Going to a place we used to frequent many moons ago, took me back to the time before GPS, navigators and online maps.
My son in the distance there, fishing off the rocks
A map book was a necessity especially if one went to unfamiliar destinations as careful route planning was vital.
Recalling memories of our travels of yester-year often leads to lengthy searches, as we have to rely on photographs that's either stored in little envelopes or in a dusty photo album.
How privileged are we today on Hive to have dApps like HaveYouBeenHere and Pinmapple making it so much easier with traveling planning and calling back the past with our very own Personal Profile Map.
I wrote about My Travel Journal Lives Forever on @pinmapple and HaveYouBeenHere just the other day.
So, when we visited the little seaside village of Port Edward with family recently, my baby brother suggested a picnic as day visitors at TO Strand Holiday Resort at Leisure Bay, just a little north of Port Edward; a place where our family spent many annual fishing holidays when we were still little kids.
Memories of laidback holidays came flooding back, and this time I got to storing my memories as they happened on HaveYouBeenHere.
The caravan park was quite empty as it was during the week and many were still afraid to travel with Covid still around, but come holiday season, and this place will be buzzing with holiday makers and activities.
Back in my childhood days, the menfolk would spend the days fishing with Mom Lily often joining them.
I would be swimming and having fun with my new friends; later on in my teens the holiday romances came along, and I'd be going home broken-hearted although we'd try and write letters, but all those teen flings quickly faded.
Baby brother fishing off the rocks
Back then, even though we eventually knew every nook and cranny along the South coast of Kwazulu Natal, we would still take a copy of the map book so we could see the next town on the endless road, or helping us judge our expected time of arrival as it was important to get the tents up before night falls, or heaven forbids, the rain starts falling, as there is no fun in putting up a tent in the rain!
Nowadays of course that lady who sits inside the navigator knows the exact time of arrival.
You know who I mean, she's the one with the American or English accent who gets quite cheeky if you take the wrong turn and keeps on telling you to turn around till she eventually gets quite fed-up and then tells you she's recalculating the route!
I'm just as cheeky with her mind you, especially when she's trying to make us take a route we don't like ;)
Getting my code from Pinmapple to add my post on this smart Map is real easy.
As I said, this time I used the HaveYouBeenHere dApp and added a waypoint when we visited TO Strand plus I could add images taken there, making it much easier for writing my post and for storing those memories.
Egyptian Goose
Empty Nest Syndrome anyone?
Quaint Signs to His and Hers' Ablution Block
TO Strand, with the tranquil Kuboboyi River on one side and fronting straight onto the Indian Ocean offers lovely shaded caravan and camping sites with good ablution blocks, plus has a large number of self-catering chalets offering basic but very comfortable accommodation.
Image Source
The whole idea of this visit was to get Mom Lily onto the beach so she could see the rocks where she used to fish from, and we managed to get her there even though her balance is really bad now; Mom has an Acoustic Neuroma which affects her balance even though she's had VP Shunt surgery to permanently drain the brain fluid.
For Mom Lily (89) this was a bittersweet day as she remembered how she used to walk these sands and climb the rocks unaided with a fishing rod in the hand and now is fragile and unsteady, but she thanked us all afterwards for taking her.
Our Cynthia who came along to give a hand with mom is always smiling, and tried to cheer Ouma up as she calls her.
The river mouth not open as we've not had much rain.
The menfolk debating which would be the best fishing spot while my sister in law already had her line in the water! She showed them up at the Umtamvuma River the next day when she caught the first Snapper Salmon as I shared in a previous post.
One of the best and safest swimming beaches on the south coast. They have life guards on duty during the holiday seasons.
I'm truly thankful that we were able to spend a day at this place of childhood memories, and that I could store those memories here on Hive plus have the post pinned on my own Personal Profile Map on Pinmapple!
A huge shout-out to the entire team of 
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