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Published: March 27th 2016
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Happy Easter everyone! In the meantime I've been back in Curaçao since 3 months and the blogs-entries are running behind.
We left Swaziland and entered South Africa via the Mahamba border crossing. We drove for about 7 hours to get to our next hostel. On the way we stopped in Piet Retief for lunch and later in Bergville to buy some groceries. Our hostel was beautifully located along the R74 road, isolated on a big field, surrounded by a lot of grass, trees and a big lake on a short distance. The
Drakensberg Mountains are located nearby and that’s what draws most people here. The tiny country of Lesotho is also nearby but unfortunately we didn’t have enough time to visit. The hostel was fun, we met several travellers there who we kept meeting in other places we went to. Especially while cooking you have the chance to make contact with others and also in the evening while sitting around the bar or playing pool. I met Youssef at the hostel, a Lebanese-Dutch guy who is a friend of my Chilean friend Marcial. I met him earlier that year in the Netherlands and we kept in touch since he told
me that he was going to South Africa too. The next day he went doing a climbing activity, while Nydia and I went to
Royal Natal National Park. The park is located at the northern Drakensberg Mountains and has an area of about 80 square km. It’s definitely worth a visit and it’s a pity we couldn’t stay longer to see more of the park and besides, Nydia isn’t too much into hiking, mostly for health reasons. Otherwise I would have done a 6 hour hike in this park. The scenery is stunning with several table-top, flat mountains and the most popular is the “Amphi-theatre”. The mountain has a particular, half circle shape and therefore it bears that name. It’s one of those places that, again, made me think about how beautiful nature can be. One of world’s highest waterfalls is located here but since they were experiencing a draught, there was no waterfall to be seen. We hiked in the park for about 2.5 hours and on our way back we bumped into a few other travellers from the hostel who we hung out with that evening.
We left the hostel and drove south towards
Durban. The
second largest city in South Africa has about 3.5 million people and is nicely located along the coast. The beaches of Durban along the Indian Ocean make it one of the most popular destination for South Africans. Especially inhabitants of Johannesburg and area visit Durban in big amounts in the summer. It's a pretty big and cosmopolitan city and it was the first time since we left Johannesburg that we were in a big city again. We visited the aquarium “uShaka Marine World” where I met Youssef again and he joined us for a few hours that day. The aquarium is pretty big and worth a visit, with several species of marine life and it’s nicely made within the wreck of an old ship which makes it unique. The aquarium is located within a bigger park containing a small shopping centre, waterpark and theme-park. Nearby we went for a walk along the Golden Mile beach and the various stalls selling souvenirs. Furthermore, we went for a visit to the busy downtown area where we got fined for parking without paying. We didn’t see any sign indicating that we had to pay but the fine was just about US$ 5 and
I paid it later at a police station. We went to Victoria Street Market where we had some cheap but good lunch. Durban is known for being a city with a large Indian population and here it was clearly visible since a lot of spices are sold in the market. We also walked a bit through the streets of the city centre where it was pretty busy.
One evening I met Siga for dinner, a former South African colleague I worked in New Zealand with. He lived next to me in the staff-accommodation and I often hung out with him. He lives in Pietermaritzburg but drove to Durban to meet me. It was really nice to catch up again after one year and we spoke a lot about New Zealand, South Africa and travelling in general. Later I met Youssef and we went to a pub in the well-known Florida Street which gets pretty busy in the evening hours because of the many pubs and cafes located here. Youssef also picked me up at Durban airport after I had to return the rental car there, which was very kind of him.
Since we didn’t have rental car
anymore, we continued our journey with the Baz Bus. It’s a backpacker’s hop-on hop-off bus that brings you from hostel to hostel. Convenient if you’re travelling by yourself, but it often runs late and the first time there wasn’t enough space for the luggage and it was full, so you sit pretty crampy in there. The major disadvantage is that the bus doesn’t run every day. It would have been better to keep the rental car for a few more days but when I booked the bus, Nydia didn’t have plans to visit South Africa yet and renting a car completely on my own would have been too expensive. Some travellers we met at the hostel near Royal Natal and again in Durban (Matan from Israel and Greg from the UK), recommended us to go to
Coffee Bay so we took the bus and went there. On our way while driving through the countryside we spotted many rondavels; circular shaped hut-style houses belonging to the Xhosa people. The Xhosa is an ethnic group living mostly in Eastern Cape. It was a long and tiring day driving in the bus and transferring onto a shuttle. Coffee Bay is a village located
at the coast and is not very developed (yet), and that gave the place its charm. The locals are really benefiting off tourism here and I hope it remains that way, as long as they don’t develop Coffee Bay too much and make it a mass-tourism destination. I really liked this place and it’s excellent to relax, do some surfing, lie at the beach or go hiking. The hostel offers cheap surfing lessons and I took one, which was really cool. It wasn’t easy at all but I managed to stand up on the board about three times. We wore wet-suits because the water is a bit cold and since I'm used to the warmer Curaçao waters, anything way below 25°C is cold for me. Another day we took a tour in the area and walked through some villages and along the coast. We had lunch at this beautiful spot where we shared sandwiches with a group of local children. We saw several rondavels during the hike and many of them have their own little piece of land where people cultivate their food. The hike was very nice and brought us to a cave and through a huge split within
a rock. There was a spot where you could jump off a cliff into the water but we didn’t do it. Nydia enjoyed it too but explicitly told me it would be her last hike in South Africa! Greg forgot some stuff at the hostel in Durban which we took to Coffee Bay for him. Nydia and I went to the hostel where he was staying and we had a few drinks at the bar there, while playing some pool and ping pong. Nydia went back to our hostel but I stayed until very late. Greg invited us, and three other travellers, to come and stay at his uncle’s house further down the coast in Chintsa. We left one day after they did and went there.
More in the next blog-entry!
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RENanDREW
Ren & Andrew
Three months already!
It must be nice to be home after being away for so long. Love your photos of Royal Natal NP, the light is so beautiful.