by Joanne Glynn
The road south of Port Edward passes through a region that was once called the Transkei, but which now forms part of the Eastern Cape Province. When he was at boarding school Neil spent his short holidays here on the farm of a schoolfriend’s family and he has a soft spot for this starkly beautiful place. Now it’s famous as the home of Nelson Mandela, but for three centuries it’s been a land of determined and resilient people, the Xhosa. Today it’s cold, windy and spitting rain but the people don’t seem to notice. We drive through high, rolling and treeless hills separated by grasslands and deep valleys. Homesteads are dotted about everywhere, the houses painted in cheerful colours like bright turquoise and lolly pink. Men carry a kierie, a short wooden club used as a walking stick in times of peace, and everyone wears a blanket. Neil remembers a time when these were always red and woollen, but these days brown is favoured and microfibre has been discovered. Men herd their stock on horseback and young ladies with white-painted faces walk along the road. These hills have only ever seen a handful of white farmers and now there is no sign of a European face. It’s one of those areas in South Africa that could easily be a separate country, so detached does it appear to be in both place and time.
We arrive in Port St Johns under heavy rain and through the most spectacular of entrances. The road winds steeply down from the hills of the Transkei then suddenly crosses the Umzimvubu River and we’re so awe-struck by the high precipitous cliffs through which the river cuts that we don’t realise we’ve actually arrived. What a forgotten little town in such a memorable location. This stretch of coastline is known as ‘the Jewel of the Wild Coast’ and apparently Port St Johns jumps with holidaymakers during the school holidays, but now it is sleepy and slightly seedy, with lowkey family resorts along the riverbank and old, poorly maintained cottages fronting the beach. It could just be the bad weather, but the over-riding feeling is of a place that has forgotten the magnificence of its surroundings.
We press on for another 20 kilometres or so to Umngazi River Bungalows, unconvinced that they’ll offer anything more than we’ve seen in town. But first impressions aren’t bad and they have a bungalow free for one night, and once shown to it we’re immediately captivated. Someone with a bit of style has put some thought into the design and fittings and it is light and breezy, but the main draw card is the spectacular view over the river mouth and the pounding cyclone-driven surf beyond.
This place is advertised as a family resort and they take this claim seriously. Signs in reception advise that you must pre-book for day care, for nannies and for all sorts of fun-filled family activities. Young couples with pre-schoolers wander about, coddling and chastising and discussing the opening hours of the nursery. Lunch is a traffic jam of designer strollers and toddlers tottering around between the chairs. Even our bungalow has a cot in the spare bedroom and at the bottom of the king-sized bed stands a crib, which the porter immediately stores away when he sees the horrified look on our faces.
I can’t shake the feeling that this is all a bit weird. It’s a holiday in a giant nursery of strangers and something that I would have thought all sane parents would avoid. We leave the next morning and on the drive out we have to concede that no place is totally ideal. We might never find that perfect little haven where the accommodation is as wonderful as the surroundings and where we could happily melt into both for a week or two.
Further down the coast, East London is the port city where Neil went to high school, and we’re here for old time’s sake. We do a sweeping tour of the old school, the pool where Neil thrashed the opposition in swimming galas, and the movie theatre where he liked to scare himself shitless watching horror movies on Saturday afternoons. I like the place but he can’t get over the fact that now the main street looks like one in any other scruffy country town and the department stores, which were once very classy, now have armed guards at the doors and iron bars over the windows.
Decent accommodation is scarce, as East London has become another place where government officials like to hold conferences, but somehow we manage a front room in a sea-facing hotel. Along with everyone else we’re at our window watching the colossal seas demolish the beach in front, a result of extraordinarily high spring tides on top of the tail end of Cyclone Favio. That night we eat in a restaurant on stilts over the sea, with spotlit breakers crashing and white water foaming under the floorboards. A seal at the aquarium next door stretches out on his slippery-dip and as he succumbs to sleep he slides into a heap at the base, a contented flipper occasionally waving in the breeze. Outside, a barefoot old man with bright alert eyes asks for a coin. After Neil obliges with a few rand I think it a good idea that he also hand over the shoes he’s wearing, which he intended giving away anyway before we go back home. We walk off along the promenade engaged in an animated discussion on the subject when the old man approaches, smiles and shakes his head. No, you keep your shoes.
Leaving East London, we detour inland to Grahamstown, where Neil spent some of his school holidays. Although it’s a city it gives the impression of being a country town with leafy, gardened neighbourhoods and low-rise buildings. The streets are lined with quaint old cottages and grand town buildings, all in good nick and lovingly cared for, and right in town is a university which anyone would want to attend just because it’s so beautiful. In a backstreet we find the little cottage where Neil stayed with an aunt and it’s still exactly as he remembered it. If it was in Australia the whole town would be heritage listed. A shop on High Street has stained-glass trim on the awnings and the original timber counters are tens of metres long, while the polished wooden shelving extends to the ceiling. There’s a famous observatory right in the city centre looking more like a neo-Greek theatre, and dapper young Xhosa men walk the streets like characters out of a ‘30s movie. Rhodes University is Grahamstown, and its streets and buildings merge with those of the town so effortlessly that we find ourselves trying to check into a college instead of a B&B. We might have had more luck at the college because there is no accommodation to be had anywhere in town.
