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Published: April 13th 2010
Port Elizabeth
Sittin' on the dock of the bay, watching time roll away...Some call South Africa 'Africa for Beginners'. We have been in the continent for almost 5 months now and South Africa is certainly different. Little things strike you. Like the water. You can drink it. Straight out of the tap. No need to treat it and no need to buy plastic bottles. And what is more it will be hot when it is supposed to be. You turn on the tap and out it comes. Lovely. Toilets. They work and, better yet, they aren't holes in the ground. Nice pedestals wherever we have needed them. My aching knees are very pleased. Security is another one. Most parts of Africa pay attention to security, but here they take walls, razor wire and electric fences to a new high. But it is still Africa and, when you are out of the shopping malls and away from the more European bits you arrive in Africa again. It is different from its neighbours but there are still a lot of similarities.
This post wraps up South Africa and takes us from Port Elizabeth through the Sunshine and Wild Coasts - aka the Transkei - the Frontier, Durban and then up to Dundee and the
Clouds
some have to go up. It is a big sky. Battlefields, then the Drakensbergs, or at least a smidgin of them, and on to Johannesburg/Jo'burg/Jozi. We will put our wrap of Africa in a separate post. Long term viewers will note an increase in photos. Patricia's new camera has led to a new lease of activity. We haven't included too many rocks, clouds and flowers but there are some that will sneak in from time to time. She doesn't just use her camera. The other one is swung into action when she needs something special - or different - or something.
The major road system in South Africa seems to be pretty good. We have followed the N2 up the eastern coast, the N1 goes from Cape Town to Jozi and the N3 from Durban to Jozi and there are others. These major roads seem to have a 120 km/h limit on them for most of the way and are normally in pretty good condition. Off the big ones, but still on the bitumen, the roads tend to be in reasonable nick, most of the time. There does seem to be a bit of an infrastructure maintenance problem here and the potholes on some roads become an issue.
The worst road we hit was a stretch coming off the N2 into Coffee Bay. We had driven up from Port Elizabeth several hundred kilometres, skirting East London and heading on north to find a reasonable place to stay on the coast if possible. The N2 swings inland a fair way. The area is not quite mountainous - in SA terms, definitely in NT terms - but it is very hilly. After weaving through the hills for much of the day we decided fairly late to have a look at Coffee Bay. A quick run for 70 km at the end of the day didn't present a problem, until the pot holes started. These were no ordinary pot holes. In places they extended across the road and they were deep. With mini buses, people, animals and other vehicles all making their way in both directions it was all pretty interesting with everyone doing these crazy slaloms roughly within the confines of the 'bitumen'. Unfortunately, for much of the distance you couldn't take to the verge. The drops were considerable and, in places, boggy.
We made it to Coffee Bay after taking nearly 2 hours to do the 70 km
and, for our first time this trip, in the dark. Coffee Bay was described somewhere as 'scruffy'. That's apt but it is not a bad little place. Beautiful beaches nestled amongst headlands covered in bush. The village itself has possibly seen better days and, given its beauty, will do so again. We had booked in at the local hotel which turned out to be a place that had been built in a time when things were a lot more genteel. We had a massive room. Two king size beds didn't do much to fill it up. It was still run a little like it might have been in the old days as well. Dinner and breakfast were included in the price - which was not especially cheap - so we were well fed with a 4 course dinner and a full English breakfast. Lovely staff. A very nice, if a little strange, place to stay.
The road into Coffee Bay had one redeeming feature. It gave us a much closer look at the Xhosa villages along the ridges and hill tops. I have no idea why but Xhosa prefer to live high. All of the villages, and there are
Slalom
On the road to Coffee Bay many, many of them in the hills around East London and extending a good distance towards Durban, seem to cling to the heights. They also don't mind a bit of colour. It looked a little like families or groups tend to pick a colour they all like and paint all of their houses the same shade. Made a change from the houses we had been seeing in the farms along the way. The concessions you would need to make good money in SA are those for green and white paint (or whitewash). Oh, and of course for razor wire. A great money spinner that one.
And just another sidebar on the Xhosa. It seems that Xhosa male initates have a dress standard that they stick to pretty religiously. We couldn't work out why the shops were selling so many English cloth caps, sports jackets and snazzy, if somewhat outdated, trousers. Young Xhosa men dress in the manner of a young English gentleman after they go through whatever 'business' they go through. They say that they do it because it is cultural. There is no suggestion that they are trying to copy the English and no one seems to know
where it all started but it is brings you up with a start to see groups of young men waiting for buses with a goodly percentage dressed in this manner. And while I am out here on this tangent we have noted that African men, particularly the younger ones, do tend to dress very well. Women do as well but - and I am going to be very careful here - they tend to have more to cover and that can work against the effect being sought. Men, as a whole, the black ones that is, tend to be pretty fit looking. I will leave this subject now.
