Port Elizabeth, South Africa

January 25^th, 2025

It was a lovely bright sunny morning.

There were no fights at the port gate this morning, but it was still a challenge for Ian and Hillary to get in, but they eventually prevailed.

This morning’s trip was to the amazing sand dunes at Sardinia Bay.

Not so long ago there were no dunes here and you could park right next to the beach. Then with changes in the climate the sand started shifting around, resulting in the huge sand dunes, now covering the car park and road, and toilet facilities.

It was quite a climb down to the shore on the soft sand, but it was definitely worth it. There are miles and miles of white sandy beaches just waiting to be explored.

It was really beautiful, and worth the strenuous hike back up the dune to the car.

On our way back to town we stopped at another beach, this one was more rocky.

We had lunch at a great little restaurant called the Old Stamp House Café. The building used to house a post office. Sadly all of the post offices in South Africa are gradually disappearing. I suppose in this digital world they are simply not needed any more.

We returned to the ship after lunch and Brian and I spent a lazy afternoon by the pool.

Unlike our departure from Durban which was in the middle of a storm and the linesmen couldn’t get to the ship, today the men were here on time, and I watched them deal with our lines..

The ropes all fell into the water but despite the fact that our bow thrusters were in action we didn’t seem to be moving very much.

There was no rain, but a fierce wind appeared out of nowhere, and we ended up needing tugs to get us out into the channel so we could leave the harbor.

Once we were safely away from the dock we waved goodbye to the tug and eased our way past the breakwater and out to sea.

When I was taking photos with my phone, someone noticed that my phone cover has a photo of QE2. We chatted about our experiences on QE2, and how the ship’s whistle is so inferior to the QE2’s whistle, or the whistle of every Cunard ship. He said that there was a QE2 jigsaw puzzle in the library, so after we sailed away I went there to see it.

Well, I couldn’t find it, but I did see this book.

Not very encouraging.

It was our friends’ 50^th wedding anniversary and they had organized a special dinner for a group of us in the Restaurant. They had worked with the chef to put together an amazing meal (prawn cocktail, pear and goat cheese salad, rack of lamb) and a special anniversary cake. A great way to celebrate.

It had been a great day, my only disappointment was that there was no celebration of Burns Night. Not a haggis or kilt in sight alas. I guess there are times when you simply have to be on Cunard.