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PhalaborwaJan 10, 2008
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| Great sleep at the Elephant Walk! Leisurely morning, ahhhhh! Finally Al and I are on our own again. We left for a walk around town at mid morning to orient ourselves with town. Phalaborwa Mall was on route so we checked it out. We found an internet cafe and a travel agent. The mall seemed very dark with many shops closed. The ones that were open had few lights on. What's going on? Locals explained that power outages have become a daily occurrence. With no indication of when it will happen each day, the frustrated shop owners are complaining. No wonder! The shop owners still have to pay the employees for sitting in the dark doing nothing until the power is back; in who knows how much time. If the owners would know ahead of time then they could plan ahead and at least open at different hours. Since a 3-4 hour time span without power was probable Al and I decided to sit at the mall coffee shop for a bite of something and a cuppa. Later once the power returned we were able to get the travel agent to book us a rental car for tomorrow and Al quickly managed to do some e-mail to let his uncle know we were here. Al's uncle had emailed us to let us know that we were welcome on Friday night until Sunday at noon. We had to laugh at his definite time span but at least we knew our time line. So tomorrow we would meet and stay with his uncle. For the rest of our day we visited the tourist info in town, bought a few groceries for dinner and bought Al a new headlamp for reading as he probably left his other one in Zimbabwe. Someone cleaning the room will be happy with it. The tourist info in Phalaborwa is the friendliest one I've ever been to. We talked a long time about travel, golf in the area, and Canada. Al got some useful information about golf and was excited at the possibility of playing. We received some tourist goodies; a couple of souvenir cloth bags and a tray liner. As we left the tourist office we noticed a female warthog and her two young grazing on the grass just outside the office. We walked closer and watched them nurse and play. Of course Al took photos too. The groceries for our dinner and breakfast tomorrow were carried back to our accommodation. The self-catering kitchen was well supplied and clean. We cooked dinner together, read through our tourist information and studied maps. We had the place to ourselves, which was a real bonus. Nice! No rain today just cloud and wind that made it feel cold. |
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