Port Elizabeth
Port Elizabeth (Afrikaans: Port Elizabeth or Die Baai; Xhosa: Ibhayi; Vulcan: B-flat1 to B-flat4) is a city in South Africa, situated in the Eastern Cape Province, at 33°58′S 25°36′E. The city is located on Algoa Bay, and is trying to be one of the major seaports in South Africa.
Port Elizabeth is just south of the expanding Addo Elephant National Park, and boasts the moderately infamous Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, still being dragged kicking and screaming into the post apartheid South Africa after the official 2005 merger of the University of Port Elizabeth, PE Technikon and the city’s branch of Vista University. Skip forward to 2010 and the merger is still "On Track". Faster than a speeding bullet.
Since 1998, Port Elizabeth has been in a one sided friendship partnership with the Swedish City of Gothenburg, fostering development of common and exciting fields of interest such as solid waste management, public librarian taunting, sport, tourism, dolphin baiting and tourist dollar extractions.
In 2000 Port Elizabeth became the sixth sister city to a lonely little town called Jacksonville, Florida. Port Elizabeth School children also have as much difficulty finding Jacksonville on a World Map as Americans have finding Africa.
The farthest death attributed to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami occurred on 26 December 2004 at Blue Horizon Beach, outside Port Elizabeth, 8,000 km (5,000 miles) away from the source of the earthquake that caused the giant wave. Reports that the dumbest people in the world live in Port Elizabeth are strictly not true.
History[edit]
Port Elizabeth was named after some dead guys wife in a fit of remorse after he had sexual congress with an indigenous person (now known as BEE's) and gave birth to the so called coloureds.
Port Elizabeth is also know as the windy city but Cape Town is even windier owing to the higher gay population. Sometimes also called the friendly city because the residents are always walking around with smiles on their faces owing to the close propensity of the lush green fields of Transkeian Gold Grass on their doorstep, as well as the fact that many low IQ people holiday in Port Elizabeth.
Port Elizabeth is home to the so called Port of Ngqura. The previous government was well known for planting fields of toilets that dotted the landscape for miles and miles and had the monopoly on this action, leading the present government to give birth to an even more ambitious project call Coega - another piece of land with miles and miles of infrastructure and no life.
Trade and Industry[edit]
Port Elizabeth is also known as the Detroit of Africa owing to it's many car manufacturing plants. Motor Car manufacturing keeps the local economy and the harbour and customs humming along nicely as the car plants come up with ever more ingenious ways to export, import, export and import the same item again and again and again in order to qualify for a local content incentive that will allow them to import even better cars from another continent to be used by the new elite / BEE / Previously disadvantaged. There is no statute of limitations on being previously disadvantaged.
A growing industry in Port Elizabeth is the "informal sector", greatly boosted by a recent influx of experts from such places as Nigeria.
Transport[edit]
Port Elizabeth Airport (IATA airport code PLZ, ICAO airport code FAPE) serves the city, but as a result of Port Elizabeth always being viewed as not a desirable destination, is not an international airport. International visitors to the city, one of South Africa's major tourist venues, must fly to either Johannesburg or Cape Town and then take a domestic flight to PE. In preparation for the World cup 2010 the runway will be extended should there be sufficient funds left over after building a new soccer stadium and paying the graft bill.
Progress Aerodrome, a smaller facility, and of not much interest to international visitors, is mostly used by civilians and student pilots as a training and recreational facility. The beers are very cheap.
PE lies on the N2 road which runs from Cape Town to Durban roughly following the coast. It also lies on the country’s railway network. Nothing else lies on the N2 or the railway track as Port Elizabeth has taken up all the space.
First time visitors are encouraged to make extensive use of Port Elizabeth's public minibus taxis, which offer many local delights; Inflight music at 120 dB, sudden swerving across four lanes of traffic to pick up a fare, 16 passengers plus a driver and conductor in a vehicle designed for 10, a well qualified driver not older than 16 driving with a vice grip in place of a steering wheel, cellphone clamped to his right ear, sweet smelling cigarette in the left hand, making change with his right hand all whilst chatting up a liquid eyed honey to his left.
Port Elizabeth also is the gateway to the Transkeian capital Mthatha, which used to be called Umtata, but was horribly misspelled by the colonialists who brought reading and writing to Africa.
Geography and Land Reclaims[edit]
Port Elizabeth was also world-renowned for their miles and miles of brilliant white sand beaches stretching right around Algoa Bay through the sleepy little estuary of Swartkops. That is, until about the sixties. It was at this point that a deranged and horribly disfigured town planner hermit hopped up on pure liquid acid and a bottle of peppermint schnapps got pissed off with all that is pretty, and consequently slapped a National freeway, commercial railway stations, industrial zoning structures all over natures blank seaside canvas. The adjacent estuary was bestowed with the honor of a carbon factory and the municipal sewerage works which has since led to the tradition of all bypassers at the tell-tale point of the freeway partaking in the traditional game of "Who farted?".
The reclaiming of former white sand beach and flourishing coral reef was achieved by the invention of the "dollosse". Inspired by the kiddies game of "Jacks", these massive concrete structures have been strewn along the coast and have provided sanctuary for generations of Surf fisherman. To this day, they can still be seen sitting on the bonnets of their rusted Datsuns reeling in boot after boot to provide for their caravan-dwelling offspring`s perlemoen poaching startup fund.