of somebody on the Sunday.
The twins’ celebration started early in the afternoon and the braai fires were on and the chops were on the fire by late afternoon and then the guests started arriving and many there were. A bit of a new experience for us in a camp site. Well they had eaten early and by 8 they were washing dishes already and we thought that it was all over. Big mistake, as the party was clearly only in its infancy. Our friend with the Sunday birthday was only warming up at about 5 when the sheep was going onto the spit. This party had not even started at 8. Not to worry, the guests arrived fast and furiously. The gates were left wide open and people arrived and left at random. A the evening progressed the music got louder and it was “doef-doef” until the early hours of the morning. At midnight mr Sunday birthday was sung into his new year of life, in various levels of “out of tune”. No problem, a few more cheers and off they were for more celebration. The music was turned down slightly after 1 am and then an amateur guitar player took over and it was a tossup as to which was the preferred music!!
By 2 am the last guests left and the camp was quiet. I eventually fell asleep next to Dick who had slept through all of the noise. He assessed the scene early in the evening and took a sleeping tablet. Very wise that was. Anyway we survived again and maybe next time we will think twice when we see marquee tents in a campsite or maybe I will also succumb to the sleeping tablet. Camping in Municipal sites clearly has disadvantages, however we chose this one specifically as we wanted to be within walking distance of the city. That was actually also a bit of a miscalculation as the city was about 6 km away, but we walked along the beach and it was fun. Amazing how differently we experienced East London and Port Elizabeth and they are so close together. The whole vibe of the 2 places are completely different.
What was great though, is that we met another couple who live in Hoheizen, barely 2 km from us and we shared many a moment about our experiences in the camp site
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