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Published: November 18th 2007
"Cycling" the Wildcoast
A most enjoyable memory from the Twine, north of Nkanya.I copied the tidal-charts for the coming month, made a list of all the rivers we would encounter and stocked up on lightweight food and fresh water.
Our plan; to cycle the
Wildcoast along its coastline, appeared quite straight forward we thought as we studied maps and read up on
Xhosa-clans and their traditions. My list of rivers numbered 42, of which 20 were blind, one had a bridge and yet another one was bridged by a car ferry. Out of the remaining 20, nine could be crossed at low tide without swimming, another nine rivers had to be crossed during the lowest tide possible which was around springtide, and the remaining two we would undoubtedly have to swim unless we’d find some locals with dugout canoes.
Since everything seemed so simple I spent the last night in
East London getting hammered at the smoky
Sugar Shack Backpacker’s. It was of high importance to wake up early the following morning in order to catch the low tide at the
Gonubie River. Obviously this didn’t happen, and the first day of our so called “expedition” was an apparent disaster.
Hung-over we hurriedly packed our panniers and pedalled towards
Nosizile Krwice
The white cream is for beautification and is commonly seen among the Xhosa women. Ms Krwice was a Pondo and had like a lot of other Xhosa-speaking women chopped off her left pinkie finger. This is also done to beautify the woman and is done by the woman's own will at any age. Some do it as early as five, others at 25, 30 or even later. It's an easy procedure. A knife is put on top the upper joint of the finger, then firmly pressed down and "splotch" the finger tip comes off. Something worth trying back home for those with a penchant for mutilations. the Gonubie and somewhere in the sensimilla-smelling kitchen at the Sugar Shack, we must have forgotten what is referred to as “common sense”.
Everyone we met told us it was a foolhardy idea from the beginning to the end. Nevertheless we’d made up our minds and decided to al least try to cycle from East London to
Port Edward along the coast instead of via the main highway, that curved way inland to avoid the difficulties of the dramatic coastline.
Every year there’s several people walking the 250km long stretch from East London to Port Edward, or al least parts of it, and truly it’s perfect for trekking. There’s also a famous mountain bike race spanning half the stretch, where professional mountain bikers fly in from all over the world for the four day competition. They have lightweight bikes, back-up drivers carrying their luggage, medical staff, mechanics, rangers that guard them through the nature parks, guidelines for the best routes, board and lodge already arranged and a helicopter with a camera team overlooking and documenting the whole event.
We had nothing like that.
Instead we had two 45kg heavy causes of grievance (and at times
Crossing the Nxaxo
Bobbie with front panniers. joy, too) called bikes that we had to push along. That, and the eagerness to do something different. So as we reached our first obstacle - the Gonubie River just outside East London - everything went wrong.
As we arrived the waves were already breaking into the river mouth and the water level was rising much faster than I’d expected. I took off my shoes and rushed out into the strong river with my two front panniers. In the rush I managed to slip, cut my foot badly on barnacles, drop my phone and camera in the water and almost get washed out to sea. I left the panniers at the other side of the river, went back for the second pair of panniers and repeated the slip-cut-my-foot-and-almost-get-washed-out-to-sea-procedure. Like this it went on until we’d carried everything across. And although we tried our best not to dip the bikes, we managed to give them both a thorough, unhealthy saltwater bath. During the very last crossing the water reached up to our necks and it were mere adrenaline that carried us across the strong current and the waves splashing in our faces.
"
-You’re absolutely out of your mind!" The
Da(i)ry adventurers
Aili chilling with the local's on the beach at Ncizele. family living on the other side of the river told us as we sat in their living room - having biscuits and tea - while waiting for our clothes to get dry in their tumble dryer.
"
-You’re absolutely out of your mind!" We were told later that evening by another friendly family who let us stay in their tree-house as we’d reached
Rainbow Valley. The family father
George was a jack of al trades and after he’d helped me take care of my foot, he took us to see the next river; the
Kwelera.
It was high tide and the mere sight of the river sent a shiver of great disbelief in our mission down our spines. The river was over a hundred metres wide and its dark coloured water indicated an impassable depth. I had lost my camera and a memory card with two weeks of photos, the wound in my foot looked far from promising (you know it’s bad when an experienced surfer looks at it and goes:
Oooouh, that’s a baaaaaad cut!), and the dispiriting sight of the Kwelera (a river I’d expected as an easy crossing) made us want to give up before the
Oh sweet sand, how memorable.
Aili shuffling through an encouraging sand dune. Looking back at pictures like this make us wonder why we didn't just leave the bikes, walked to the closest road, hitched a ride to the airport and went back home. journey had even begun. But the family we stayed with encouraged us to continue and reassured us that at low tide the following day the river would be - if not easy - at least possible to cross, by finding the best place to wade it.
The next morning we arrived to a Kwelera that was far less daunting. It had shrunk to a ten metre wide channel that separated us from the sandbanks of
Yellowsands that awaited us at the other side. The current was strong, but after about an hour and a half of wading up to our chests in the water, carrying our equipment, we’d finally crossed the river and started to cycle along the beach that led further north. As we got to
Cintsa we decided to rest for a few days, letting my foot heal, and seriously considering if it was worth continuing.
I hitched back to East London and bought a new camera then spent a few days fine tuning the art of doing absolutely nothing at the relaxed and rustic
Buccaneer’s Guesthouse where we stayed. My foot looked better and we’d been charged with optimism by the staff at the Buccaneer’s, so
Once upon a time along a path.
Fairytale roads through the forests of the Wild coast. we decided to continue our quest.
