Xhosa villages, whales and wine tasting.... a week in South Africa

---

As I sat on the plane at Heathrow the sky outside was grey and rainy - far too many hours and no sleep later I sat drinking a cold beer with Helen in sunny Warner Beach, catching up on all the news and excited about our trip ahead that sees us heading north through Southern and Eastern Africa as far as Uganda.

After a few days of lazing around we moved further along the Wild Coast to the smaller and even more relaxed Coffee Bay. The drive down took us through small towns, some busy, others quiet, and towards the end of the ride the streets were filled with school kids making their way home, some walking, others sqeezing into already tightly packed minivans, but all impecably dressed in school uniforms that made school kids at home look quite scruffy in comparison.

Coffee Bay is tiny - a few hostels, shops, restaurants and not too much else.... apart from a 1km long beach that we occupied for a while whilst watching the surfers! The Wild Coast is also full of small Xhosa settlements and the area around Coffee Bay is no different - whilst there we went on a village tour with a local guide who went by the name of Fez and 3 weeks later it's still one of the best things we've done.

The scenery was stunning and as we passed rondavels (traditional round houses), Fez explained some things that we'd noticed on the drive down, e.g. why many had dark rectangles painted on one outside wall (apparently to absorb heat during the day and release it when it's colder at night) and others that we hadn't - e.g. the conical tip of the roof has shells on top so that owls don't perch on it at night and keep the occupants awake and a tire filled with soil and seeds that stops any leaking when it rains. None of the homes have running water yet - it was only a few years ago that the government put in stand pipes, before which people drank water from rivers and were frequently ill as a result. Needless to say there's no electricity.

We passed a women making bricks for a new rondavel - step 1 make your brick mould (i.e. a wooden box), add soil and wet manure, leave to dry for a few days in the sun, make 800 of them and then maybe you have enough to build a house. Dung it seems has many uses - dry it's also burnt as fuel, used to smoke out bees from their hive in order to steal their honey and to make the floors of the rondavels.

We approached a couple of rondavels and were welcomed inside one which was suprising light considering there were no windows - it was sparsely furnished with a bed and cabinet to store the cooking utensils - by night maybe 8 kids slept in here on mats on the floor, whilst by day it doubled up as the kitchen. A small bench along one wall is where the men would sit... women it seemed sat on a mat on the floor.

The rondavel next door was completely different - dark and smoke filled, a fire smoldering in the middle of the floor, on one side a row of young men and boys sat on benches or the floor and opposite them sat two boys of @ 18, their faces and bodies covered in dried white mud and naked except for a single blanket. These guys were undergoing their coming of age initiation, a ritual which began with them being circumsised followed by a period of a few months when traditionally they would have been sent off into the bush with no clothing but the blanket. During that time they would detox, paint themselves in white clay and generally have to feed and fend for themselves - if they came to close to the village the elders would wave them away. But the government has decided that that's to dangerous and the period that would have been spent in the hills is now spent in a very basic hut in the village (along with a solar powered radio in this case). They're allowed to receive visitors but not to touch them, so as we entered we shook hands holding opposite ends of a long stick.

From Coffee Bay we had a two day long drive down to our next stop at Hermanus, the traditional rondavels being increasingly replaced with modern houses, large and small, as we progressed and the contrasts between rich and poor becoming more apparent - approaching the the town of Knysna we passed a shanty town on the top of the hill, which had a great view of the lagoon below and the expensive houses surroundeding it.

Hermanus is sufficiently close to Cape Town that many have second homes here that they escape to at the weekend - in the summer the population swells from 70,000 to nearer 250,00! We were to see the Southern Right whales, which spend the summer months feasting in the Antarctic waters but then migrate to this coast duing the winter months to mate and give birth. We managed to spot quite a few, although they were so far away the only sign was the occasional tail lobbing in the air or a dark patch as they just broke the surface. We ended our stay in Hermanus with a wine tour... managing to persuade ourselves quite successfully that as we didn't need to carry it very far it was OK to buy a bottle or three ;0)

Next stop Cape Town!

---

Comments

[Lynn]

Boy you sure know how to make a girl feel homesick!
Hey Wendy Thanks for sending me the blog link. I am so envious - you've been all around some of my most favourite parts of the Cape. Have a blast, and keep the blogs coming! L

[richard]

thanks
hi wendy pleased your having a great time thanks for sending me the blog ps you get a good view of whales mating in the moon on the square basildon :(