The road to Durban is another good one as befits SA's second largest city - good, that is, after you deal with the pot holes, this time in nice daylight. It wasn't quite as long a drive on this day and we arrived at the Nomad's Backpackers at a reasonable hour. Spent the next day wandering around the place. Found, again, that people tend not to walk if they have a car. We walked to the Botanical Gardens. Not a long way from where we were staying but we seemed to
be the only people on the road again. The local shops were a reasonable sized mall which was pretty flash.
Driving around Durban we were struck again by the compartmentalisation of South African cities. It is obvious, of course, that there would be clear segments but it is still a bit of a surprise to see the difference. The white areas are no longer exclusively so and plenty of black people are around the shopping centres. In the black areas though you don't see too many white faces, not even in the cars that drive through. Again we were warned by locals about walking through some areas and cautioned that we should be careful where we drove, particularly at night.
We have had a debate for most of the way about whether we would go to Lesotho and Swaziland. Lesotho is a mountain kingdom bordering the Drakensberg Ranges. Swaziland is up north near Kruger National Park and the Mozambique border. The main pass into Lesotho from the direction we would come we found to be 4WD only so that killed that. We have seen a lot of game parks so we didn't really need to see Kruger -
and it was a long way - and we didn't really have the time - so we didn't go to Swaziland.
Instead, we had a couple of days to go up into Kwa-Zulu Natal and stay at a place called Dundee. This is a nicely located place in the middle of what we found is called the Battlefields area. We picked a place called the Battlefields Backpackers International because they could organise guided tours of some of the Zulu/British/Boer battles and the Anglo/Boer battles. We were very lucky to find both a very comfortable, small place for a couple of nights and one of the better guides we have found on the trip. Evan Jones has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the battles that occurred in the area and we spent a much better day than we had anticipated travelling around and being filled in on some of the major battles.
In the material I have read about the campaigns of the British against the Zulu and then against the Boers it was always pretty clear that the comment of one of the Boer generals to the effect that the British soldiers were lions led by fools was spot
Sunset over Transkei
They call it the Wild Coast now because Transkei has a bad name. on. Evan told a story about the Boers at the battle of Spiermanskoop being told not to shoot the officers because they would kill more of their soldiers than the Boers could. Looking at the sites and seeing how the battles played out it was crystal clear that, with better leadership, there could have been very different results earlier.
The luckiest part of the day though was that we had picked the day for the annual extreme sports event called the Swartkop Challenge. This requires teams to haul a naval gun up a very steep hill. The Lesotho Army team had carved 7 minutes off the record the previous year, which was about 20 minutes. This year the teams were all expected to aim at the new record. They probably did but the Lesotho blokes were ready for them and chopped the record again getting up there in 7 minutes and 19 seconds. Their boss was peeved because they aimed for 7 minutes flat. They were brilliant. Also brilliant and powerful were the Zulu dancers who put on a show. They have phenomenal rythmn, beat, vigour and power.
We had been in sight of the Drakensberg mountains since
we had left Durban and Pietermaritzberg but as we moved closer the spectacle intensifies. It is very clear here that Africa is a young continent in geological terms. These mountains are sharp and proud and very different from those we find in Australia which have been beaten down by time. We didn't really have time to do much but we did make it into the Natal National Park and found a 6 km walk - 3 km up a mountain, 3 km down - that gave us a feel for the place. Camped at a very nice lodge that night. Just didn't feel like driving on.
And then it was on to Johannesberg. This is just an overnighter. We won,t get to see anything of Jozi really which the guide books tell us is not really that much of a pity. It has a reputation as a dangerours place. We won,t really have time to find out. At the moment, sitting in the backyard of a backpackers which is in reasonable proximity of the airport, it doesn't seem too bad.
We fly out tomorrow for Paris where we have booked an apartment in Malakoff, the 18th District I
Cheap Service
But you may not be able to make out the added extra - free cleaning! think. It is called an apartment but it will be smaller than a lot of the roome we have stayed in lately. Looking forward to it. Will post again in due course.
Au revoir
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adamasao
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durban
That stadium is where the aussies play their first game, I think. What's with the hair, sick of the grey? :)