Our second jaunt took us east and north from Port Elizabeth. We started out on a fine Easter Sunday morning at Addo Elephant Park, less than an hour from PE. Our first heffalump sighting was a large, single bull, who was munching grass and looking quite large as he flapped his ears. He ambled from the greenery along the roadside right to our car, and almost brushed Becky's arm as he walked past. Elephants don't wear deodorant. Not that I was about to tell him he needed it. We drove through the park and saw several other elephants (although none with Easter bonnets or rabbit ears on them), Cape Buffalo, zebra, warthogs, ostriches, and Red Hartebeasts.

And oh yes, the humble dung beetle, found only in Addo. Dung beetles happily spend their lives rolling snowballs out of elephant dung.

We then hit the road and headed up the N2 to a small town named King Williams Town, which is near Bisho, the provincial (East Cape Province) capital where it's reported that nothing constructive (governmentally) ever happens. In "King" as locals refer to it, we stayed with an absolutely charming colleague of Scott's named Raj. Originally from Kerala, India, he had emigrated to South Africa and has lived in King for over twenty years. A science teacher, he married one of his students, Malanie, who is also Indian but a native South African, from Durban.

We had scarcely arrived when we were piled into the back of the bakkie, bumped down back roads, and heading for Raj's fishing hole. Raj had stocked a farm's dam years earlier with Largemouth Bass, and we fished, sharing in Raj's passion. He and his buddy Yusef dream of going on a fishing vacation in Alaska. I'm going to send them brochures, along with a Billy the Singing Bass.

The fishing was a fun combination of familiar northern Wisconsin and African bush. With lovely grassy plains sprinkled with flat-topped trees, the landscape looked quite African. Raj didn't tell us about the cobras and puff-adders until we were home.

Malanie was a fantastic cook, and we had an Indian feast. This was my second time "behind the gates." Suburban houses are paradises inside, with pools and lush gardens, but not too high on the neighborly friendliness spectrum. Raj and Malanie also had ferocious attack dogs, a Mastiff, a German Shepard, and a geriatric fuzzy thing named Sammie, all of whom rolled on their backs and licked us.

The next day we headed northeast, from the Ciskei, across the Kei river, into the Transkei (kei is pronounced kai). The Ciskei and Transkei are two "former independent homelands," vestiges of apartheid race-separation engineering. People who couldn't work: elderly, sick, children, etc. were basically corralled into these areas in an attempt to "just have them live among themselves." Of course the workers were still needed to fuel apartheid's engines for the white status of living. The Transkei is where both Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, the current president, hail from. It finally felt like non-colonial Africa. Each little town had a new school, there were few fences, yards, fields, and homes were tidy, and people looked happy. Very pastoral and peaceful.

As we drove on, square homes were replaced with rondevals, which are round houses with thatched or metal roofs. The area was rural, but there were people everywhere, in every little nook and cranny. The terrain was hilly and green, with the flat-topped trees and livestock.

After passing through Butterworth, where we felt very white, we headed up to a small town called Udutywa and turned on to a little dirt road. We'd heard about the road (the brochure said to call ahead if there had been rain), and were wondering how our little overloaded Honda Ballade would do. After fording the first big puddle we felt pretty darn good about our chances. We drove on, through rural countryside, and seemingly back in time. Scott pointed out that people had been living there, probably in much the same way as they are now, for half a million years. It certainly felt that way. As we bumped on and on we took in rondeval after rondeval, each with its own yard, rough fences, livestock, kids, ladies with turbans on their heads balancing five-gallon buckets of water, suitcases, or whatever, and miscellaneous action. I just read a novel about recent times in Zimbabwe, and one of the ways the army identified guerrilla men disguised as women was that women always carried loads on their heads, men at their sides.

