Slowing Things Down

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Now that we are off the truck we have to start dealing with things on our own again. We had planned to slow things down a little. The truck was good but it did keep us moving. Travelling through from Cairo about 12,000 km there were not that many opportunities to back off and take it easy . We had been looking to Cape Town as a place where we would sort a few things out and re-group. All of this travelling can be tiring and you really need to give yourself a bit of 'holiday' sometimes.

In this post I will talk about South Africa generally, our time in Cape Town where we spent a total of 8 days and then our trip across to Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape.

South Africa is a place that looms large in the memories of people of my generation. The decisions of its government during the apartheid years had a dramatic effect across the world and, particularly, in Australia. At its most trivial we paid attention to South Africa because the Springboks could no longer play against Australia after the infamous tour in 1971 and there was no cricket between our countries. It is now 20 years since Nelson Mandela was released, a new democratic constitution was developed and massive changes were commenced. It is fascinating to be in the place, read the newspapers, talk to people and watch what is happening.

The dominant topic everywhere here seems to be the imminent 2010 FIFA World Cup which commences on 11 June. There is a lot of activity aimed at getting things organised. Some seem a little concerned that the estimated 450,000 visitors won't arrive but there seems little concern being expressed here that the facilities wont be ready.

Crime is an issue that dominates here. All of the guide books tell you to take all sorts of sensible precautions. Stories of daylight muggings and people being confronted by knife wielding hoodlums abound. You can hardly not pay attention. The signs that there are, or have been, major problems are everywhere. Most shops in Long Street, Cape Town - the main tourist and backpacker street - sport security doors. You stand at the door and wait to be spotted, the person inside hits a buzzer and you go in. Then you are buzzed out. Walls are everywhere and most sport jagged tops - razor wire, glass or bits of jagged metal. You are told not to walk around on your own after dark, anywhere. Dotted on almost every house are signs declaring that the place is looked after by a security company providing armed response. So far though - and I am touching wood as I write this - we have not seen any real evidence of actual crime, just precautions against crime.

I would never suggest that the fears and concerns aren't real. Clearly, there is, and has been, a lot of trouble but I do think there is a chance that the SA Government's statements, that there has been a major crackdown and that it is working, may just have some substance. There is security everywhere and there seem to be a lot of police around most of the places we move around. Of course, we take all of the precautions we can. I generally operate on the basis that at some stage we will be robbed or lose something important. So we keep our important stuff - money, credit cards, passports, cameras etc - in different places and try not to have anything too ostentatious or obvious going on.. We may lose something but, with any luck at all, we won't lose everything that is important to us. We operate this way everywhere though, it is not specific to South Africa.

I have to say that it is not terribly difficult to spot a reason for high levels of dissatisfaction with the way the economy works here. The haves do very well, if you ignore the walls, razor wire and 'Armed Response' signs. The have-nots don't do that well at all. Two men who have apparently admitted killing Eugene Terre Blanche, the right wing leader, are said to have done so over an argument about wages. They were apparently seeking the 300 rand each that they believed he owed them for a month's work. You get a little less than 7 rand for $A1. We are paying at least 350 rand for a night's accommodation. It costs about 11 rand for a beer and it is easy to spend 50 rand buying provisions for a feed that you cook yourself. Obviously, people can live for less than we are but a little over $A1 per day seems just a bit tight. Nothing excuses murder and assault but it is possible to understand the pressure some must feel.

It is impossible to ignore the history but, of the bits we were able to see, Cape Town is a beautiful city. We didn't really get out to the Cape Town Flats where there are a number of large suburbs and townships where the bulk of the population live. We did see some of this as we drove past but were strongly advised not to go there without a very reliable guide.

We stayed for a couple of nights in the Saasveld Lodge which is on Kloof Street, the extension of Long Street. It was very nicely centrally located and, given the excellent breakfast they provided in the cost, very good value for money. We moved out of Saasveld up the hill into the Upper Bloem Guest House which was also excellent value for money and provided us with a friendly, easy place to camp and catch our breath.

The only difficulty with the Upper Bloem Guest House is that is a fair way up a fairly steep hill. Not a problem coming home at night because, of course, you take a taxi, but we did walk up and down a number of times in our time there and it must have increased our fitness levels. Necessary after 4 months on a truck. Bo Kaap, the locality in which we were staying, was the place that slaves moved to after they were released. Many of the houses there are apparently pretty much the same as they were back a couple of hundred years but a lot of others have been refurbished and provide excellent housing close to the central business district. Bo Kaap still houses a lot of people who are the descendants of those who originally moved there. Some of the slaves were Moslem and there are still mosques in the area - one with a muezzin with a better than normal voice.