So it’s back down to the coast and Port Alfred, and The Lookout Guest House. It stands on a hill looking out over the town towards the sea, the apartment large and sunny and our hostess, a local girl, good fun. She and Neil engage in long conversations about the South Africa of their youth, the boarding schools, train journeys and childhood holidays. Neil has found someone who can relate to his life here, and I’m happy to sit back and listen to their reminiscing. In the mornings Neil and I take long walks on the beach and visit an Internet café to check the latest movements in the Troopy’s Sales Campaign, but then we return to Louise and her cathartic conversations.
Port Alfred is where Neil’s grandfather lived, and once or twice when Neil and his brother were very young the family made the long journey down from Northern Rhodesia to pay him a visit and to have a holiday by the sea. Neil thinks that he can just remember playing on the edge of the surf but it’s more likely that he’s relating to an old black-and-white photo in which the boys can be seen cavorting in nappies in shallow, low-tide ripples. They look thrilled and wary at the same time; all that water must have been overwhelming to toddlers from a dry, landlocked country.
After a couple of days Louise has to kick us out as The Lookout is fully booked, so we cross the river to a cabin in the Medolino Caravan Park. What a gem, not only because the owner’s pride and joy is an Australian cockatoo but also because it shows what a caravan park can be with a little love and imagination. The log cabin we’re given is comfortable and quiet, and overlooks a little lake where kingfishers, herons and Egyptian geese mill around. To be picky, the master bedroom is a bit on the small side and during the night I hear Neil cursing as he knocks his shin on the bed-end when he tries to move around it, but that’s a small price to pay.
The grounds are grassy green and thick hedges between the sites give the sense that we are lodging on the manicured lawns of a swanky estate. Staff constantly tend the gardens, do the washing, and serv
ice the cabins and public ablution blocks. The floors of our cabin are mopped daily, the barbecue scoured and clean towels materialise.
I start passing the time of day with other couples who, like us, have the time to holiday at a leisurely pace. Taking a grey gap year, as one clown suggests. I walk past a couple sitting on recliners in front of their van enjoying sundowners and a bag of chips. The husband raises his glass in greeting. ‘This is the life,’ he says with great contentment and I find myself thinking, yes, this is the life — and it has nothing to do with nationality or wealth or age, but with your state of mind.
Both Neil and I have been insidiously gaining weight. Our excuse has been that we’ve been leading a sedentary life, sitting in the Troopy for long stretches and frequenting national parks where we’ve been restricted to our vehicle and just a small safe area to walk about in. There is truth in that, but deep down we know that the Cadburys Eclairs have been weaving their magic. We started a get fit campaign at The Lookout, and now it’s just a short walk over the dunes to the beach so both morning and evening we go down, walking for a good hour. The locals are a friendly lot and we learn many wonderful things on these walks, such as why sea sand is better than river sand for making cement, and where you’d wash up if you got swept away while swimming in the bay. The morning we leave we come upon hundreds of sea urchins washed up at just one spot near the rocks. There are blue ones, large black spiky ones, ones with geometric mauve patterns and baby pincushion ones. Everyone stands around looking at them in wonder, silenced by the gifts nature constantly surprises us with.
On these beach walks and as we drive along in the Troopy we talk about this and that, Neil usually musing over the political situation while I worry about homeless boys or the availability of fresh milk. But something subtle has been happening and Neil has become interested in my chatter, can discuss everyday trivia with the same intensity as me, while I’ve begun to comment on governments and political personalities. With just each other to talk to, we’ve gradually become more tolerant of each other’s point of view and more involved in the other’s interests. We’re no longer bickering over insignificant things, like who had the map last before it went missing, but are instead arguing about a country’s policies and its future. Without even trying, we’ve become interested in what each other has to say and more accepting of the other’s shortcomings.
CHARMED
We’ve booked the Zuurburg Mountain Inn in Addo Elephant National Park thinking that it will be bang in the middle of elephants and eland, and that we’ll be game driving through the park to get to it. But it turns out that the park’s borders aren’t straight up and down, but a confusing pattern of indentations and bulges around railway lines, public roads and privately owned land, and that it’s sectioned to accommodate the various biomes that it encompasses. Only one section, the one in the middle, actually has the famous elephants. This population of Eastern Cape elephants, now at over 400, has grown from just eleven in 1931 when the park was established to save the sub-species from extinction through poaching. The park has subsequently expanded to cover additional landscapes and biomes, and now a diverse range of species call it home. Because of its accessibility the park is popular and we’ve been able to book just one night’s accommodation at Main Camp. We’re disappointed that we’ll only have 24 hours in what we think could be the last wildlife park we’ll be visiting.
