Blogs from Coffee Bay, Eastern Cape, South Africa, Africa - page 5

I spent the better part of the last week on the Wild Coast in the Transkei. This is a very rural area that was/is very poor and often forgotten in the Apartheid era. Simple local Xhosa farming villages dominates it. The landscape is rolling green hills that come right down to the beach. I stayed at Bulungula. This is a small backpackers that is 40% owned by the local community. I only intended to stay about 3 days but ended up there for more like 6. I guess some of it was the effort to get there. They have a shuttle that will pick you up from Mthatha. But they also offer to let you stay one night free if you get there via public transport. So in Mthatha, I caught a mini-bus taxi to Xhora. ... read more

Here is another Blog as promised. U'd better appreciate this one and excuse the spelling because we've been partying for 2 days solid now!!! Anyway, After dicing with death with Great Whites we spent a couple of days at Plettenberg Bay and then a couple of nights at Port Elizabeth. Not much to report from these places but we met some wkd people and spent most our time sitting around the Braai (barbecue) drinking Beer and sipping cheap Red Wine. We were planning to get the Baz Bus which is a hop-on hop-off backpackers bus service that travels all across South Africa, all the way from PE to Durban but we were informed when we booked our ticket that even tho it was only 2 inches on the map it would take 17 hours , sod ... read more

Seven of us set out from Bulungula with the aim of hiking the thirty km to Coffee Bay, via Hole in the Wall. Kris and Laurel were two of our companions, and like myself and indeed our trusty guide Simon, there were a few hangovers. We were warned to keep Simon out of the shebeens we would pass as we may not make it! A shebeen is an illegal pub, or someone usually just selling beer out of their hut. From Bul' to HitW we would head inland over hills and through fields and then from there to CB we would follow the spectacular coastline. The first hour passed quickly, without any other signs of life although we were thankful when we saw the first hut in the distance where Simon said we would stop for ... read more

We'd heard from one or two travellers about a place called Bulungula that although run by a white guy, was owned predominantly by the local community and in addition to only using gas and solar power, were 100% eco friendly. We decided to check it out and needed to pre book a shuttle as once again it was in very remote 4wd territory. The shuttle ride lasted a couple of hours and along the way Dave, the "whitie" told us very interesting stories of his extensive travels and of how he came to be at Bulungula including the walk along hundreds of km of coastline to find the perfect spot and the years of working with, training, educating and convincing the locals that this was a great oppurtunity for them too. We stopped to collect some ... read more