We did the standard tourist things - took rides on the hop on/hop off city tours, did a walking tour and visited a museum dedicated to the people who were forcibly moved out of District 6. This removal was carried out in accordance with the apartheid laws. Thousands of people who had been living in an area close to the CBD were shifted and their houses were bulldozed. The museum provides a number of moving exhibits dealing with an issue that is still very much alive. I happened to follow a group around the museum who were with a man who had been one of those moved. The land that was District 6 is mostly still wasteland. No developer has ever been prepared to take it on and there are now disputes about land ownership.

Cape Town has done much the same thing with its waterfront as a number of other cities. The development feels a little like Darling Harbour in Sydney except that in Cape Town the Waterfront is still part of an operating port. Bit of a tourist trap and with prices to match but still worth a visit.

As I said earlier, we intended to use Cape Town as an opportunity to re-group. One item that needed attention was our camera. The advice was that it was likely to cost a significant amount to replace the damaged lens and to get it working properly and that it would also take a considerable amount of time. It has been clear - if only to me - for a while that Patricia needs a camera that will do more than our Panasonic Lumix T5 can provide. Photos of rocks, flowers and insects require a better macro and those of hills and rocks 5 km away need a better telephoto. So I have been gently suggesting that we upgrade to something better for her. I overshot a little and we ended up with 2 new cameras, one with an SLR and one a little flasher than our current one but still not SLR for me. You may note that there are more photos in this post. Two cameras makes for more negotiation and more difficult decisions. There is always a downside.

We have decided to leave SA from Johannesburg and were intending to basically use public transport to get us there over a period of a little over 2 weeks. There isn't much in the way of public transport though and it certainly isn't sufficiently prevalent to allow us to move flexibly through the bits of the country that we are interested in visiting. There is a bus called the Baz Bus that focuses on delivering backpackers from place to place. It seems to go to most of the places we are interested in but the costs for the 2 of us didn't stack up against the cost of hire of small rental car.

Just outside Cape Town - interesting that it is always 2 words - there is the beginning of what is billed as the world's longest wine route. We took it, of course. We started out with Stellenbosch on the Wednesday before Easter. We drove in, took stock of all of the big houses, the very flash wineries and the wall to wall people and drove out again. Nothing against Stellenbosch but, for us, it is just a bit too much. Next we came to Franschhoek where we had formed a view that we might look for a place to stay and use as a base to visit some of the wineries. Unfortunately, again we looked and saw a very flash, clean and very popular area and moved on. Not before actually stopping and having a bit of a look about but we were not terribly sorry to move on. I was starting to wonder whether we would have to return to beer though.

We continued onwards and upwards through one of the many passes in the young mountains they have here and arrived at Robertson. The place doesn't have a name with the resonance of Stellenbosch or Franschhoek - although I am sure that my cousins would disagree - but it is a nice, and perhaps a bit more real sort of place. We stayed at the Robertson Backpackers for a couple of nights. The first because it we needed to a place to sleep, the second because drinking and driving is not a good thing.

On the advice of our hosts at the Robertson Backpackers, we visited four wineries and on our own initiative we found a place that makes cheese. The cheese place was La Mont. We were able to taste and purchase some very good cheeses, including an excellent blue 'Blue Rock', a great pecorino and a different herbed fetta. Given that we are in a car without a fridge and could be staying at places where fridges may or may not be available, we could only buy what we were going to be able to eat reasonably quickly.

The wineries we visited were Bon Courage, De Wetsa, Springfield and Zandvliet. We bought mainly whites, because they seemed to us to be the better wines and the better value but we did pick up some very good reds, particularly at Zandvliet and Springfield. Again we were constrained by the need to be able to consume our purchases in a limited period - we don't really see the need to cart wine to France - but, interestingly for us, we were not constrained too much by price. Cellar door prices in Australia tend to be higher than what you pay in the shops. It seems to generally be the opposite here.

From Robertson we made for Cape L'Agulhas, the southernmost point on the African continent. A good drive through what seem to be massive farms to a place that looks much the same as any other bit of rough coast line. The 2 currents, Benguela - the cold one from the Atlantic Ocean - and the Agulhas - the warm one from the Indian Ocean meet here or, more properly I understand at points between here and Cape Point near the Cape of Good Hope. Cape Agulhas is very much a developing place with what seem to be retirees both from South Africa and Europe building the population. There was no reasonably priced accommodation for us so we had decided to make for Oudtshoorn and Backpacker Lodge 96, the only place that had a room available. Matt, the bloke in charge, sold us his room for the night. A very helpful and friendly bloke. Welsh but now living here.

