Jeffrey's Bay

And I'm back! I returned yesterday from a week of travelling with the 4th Year Forestry students for the second week of their annual South African forest industry tour. Basically the tour is put on so the students can see what the industry in South Africa like and also so their future employers can see them. It was a really great trip and I spent the week with them travelling from Jeffrey's Bay near Port Elizabeth to Storm's River mouth and Tsitikamma forest to George and then back to Cape Town/Stellenbosch.

Last friday I flew at lunch time to Port Elizabeth which is the capital of the Eastern Cape province. I didn't get to see much of PE, as its known here, because I was picked up from the airport and taken to Jeffrey's Bay. But no complaints because Jeffrey's Bay was incredible and I really enjoyed my 24ish hours there.

This is a photo of the eastern edge of Jeffrey's looking onto Kabeljauws (Cobble-yuse) beach. Kabeljauws is the start of the bay and the beach moves into the main part of Jeffrey's beach. In case you are wondering, that's the Indian Ocean.

Moving into the main part of Jeffrey's, we passed the Billabong set up for the annual Billabong Pro Surf competition which runs this year from July 14-24 (so I just missed the start of it!). Apparently Jeffrey's is known worldwide for its surfing and the Pro Surf competition attracts the best surfers from around the world. Kelly Slater (who is a famous surfer) is even there right now. So Billabong has quite a strong presence in Jeffrey's Bay.

Because Billabong and surfing is so popular here, Billabong has a factory store in Jeffrey's! Hence the factory shop in the photo above. Here they have so much awesome Billabong stuff and for really affordable prices. I found a really nice pair of sandals (since my last pair of flip-flops broke) for R80! The shop gets crazy busy during the summer holidays (aka Christmas break) but it was only slightly crazy when I was there.

This is the main beach of Jeffrey's Bay (although the slightly rockier-shelly side). Even though its the middle of winter, the water was still 17 degrees and nice to wade it. The beach stretches on for a while and I've been told even during the busy season there always manages to be ample space for everyone. The other really nice thing about Jeffrey's Bay is there are lots of great restaurants with lots of choices for food. We had dinner at a lovely Greek restaurant on the beach and they served some of the best Greek food I have ever had. If you come to South Africa and want to relax and play on the beach then Jeffrey's Bay is perfect. I definitely want to come back here again! Friday/Saturday was definitely a great start to the week!