Port St Johns to Jo'burg

January 19 - 22 2006

We arrived in Port St Johns after an unexpectedly long bus ride. We were in East London waiting for the bus for two hours before it arrived, because it had been filled with the wrong kind of fuel in Port Elizabeth and had to be drained and refuelled. It wasn’t a big deal, except that we had to just sit around and wait for the bus, because we weren’t sure when it would arrive. After a four hour bus ride, we arrived in Port St Johns, which was a beautiful town. It has mountains and lush vegetation, but also a beautiful beach and river. The hostel we arrived at was a total hippy hangout with a lot of ‘chill out’ areas. It was totally relaxing though, and the owner made excellent dinners! We couldn’t believe how nice the house was when we arrived. The house was on a small street, up high on the hill. There were floor to ceiling windows in all the rooms, including ours, that overlooked the mountains and beach. There was a lot of weed and incense, as well as a totally welcoming atmosphere and friendly people. Our first full day in Port St Johns, we headed down to second beach, and attempted to hike to a waterfall that we heard about. The owner of the hostel next to ours had driven us down to the beach, and told us to follow the trail to the waterfall. After awhile of fighting our way through the overgrown trail, the path stopped, as far as we were concerned. We thought we had taken a wrong turn, so we headed back out and asked. The only guy around, however, did not speak English, but gave us the impression that we had been on the right path. Because it was so horrible to walk through the first time, we decided that it wouldn’t be worth it to try again, as we were just getting angry. Instead we headed back to the beach, to climb through ‘the gap’. We took a path up the mountain, which was much nicer than the path to the waterfall! When we got to the top, a local guide showed us the way to the blowhole. We had to climb back down the hill on the other side, which involved a steel cable and large (large!) ladder. Then, we proceeded to climb up the other side of the gap, which included, yet another ladder. When we got to the top it was breathtaking, and we spent awhile watching the blowhole, which was going pretty good. The blowhole is a hole in the rock where the ocean hits the rocks, and so when the big waves come in, the spray from the water shoots out of the rocks…like a blowhole. After climbing back down halfway, John decided to take a more unconventional way down the hill. We’ll just say, this way included a lot of yelling and the result involved me with dirt all over the seat of my pants. After finding our way back down, we spent an hour sitting on the beach, alone, except for the sand crabs that were surrounding us. We were alone because, yet again, the rain had followed us, and it was quite overcast. It was beautiful weather for hiking though, so no complaints from us!

The next day we walked through the town on our way to Eagle’s Nest, another recommended hiking trail. While the scenery of Port St Johns was breathtaking, and the hostel we were staying at was beautiful, the actual town showed signs of the poverty in the area. It amazed us at how so many people could live in beautiful homes in the area, and ignore the poverty of the people living right there with them. The shops were run down and the town looked a lot more like towns in Senegal than Cape Town. The thing that amazed us the most was that so many people lived in the town as though they were living in a wealthy area, despite this poverty. We also noticed, as we walked around, that a lot of the towns for the poorer populations were on the tops of the hills and mountains. We watched as older women started their hike home at the end of the work day. While we have loved our time in South Africa, this kind of stuff is the reason that we know we would never want to live here. Not only is race still a very strong factor here, but there is also such a large discrepancy between the rich and poor that it is almost unbelievable. While a small portion of the population lives like we do in the developed world, a huge part of the population lives in extreme poverty. The race factor is also something that we’ve become very aware of. This country seems to be an outlet for people from developed countries who want to harbour their racist views, but it has become unacceptable in their own countries. There were often racist comments made in our presence, which was really uncomfortable for us. Perhaps it will improve as time goes on…hopefully.

Anyway, we took a trail that resembled the trail to the waterfall, up to the top of “Eagle’s Nest”. It was really overgrown, but otherwise fine. We were hacking our way through the bushes, dripping with sweat from the humidity, praying that it would be worth it. When we came out of the forest and reached the top, we found out that we still had 180 metres through really high thick bushes, before reaching the lookout. When we finally reached the lookout, the view was worth all the trouble. We had a fantastic view of the town, the ocean and the river. We were really high up, with really steep drop-offs all around us. This made John kind of nervous, and he insisted on holding onto my arms while I took pictures. The hike back down wasn’t as bad as the hike up, maybe because we knew how long it would last! We had lunch at the hostel, then headed out to First Beach. This is the beach that we had a view of from our hostel. The river empties into the ocean at the beach, and since it had been raining for days before we got there, the river was brown from all the churned up sediment. It looked like chocolate. The ocean looked really neat also, because it was brown where the freshwater entered. There was a distinct line where the brown water stopped and the blue water began. It was weird to watch the waves crashing on the beach, looking like chocolate milk. It was very Willy Wonka. We hiked along the rocks on the beach, up the hill to the lighthouse. On our walk back down to town, John spotted a whole bunch of monkeys in a tree beside us. They had really long tails, and were quite interested in us. There was a whole bunch of babies also, and we stood watching for a long time, as they played and jumped from branch to branch. We laughed on the way home, thinking that for the people who live here, the monkeys are probably huge pests, and here we are gawking and snapping pictures. Check out the tubab tourists!

