I met Cristal in the 'New Age' chat room at the end of 1997. Because we are on almost the same time line as Africa we were often online together. We became good friends and when Cristal said that she was coming to London we arranged to meet up. However within a couple of days of arriving in England Cristal decided she didn't want to stay and so flew to Sweden to meet up with her own family. She then invited us over to Africa for a holiday. We decided to go in August of 1998, although this is the depths of the African winter we wanted to see the whales come in to give birth. We actually found that the weather was better than we were having at home (and it was the height of our summer !!)
Cristal Cove
This is the wonderful guest house called 'Cristal Cove'. It is made up of six self contained appartments. We had the middle one on the top floor. The children slept in the bedroom at one end of the flat and we slept in the one at the opposite end. Our bedroom had sea views. We had a kitchen/dinning room, a lounge and a bathroom with a shower. On the veranda outside there was a bar-b-q. The deco was very cool - wonderful for the hot African days. As for the building itself - Cristal designed it and did a very good job of it too. There are some very interesting structural points to look at.
Where is Cristal Cove ??
Cristal Cove is on the beach at Jeffreys Bay - a very pretty little town. It is about an hours drive from Port Elizabeth airport and very close to the begining of the famous 'Garden Route'.
What are the people like ??
We were treated like kings and queens for the whole of our stay in South Africa. The shop keepers couldn't have been more helpful to us if we had been royalty !!
What was the shopping and eating out like ??
Due to the incredible exchange rate shopping was a pure pleasure. We even ate out every night. Our favourite place to eat was 'The Spur' (a chain of restaurants). Here we could eat a sirloin steak, a rump steak with fries and side salads for less than we can buy a Macdonalds here in England !! Once again the staff were brilliant - they really couldn't do enough for us.