Well, it may be just 24 hours but it’s an exceptional day. There are fields of eland and waterholes of buffalo, and all three types of warthog, namely brunette, blonde and redhead. And of course there are the elephants and, almost as precious as those, the dung beetles, and flightless ones at that. Signs all over the park warn that dung beetles have the right of way and on game drives you see cars erratically swerving or screeching to a sudden halt as they come upon a dung beetle rolling his perfect ball of dung across the road. Sometimes the road is scattered with dung beetles and it’s only with some very fancy driving that they can be avoided. Even so we come across more than a few squashed bodies, not so much victims of a heartless motorist but unavoidable due to their sheer numbers.
On the afternoon drive we round a corner to see below us a fabulous sight. A series of waterholes surrounded by and filled with elephants, 60 or 70 of them, drinking, playing, larking about in the mud or wandering through the car park where some lucky people are parked, cameras working overtime and big smiles on their faces. Out of the bushes more herds wander in while others, slick with mud and dark with water, move off to make room. It’s ordered and stately, and after what seems like just a few minutes they’ve all gone, engulfed by the surrounding bush. Twice more before we leave the park we visit this waterhole but there is no one there. Our earlier encounter could have been a dream, an illusory trick of the harsh African light.
As we continue towards Cape Town it becomes apparent that now we’re heading westward, not south, as the coastline has flattened out and runs roughly from east to west. It’s a concept that continually confuses me, as set in my mind is an image of South Africa with Cape Town sitting on a point at the southern extreme. When we were in Cape Town I assumed that I was looking out south towards Antarctica, but I must in fact have had my sights set on Argentina. My sense of direction has been thrown and I fear that from now on I’ll be continually guiding us 45 degrees away from our destination.
Our initial intention had been to stay at Jeffreys Bay, home to the Billabong Classic of surfing fame, but it looks bleak and wind blown when we arrive, and we’ve heard bad things about property safety from previous visitors so we decide to push on to St Francis Bay. This little town looks as pretty as a picture on approach; all whitewash and thatch nestled into a gully amongst sand dunes and the low-lying coastal heath known as fynbos. We continue down the peninsula to Port St Francis and then, because we’re almost there anyway, Cape St Francis. Not quite as quaint and ordered as St Francis Bay but arranged around a wide sandy beach that stretches as far as the lighthouse. This is the beach that attracts international surfers in winter when tides and winds combine to give a magic mile-long ride right across the bay from the rocks in front of the lighthouse. Now the sea just looks rough and there’s not a surfboard in sight.
We choose a place to stay which meets only half of our requirements: there’s no view, no international news on DSTV, no Internet facility to track the progress of the Troopy’s sale, and what’s more, there’s an interconnecting door — but we like it all the same. We like it even better when the manageress gives us a discount and says she’ll keep the connecting room vacant for the duration of our stay. We continue our get fit campaign with the bravado of the weak-willed, but do manage to stick to a loose regime of morning and afternoon beach walks.
I love this sort of walking — dodging waves, picking up shells, patting dogs. I think about why so many bluebottles have been washed up, and plan what we’ll have for dinner. Why do some walkers greet you and others ignore you? And what could that lady have been thinking when she came to walk on the beach in high-heeled espadrilles? When I raise this last important issue, in fact have to repeat it twice, Neil looks suddenly askance and says, ‘What?’ He’s been discussing with himself the future effects of South Africa’s policy of Black Empowerment and Affirmative Action, and we laugh at the disparity in our thoughts. We may have, finally, learnt to respect the other’s ideas and interests, but my froth and Neil’s earnestness will always be there. Now we can appreciate that, underneath it all, we both whistle the same song. I think back to a night in St Lucia. We were sitting at a table in a restaurant and, in a heavy drizzle, a group of black entertainers sidled up to the owner and asked permission to busk. In imitation of the upmarket Khula Happy Singers who entertain tourists all about town, these were dressed in white tuxedos and white gloves, black and white minstrels in reverse, and they sang and danced their hearts out. I don’t like to think what it cost them to put their costumes together but there they were, in the rain and with reserved reception, hoping to make a buck.
Other diners sat at their tables, eating, drinking, some turning their backs to the boys. As the dancers hummed and clicked their boots I felt a sense of hopelessness for these earnest young men with big dreams but little future. I glanced over at Neil, who was staring into his plate, so wretched did he feel about their nightly humiliation. When they’d finished and the hat was passed around Neil emptied his pockets of change to try to make up for the indifference of others.
We’ve booked two nights in Tsitsikamma National Park, not really knowing much about it except that it is by the sea and has good walking trails. Ho hum, I’m thinking, as we approach through scanty pine forests and old maize fields. We check in at the gate, where we’re given a key and a map, and head off for Storms River Mouth Rest Camp, immediately entering thick forest. There are a couple of marked walking tracks veering off into the undergrowth and through the trees are glimpses of water. The road continues and then in front of us a dramatic stretch of coastline is revealed. We notice tents and caravans and mobile homes spread along a grassy verge right on the rocky shore. Down a little track and we find our chalet nestled up against a ridge of fynbos, right on the rocks, 180 degrees of ocean staring back at us just metres away. Wow! Inside it’s even better, with a lounge room designed for lounging and a big bed facing the water. Feng shui or whatever, this place immediately feels just right.