People almost invariably smiled and waved as we passed. There were schools, kids tending goats, sheep, or cows, horses, ladies with loads on their heads, fields of mealie (corn). They seemed to have a pretty good life figured out. Not a single store, one or two small cafes, closed, not much evidence of cash-based anything. What I couldn't quite grasp was that it seemed wide open, but everywhere we went we were in someone's front yard, which made it hard to take pictures. It reminded me of Nepal.

The rondevals turned into clusters of middle-sized dots on the nearer hills, then sprinkles of lots of little dots on the far hills, ending in a galaxy of way distant tiny specks, each someone's home. As we drove over about ten thousand hills, I couldn't get my mind around how many people were living among them thar.

After about an hour and a half, maybe 30 kilometers, we hit the small town of Willowvale, where again we felt very white. After Willowvale, the road turned to pot, rather, potholes and rocks. The trusty little Honda did make it to the sea, but all the time our worries were growing about "would we ever make it out of here?" Let's hope it doesn't rain. Becky said "this is definitely someplace we're not bringing Scott's mom, because she'll worry the whole time about getting out.". Um, like we wouldn't?

But we made it to the beach, the Indian Ocean, where the Big Ass surf kept bringing the Hawai'i 50 theme song to mind. We were staying at the Kob Inn resort, which was a little cluster of thatched bungalows with all the necessities for civilized living: a large dining room, and a much larger bar. The waves just about crashed into the bar; it was fun to sit and sip one's Castle and watch them break.

Having just driven through very intense poverty, it was hard to relax and enjoy this white-man's playground. It was very popular with the dune-buggy/ATV/off-road motorcycle set, and also large groups of jolly middle-aged hikers from Joburg or Cape Town who were hiking from resort to resort along the coast. It was intensely weird to have all local black staff waiting on us. We were distinctly out of our comfort zone.

The resort was run on the British system, where children are bundled off with local nannies for 4 Rand an hour (50 cents) and have their own separate dining room so the adults can enjoy their cocktails and dinners in peace. The food was excellent, local fare, and they had good wine. Still there was that lingering "what am I doing here?" feeling.

But we had a jolly good time looking for seashells and digging in the sand. On day two Scott, Charlie, and I had a "hey, this wasn't in the brochure" kayak experience. My paddle looked like it was used on a set for "The Flintstones," and the kayak, which was actually a canoe/bathtub, wasn't much more high-tech. But we paddled up the mouth of the Qora River looking for adventure.

After awhile we decided it was time to go ashore, but we couldn't find a non-muddy spot. As the leaky boat filled up with water, it became unsteerable, so we had to go ashore and empty it, mud or no mud. As soon as Charlie stepped out into the mud he sunk in almost to his knees. It was Gilligan's Island-grade carnivorous mud, almost quicksand-like in its appetite. Large sucking sounds, disappearing feet and lower limbs, and no hope of retaining the Tevas. Scott and I tried to empty the boat, but when we picked it up it stayed still and we went down deeper. We finally sucked our way slowly to where it was just mud, not mud covered with water, emptied the canoe, and tried to get our feet and legs out of there and back into the boat.

When I wasn't thinking about losing my feet I was wondering about hungry hippos, bilharzia, parasites, crocodiles, water snakes, and piles of monkeys besetting themselves upon us. We have since been reassured by an ecologist that the Qora doesn't have crocs, although the next river up the coast does.

But we survived and washed off and ate lunch and resembled humans again. Kind of a Hieronymus Bosch meets Outside Magazine adventure.

After lunch the monsoon started, and we resigned ourselves to spending a week in whity-world amidst crazed ATVers.

The next day our little Honda Ballade, bless her little green heart and transmission, did climb her way through what actually turned out to be minimal muck and we made it our bumpy way back to the real roads, verrry slowly. We scoffed at the little puddle that had looked like Lake Michigan driving in.

On the way home we took a smaller road along the coast between East (shouldn't it be South?) London and PE. It was absolutely stunning countryside, green as Ireland, and seemingly deserted in contrast to the heavily populated Transkei.

It was good to be home, but the beauty of the Transkei countryside will haunt me.