South Africa Day 1 - Airports, African roads and Addo

Day 1 of my trip to South Africa begins when our plane lands in Johannesburg in the early hours of Sunday morning. Through some bizarre organisational bad luck, my partner Craig and I end up having to queue for 2 hours with hundreds of other people to get through passport control before we can get to our connecting flight to Port Elizabeth. Luckily we make it just in time, and after a brief snooze and the delights of an aeroplane breakfast, we land in Port Elizabeth airport and head outside to find our hire car. We'd booked a VW Polo Sedan but end up with a Ford Ikon Sedan, which feels a little clunky but will do the job. Setting up the Sat Nav, we head towards Addo Elephant National park, which will be our home for the next 2 nights. Not long into the journey we get a bit lost and end up taking the "scenic" route. I soon learn that "scenic" is synonymous with "potholed". We traverse the uneven surface carefully and manage to navigate back to the main road as we head further away from the suburbs and into the beautiful rolling hills in the Addo area.

We arrive safely at the Avoca guest houses, where we are greeted and given a wealth of information about our chalet, breakfast arrangements and nearby places to eat. Craig's sister Erica and her husband Steve arrived the previous day, but they're out on a safari trip on the Scotia reserve and won't be back until later. Our chalet is a wonderful thatched building set just up from a small river.

There are a family of rock rabbits, or dassies, living around the braai area outside our bedroom window. When we arrive they are sunning themselves on the tree branches and playing around the bushes.

After a brief walk around the grounds, discovering the prickly pear plant and meeting some feral but friendly cats, we head out for dinner to the recommended local restaurant Africanos.

I enjoy some delicious game carpaccio to start, followed by kudu schnitzel which is unfortunately a little blander than I was expecting. We have a tasty bottle of Beyerskloof Pinotage with the meal and I have my first experience of a Don Pedro, a wonderful Amarula ice cream drink to finish. Heading back to the chalet, we marvel at how clearly we can see the milky way and stars in the sky without city light pollution, have a quick catch up with Craig's sister and her husband to hear about their trip to the Scotia reserve, then head to bed for my first night under African sky.