In time, we were getting better and better at timing the river crossings. But the rivers weren’t the only obstacle we had to face. There were long stretches of soft sand where we could do nothing but patiently push our heavy bikes. Often blistered by sand stirred up by strong face-winds and always in a struggle against the incoming tide, swallowing more and more of the beach until we were forced to push our bikes through the water.
There were steep hills that grew in size for every day we pushed further north. We struggled through man-high grass, thorny scrubs and patches of dense forest. All of this caused difficulties for our journey, but the biggest obstacle (with no comparison) was the lengthy stretches of nothing but big boulders that lay in our way. A piece of cake for someone to skip along with a light rucksack, but for us the stretches were the most tedious, demanding, and critical parts of the whole coastline.
We would have to detach all the equipment from the bikes then carry a first set of panniers a hundred metres. Leave them there, then go back
Boulder-skipping with bike
A sport on the increase, with many of its sportsmen hoping to see it in the coming Olympics hosted by evil China. to get the next set, walk/climb the same hundred metres, go back, get loose articles, repeat the above mentioned procedure, before finally putting the bikes on our shoulder and carrying them to where all the other equipment awaited. Rest there for a minute, and then start all over again with the first set of panniers and the next hundred metres. For several kilometres. Hour after hour.
When the coastline got too dramatic we had to steer inland for a few kilometres, riding on whatever we could find. Sometimes we would be fortunate and could follow dirt tracks and 4x4 tracks. Other times we followed footpaths, cattle trails or just cycled freely across open fields following nothing but our intuition (which more than once misled us). As long as we followed the coast, navigation was obviously easy, but as we were forced to go inland we navigated by maps I’d drawn myself, photos of maps from bookstores (a shoestring classic to sneak into a bookstore and take pictures of their expensive maps) or the internet, and by following vivid directions by the locals.
Everywhere we came people would say the same thing:
“
-It’s safe here, but as you get Go Straaaaait!
Following directions from drunken locals was always amusing. This man even drew a map in the gravel on the road. First pointing out where I was, where I should go and then connected the two points with a straight line denoting the road I was already following. The message couldn't have been clearer. to the next village, they’re all thieves and con-men.” Same thing would be said in the next village and they were all equally wrong. Everywhere we went on the Wildcoast the
amaXhosa tribes were nothing but genuinely friendly and hospitable. After a couple of days with difficulties learning
isiXhosa (one of “Click”-languages of
Southern Africa), we got a pretty good hang of it and eventually managed to “click” our way through the region (to much amusement for the locals, as well as for us).
As the evenings arrived we would seek out clusters of small houses and ask for permission to pitch our tent within their compounds. We stayed with fishermen and farmers, in mud huts or in our tent, and once we even got invited to stay in a three star hotel, all inclusive, for free. There the chef had been attacked by a great white while out surfing. He showed us the nasty scars and explained that surfing had somewhat lost its appeal, and I could see why.
The chef was just one of many interesting people that we met in the region. Almost everyone we met that had taken their refuge on the Wildcoast
The old Bantustanians
Some people we met had stayed in the Wildcoast for a long long time, and still refered to it as the Transkei. The region has also been known like Bantustan, a name I'm particularly fond of myself, and would encourage people to use would it not carry a slight derogatory touch. (depending on how it's used). had spectacular stories to tell.
There were rainbow-people, traditional healers, people hunting sharks with harpoons, witchdoctors, survivalists, drug dealers, intrepid outdoor adventurists and a lot of hippies - both young and old - of which some had been around since the
Apartheid South Africa’s draft during the war with
Angola.
It was easy to see why they’d stayed for so long. The untamed beauty of the region, the friendly amaXhosas and a small but steady influx of like-minded travellers made this a great place to live. Even we had to struggle to leave alluring places like
Bulungula,
Mbundi,
Mbotyi or
Coffee Bay.
We didn’t make it all the way.
Slowly the bikes had deteriorated. Everything had started to corrode due to the constant contact with saltwater, my front derailleur broke, my panniers were torn and every single bolt or bearing was squeaking for oil. My wheels were badly aligned and I had more and more problems with my chain at every pedal stroke. The last day as we left
Lupathani the chain snapped three times in the span of half an hour, and as we reached
Port Grosvenor it snapped for the last time. My bike
Nqileni Village
The beautiful Nqileni village lies next to the Bulungula river and the Bulungula Backpacker's and it's arguably the best place I've ever stayed in, which I probably shouldn't have written on the internet, since the beauty of the place was its lack of tourists. DON'T GO THERE! ;-) wasn’t viable to cycle on any longer. It would have been possible to push it the remaining 58km to Port Edwards, especially since the hard part of the Wildcoast was already behind us and the hills ahead were gently decreasing in size. But I came to the Wildcoast to cycle, not to walk with a wheelbarrow, which was what my bike effectively had turned into.
A cloud of dust grew closer as a bakkie approached us on the bumpy road. It was a carpenter from
Durban offering us a ride to Port Edward.
I looked at my bike, and then at
Aili who nodded with approval. I felt defeated and yet I felt relieved. We had already spent a month on the Wildcoast and with only two more days of cycling we choose to give up. The decision was unexpected and quick, but subconsciously we both knew that it was time to get back to civilisation. We sat in silence at the back of the dusty bakkie, watching the dry fields of Pondoland turn into a vague horizon; our expedition turn into an unaccomplished mission; and all our hard work turn into yet more treasured memories of mother
Africa.
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SuperSyrran
non-member comment
Rusty-Rides
After that journey you'll certainly need something to bring your serenity back. And I happend to know exactly what that might be: - GingerSnaps with a good deal of Gorgonzola. You know what I'm talking about. I'm snapping on one at this very moment. Actually I'm trying to make you envy, so you'll be home in time of the holy "Sathi-Lassi" festival in Mörrum. You might still make it... Take Care, both of you... Love sis