Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape, South Africa – 5 & 6 April 2015

Date: – 5 April 2015

I arrived just now in Port Elisabeth. Today i am going to spend the night at Helicharter Backpackers in Port Elizabeth.

Tomorrow morning  I will continue my journey towards George. I hope i will reach to Capetown next Wednesday or Thursday. — in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape.

Date: – 06/04/2015

One happy family meeting in Port Elizabeth. South Africa — in Port Elizabeth, Eastern Cape.

Port Elizabeth or The Bay (Zulu: Bhayi; Xhosa: iBhayi; Afrikaans: Die Baai) is one of the largest cities in South Africa, situated in the Eastern Cape Province, 770 km (478 mi) east of Cape Town. The city is nicknamed “The Friendly City” or “The Windy City” is situated along Algoa Bay, and is one of the major seaports in South Africa.

HISTORY

Port Elizabeth was founded as a town in 1820 to house British settlers. It now forms part of the Nelson Mandela Bay Metropolitan Municipality which has a population of over 1.3 million. The area around what is now called Algoa Bay was first settled by hunting and gathering people ancestral to the San at least 100,000 years ago. Around 2,000 years ago, they were gradually displaced or assimilated by agriculturalist populations ancestral to the Xhosa, who migrated into the region from the north. The first Europeans to have visited the area were Portuguese explorers Bartholomew Dias, who landed on St Croix Island in Algoa Bay in 1488, and Vasco da Gama who noted the nearby Bird Island in 1497. For centuries, the area was simply marked on navigation charts as “a landing place with fresh water”. One of the Portuguese’s main goals in the Indian Ocean was to take over the lucrative trade of Arab and Afro-Arabian merchants who plied routes between the East African coast and India. As they took over that trade they established trading with their colony in India, Goa. The name, “Algoa,” meant, “to Goa,” just as the port further north in present day Mozambique, “Delagoa,” meant, “from Goa.” Algoa reflected that it was the port from which ships left for Goa during the season when the winds were favourable, while Delagoa was the port in Africa at which they arrived from Goa in the season when the winds for the return trip were favourable. (wikipedia.org)