AMazing Mountain ranges and Coffee..

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Greetings Peeps,

I have commenced my travelling with a short stay in Johannesburg, which I found to be a little daunting for a traveller on ones own… and this because I met a guy from Manchester in my Dorm, soon after I arrived, and he told me how he had just been mugged on his way to the hostel (a road near the main train station)!! That hardly made me want to venture into the centre of the city. But cities are cities hey and girls will be girls or something like that!

My first planned stop was at the Drakensberg region between Jo’berg and Durban and good gravy Marie that took my breath away. The mountain range of Drakensberg, which I’d not heard of before researching South Africa (look it up if you’re bored!) is sooo huge, is at a very high altitude and has the second largest waterfall in the world!
So I went on a hike and expecting to be a fairly easy one, had to climb some crazy ascent with potential falling rocks and lots of falling points would one lose grip for a second!! Argh! I’m not the biggest fan of heights and I’m sure I suffer from minor vertigo - so when I got the peak of our ascent, some 3500 feet up, I didn’t just walk up to the cliff edge, which it was!, and sit down - a few people in our group did and I’ve included that as a photo…

Next I travelled through the Kwazula Natal region visiting another urban centre that is Durban, where there is the largest number of Indians outside of, er, India… So lots of curry restaurants and home of a specialty called the Bunni-Chou where a loaf of bread is hollowed and stuffed with curry - yum. There is also the Bunni-Rabbit here but I didn’t taste that-slightly hairy.
My hostel gave me a map showing two regions in Durban marked “Keep Out” and supposedly foreigners wandering here will wander out less what they have with them! Funny (or maybe not so) as I heard the story of another hostel that simply highlighted theses regions on their map (without a key I might add - when will they learn god damn it!). A couple of travellers found one of these “keyless” maps somewhere and without explanation from the creator, took the highlighted areas the be the, well, highlights of the Durban city (Durban’s nicknamed the golden city I think). So they set off to visit every highlighted road on their map and they were duly mugged and ravished of their personal belongings!! Oophs.

I saw some South African stand up in Durban, and boy the comedian didn’t hold back. I like the accent here though - “Easy bro” comes as “easy brew”.

I then stayed for a large amount of time in a place called Coffee Bay within the Trans-Kei region, which apparently is the last “real” African part of South Africa and until recently was a separate kingdom and not part of South Africa. The people are extremely friendly here and have their own language and traditions. I’ve included as photo of typical living quarters and some local lads collecting some oysters. I’ve had my first surfing lesson here (from a former Billabong world champion mind!), stayed within the village for a meal and dance, and done a couple of hikes - did a high jump into the sea on one hike- yikes - my vertigo improving there!

In general, there are lot of really interesting people travelling in South Africa - some volunteering in schools and hospitals, and then also people who are doing visits into much less developed African countries as well. The guy from England who got mugged did a cycling trip from Egypt all the way to South Africa!! Lots of Dutch, English and rest I’ve met have been from USA, Norway, Denmark, Canada, Australia or New Zealand.

Alrighty, moist shoot now… speaks again with some more rad photos!

Pat

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Photos

The Drakensberg
A small, but amazing section, of the Drakensberg... we climbed up to the 2nd highest peak - took a few hours

trans-kei living quaters
These living huts are gathered together in groups of no more than about 4...

Local boys looking for Oysters
I think they were looking for Oysters!!! Our tour guide smelling (the locals are in the middle)

Comments

[Mich]

Soundz fab
Hey Pat - Sounds like you're having a fab time, great to hear from you and see the wonderful pictures. Makes good reading.....ever thought of being a travel writer?? Love Mich

[JP]

Piccies
Nice log Pat, how about some pictures of you?