Our advice was that Oudtshoorn would be full because it was Easter. Later we heard it was a week long Arts Festival. We had thoughts of trying to find another place close by so we could have a look. Turned out that it was one of the largest annual festivals held in South Africa that celebrates Afrikaaner culture. It would have been interesting to have a look around but apparently there were over 80,000 additional people in the region and there was simply no accommodation available to us.

Luckily, we arrived in time to take a quick 170 km loop through a couple of the passes near Oudtshoorn. They have a lot of mountains here. Apparently the mountains are the youngest on any continent. Sharp, jagged things they are and with spectacular passes through them. We had seen a few on the way to Oudtshoorn and have seen a few since. There is even a place on the road where you have the opportunity to look at 4 at once, including one taken by the Voortrekkers. But there are none that compare, as far as we are concerned, with the Swartberg Pass.

I will admit that I was becoming very doubtful about this pass during the drive that took us through the first pass - it has a name but I can't remember it - that included a less than impressive waterfall - Victoria Falls has ruined us for these - and on a long drive through a nice valley. It was getting late you see and I figured we would come down the next pass directly into the setting sun. My doubts increased when we turned onto the gravel road. (And if you work for the rental company turn away now). The road is actually pretty reasonable given where it goes. It is a little over 25 km long. Tom Tom told us that the trip would take 2.5 hours. To hell with it, we have come this far. It can't be that bad. Well it was and it wasn't. We were never in any danger. The road stayed pretty reasonable. The grades were pretty special though. I was in first for a lot of the climbs and stayed in a pretty low gear on the way down some of them as well, just in case the brakes weren't up to it all. It didn't take us 2.5 hours but it could have if we had stopped to take all of the photos. Fortunately, we were going so slowly that the photographer could snap to her heart's content without too much worry.

I probably don't need to mention that the scenery was absolutely spectacular. Took your breath away - although that may have been looking over the drops that we were negotiating. Rather a lot of photos were taken but I am not sure how many will go up. It was all just a bit more than a photo can really do justice too, or at least bigger than our respective photographic skills.

From Outdshoorn we continued on the Garden Route from Route 62 down to the N2 and George. This is a large, modern looking city with at least one large modern shopping mall. We needed brunch and ended up shopping. A major surprise this.

The N2 is an expressway that took us, for a time, along some beautiful coastline and then, just to keep us honest, through some pretty uninteresting country. It is surprising, for those used to gradual changes in the country, to see the dramatic and almost instant changes in the country from one valley to the next. It looks as if most of the country is reasonably fertile. Some gets water, either through irrigation or rainfall, and some doesn't. Some is highly productive and some farmers look like they do it very hard unless they have very large acreages.

We are now in Port Elizabeth and have been for a couple of days. We are staying at one of the flashest and cheapest backpackers we have encountered, the 99 Mile Lodge. Very nice and with lovely staff.

We haven't seen a lot of the place. There has been a big festival on locally for the last three days. Lots of 'show' type activities with stalls, bandstands etc. We walked down to the beach, where most of the activity is occurring, on the last couple of days. We were generally the only people walking. The streets were deserted. Everyone drives a car, everywhere. We have been told to avoid deserted streets and, while we haven't encountered anyone other than a beggar or two, today we took the car to the shops. It was also very cold and looked like rain. But still.

From here we head on up the east coast along the Sunshine - not a lot of that about at the moment - the Wild Coast - which used to be called the Transkei - to Durban. From there it is up to the Drakkenberg Mountains and on to Jo'burg.

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Photos

Cape Town
View from our guest house on Upper Bloem

Electric Wire
bit better than my electric fence but then there is a lot to be done here.

District 6 Museum
Cape Town. A building on the edge of the area where it was all razed.

Street Names
Story is that a bull dozer operator saved all of the street signs and hid them. He handed them over when the museum was established

Cape Town
in the smog

Table Mountain
the 3 towers under the mountain were built using the planning legislation which was not specific about the height of buildings just where they could be started.

Tablecloth
over the Table

Nobel Prize Winners
SA has four winners

Comments

[adamasao]

photos
the photos are getting flasher, I'll admit. I'm glad the maps worked, too! Been missing El Comandante the last few posts - I guess they have their own heroes.

[Surtrek Web]

travel
I like this blog. Pictures are awesome.

[Slowfeet]

Photos of El Commandante
Actually there is a T-Shirt here with him on. I have not been prepared to take their photos. Bit quick. He is a hero here - for some.