Flying Bricks & His Eye is on the Sparrow

Part 1 of Port Elizabeth & Cape Town Holiday

My long days of planning, booking and excitement of visiting the Cape finally arrived and on April 1st I finally boarded my Citiliner bus for Port Elizabeth, my first stop of my holidays down to the Cape.
I left Durban at 5 pm, 15 minutes behind schedule; Africa, does anything ever happen on time? When I planned this bus trip I had planned on an overnight ride down to PE which was due to arrive there at 6:45 the following morning, what I didn’t anticipate was arriving 4 hours late, which made my 14 hr ride into an 18 hr ride, eek too long!!
You now must be wondering why was I four hours late and what does flying bricks & His Eye is on the Sparrow have to do with the delay? Well about just over 2hrs into the trip, I heard a big bang and discovered that a brick was thrown from someone in the ditch at the front of the bus which ended up puncturing a small whole which lead into a large spider crack into one of the driver’s front windows. About a minute or two later after the front window was hit, I heard a bit of a commotion from behind me and noticed that 3 of the passengers were standing up in the aisle of the bus. I soon realized that another brick was thrown and smashed a window. “Welcome to Africa”, I was told by near by passengers! The people were calling to the bus driver to stop the bus, stop the bus, but the driver did not stop, but called the local police and we pulled into the nearest community where we ended up waiting for 2 hours outside a police station for a replacement bus from Durban. What I learned from this experience was that the people in the ditch throwing the bricks were intending to have us pull over to examine the damage and in the process hi-jack us to rob us of our money and cell phones!
After I safely arrived at my backpackers in PE, ate lunch, finally checked into my room, I decided to walk down to the beach front to check out the weekend festivities. There was a Splash festival going on and I decided to wander through the vendors lining the beach front to see what they were selling and then decided to take a walk down the pier. As I started my decent down the pier my ears perked up on a very familiar song. “Why I should I feel discouraged, why do the shadows come, why should my heart feel lonely and long for Heaven and home. For Jesus is my pardon, my constant friend is he. His eye is on the sparrow and I know he watches me. His eye is on the sparrow, and I know he watches me. I sing because I’m happy, I sing because I’m free, for his eye is on the Sparrow, and I know he watches me.” There was a stage set up across from the pier and there was a guy singing Christian songs to the crowds of people at the festival. My fellow LMCer’s who are reading this, may remember that was the last song I sang at church before I left. Wow!! How much reassurance did I need from God after what I went through the night before on the bus? Yes God I’m listening and I know you are watching me like you watch the sparrows!! If I could sum up my experiences with God for the year I would have to say he kept me safe from flying bricks!
Anyways continuing on, later that first night at my backpackers I met up with some of the others staying there and one of the guys tried teaching me how to play pool. In future if you need a pool partner, don’t ask me to partner up, I’m truly am not gifted in the game! The following day was a full day of safari adventures, starting off with touring around Addo Elephant Park where I spotted my first black rhino. The black rhino is rare and I think there are only 5000 of them left in all of Africa! At Addo, I saw a Cape buffalo, lots elephants, hartebeests, kudus, and warthogs. This region of South Africa has been experiencing 8 to 9 months of draught and the week before they had some rain which the elephants had gone into the wooded area to find more water, and we were fortunate to see a big family of them running for a waterhole near the road.
After Addo, our driver drove us over to nearby Schotia Private Game Reserve, where we enjoyed a nice cold lunch. There I said goodbye to the young German’s who I had spent the morning with over at Addo and met up with my new group of Europeans from England, Holland and again Germany for my next safari in Schotia. Here we traded in the tour bus and climbed aboard a 4x4 safari truck. Schotia is a smaller park but still filled with lots of animals and it was here that I was keen on seeing lions living in a more of a natural habitat. As we trekked through the park we came a cross blesbuck, crocodile, white rhino, giraffe, hare, hartebeest, hippo, impala, monkey, mongoose, springbuck, warthog, wildebeest, zebra, and of course lions. Seven lions to be exact, which we were entertained when they started prowling in on some impala and when they couldn’t catch one for their dinner they started sniffing out the nearby zebras. My ranger Malcolm was more concerned that the lions would go after a baby giraffe that was about 6 weeks old. We all stayed there for supper which was included in the day and we were served a wonderful meal. As we headed out after supper we noticed the hippo was out of the pond and also sighted a few other smaller animals, including the hare. How appropriate for it being the eve of Easter! It was a fun filled day, I got quite a few pictures, but disappointingly my camera battery died but I still manage to get a few loin pictures before it went completely.
Signing off…
End of Part I, stay tuned for Part II