After all that hiking, we spent the next day relaxing and getting ready for our trip to Durban. The bus arrived at four thirty, and at four fifteen, we realized that we hadn’t reserved our seats yet! We had been so over-organized for the whole trip and had always planned so far in advance, that we completely forgot about it. We frantically called the hotline, and they booked us on it without a problem. I think we might be too high-strung for backpacking…apparently last minute calls are the norm…

January 22 - 23 2006

We arrived in Durban at half past ten. We were greeted by the owner of the hostel we were staying with there, who was a 60 year old woman from Liverpool. She was a typical Liverpuddlian…we’ll leave it at that. We only had one full day in Durban and needed to get some errands done for the safari. We were supposed to get the hostel’s shuttle to the large mall in Durban at 10, but didn’t end up getting it until after 12. We were a bit on edge about it, as we felt we were wasting our only day in Durban. When we got to the mall, we had a bit of a scare when the American express office told us that we couldn’t get US dollars anywhere in exchange for our US$ travellers cheques. This was after I had asked, and she said we could, so I signed all the cheques. The tour requires US$, so we were a bit nervous, when she started counting out Rand. We eventually cleared it all up, got our passport photos taken, and picked up a few things. This mall had a bunch of other things in it, other than stores, including an artificial wave thingy that simulated something that was a cross between surfing, wakeboarding and snowboarding. It was cheap, so John had to try it. He confidently bought a ticket for the hardest wave pool, mostly because of my encouraging. It turned out to be a lot harder than it looked, and he spent a lot of time underwater. Luckily, there was a ten-year-old one it at the same time, who had obviously been practicing, and kept showing John up. This encouraged him enough to get it down before the hour was over. Afterwards, we headed over to the Casino, which we thought had a lot of nightlife activities, but it turned out to be restaurants, the casino and a cinema. We had dinner, and John agreed to go to a movie, since we didn’t want to head back to the hostel early (there were mostly older people there), and he certainly didn’t want me in the casino. Back at the hostel we had to deal with a bunch of drunken (absolutely ruined) old people, asking us the same questions over and over. We excused ourselves to pack, and hid in the room until they went to bed…

January 24 - 26, 2006

Our bus from Durban to Johannesburg left Durban at 8:30. We got half an hour out of Durban before the driver said that we needed to stop at a garage to have something small fixed on the bus. We sat there for half an hour while they fixed it, and proceeded to drive for an hour, before we pulled over on the side of the highway and the driver informed us that the accelerator was broken. He told us that the nearest town was half an hour away, and Durban was two hours behind us. We waited for four hours in total for a mechanic, including a free lunch, courtesy of Baz Bus. This would have been nice, if he hadn’t ordered lamb sausage on a bun for everyone. Even John could barely stomach it. Anyway, despite all this, we arrived in Jo’burg only an hour late. Our hostel here is nice, and although we were supposed to be in a dorm room, we couldn’t help but upgrade it to a double room. There are just too many people in a dorm, and since we needed to repack our bags, we needed a lot of room. I did our laundry last night, so we have actual clean clothes for the safari…but it hasn’t been warm or sunny since, and the stuff is still drying. Our day in Jo’burg was quite boring, and involved some more errands. Unfortunately, we didn’t see any of the city, but we needed to get some errands done. This involved a $100 trip to the post office, to mail souvenirs back home so that we don’t have to carry them. We were beside ourselves at that one! We just had our pre-departure meeting for the tour, and it sounds great already. We just found out that the first two nights we’re at a lodge, instead of camping, so that’s a plus already!

We’ve really enjoyed our time in South Africa. Although there were tons of things we wish we could have done, we feel like three weeks was a good amount of time to leave us with a good impression. It is one of the most consistently naturally beautiful countries we’ve ever seen. The pictures don’t do it justice. It’s unfortunate that such a beautiful country still carries the scar of apartheid, but hopefully time will change that.

We’re not going to have access to the Internet too much for the trip, but when we do, we’ll try to update the blog. Hope everyone is doing well!

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