Coffee Shack Coffee Bay

Of all the places I visited Coffee Bay was the place I loved most.
My last stop before returning to Durban for my flight back to Amsterdam.
The Bazz bus, a hop-on hop-off bus service running from Cape Town to Johannesburg, vans taking up to 9 or 10 passengers, brought me from Port Elizabeth to Umtata. I just spent the night at Port E, so not much to tell, but the Bazz bus is a great way of getting to the right places. Amicable drivers throwing in interesting bits of information ...

September 21 and we have been on our adventure for one month now. Hard to believe, time really flies. Today we are heading for Coffee Bay in the former Transkei (now called Eastern Cape province), homeland of Nelson Mandela.

It's a sunny day and the sky is bright blue. Our drive starts off in a rolling terrain viewing field after field of sugar cane, all manicured. The sugar cane fields end and commercial forests take over for awhile. As we ascend ...

We headed into coffee bay with warnings about potholes and animals. Coffee bay is at the end of an 80 k winding road in very bad condition. Based on our experience, we made our own big 5 list driving to Coffee Bay
1) Potholes (leopards- hard to spot!)
2) Cows (Elephants, Gentle but dumb and slow moving)
3) Sheep and Goats (Black and White Rhinos)
4) Cars driving in the wrong lane (The Buffalo- the most likely to kill)
5) People (Lions. People ...

The Baz Bus picked us up at about 7am on Thursday morning. We arrived to Mthatha at about 2pm. We had planned to go to Coffee Bay which meant being dropped by the Baz Bus in Mthatha and the hostel sending a shuttle bus to meet the Baz Bus to drive us the one and a half hour drive to Coffee Bay. The road to Coffee Bay was in very poor condition with giant potholes everywhere so between that and the cattle darting out in front of the van the ride was ...

Got into Coffee Bay around 430pm Sunday. A very long drive from Durban to Coffee Bay. Coffee Bay is a remote village about 8 hours west of Durban. We woke up around 6am to catch the bus to Coffee Bay. It is a really cool place. The six of us from Durban managed to get a 12 person dorm room to ourselves which was very spacious. It was quite sad coming here, as we passed some real poor towns with people simply sitting on the streets as they have no ...

Coffee Bay is one of those places that you fall in love with. It is located in the Transkei region of South Africa. This region is the poorest area in South Africa. Almost everyone lives in a traditional mud hut. The government recently provided them with a running water tap in each village. Also, about 6 months ago the government built outhouses in the villages to prevent Cholera. This is also where Nelson Mandela lives. If he is home, there is a flag raised. The front ...

Hit the road Jack. Woke everyone up at 7.30 with the sound of my hairdryer. Ooops. Loving the straight hair though!!

So left Durban at 8 and hit freeway south. Tiny towns dotted the rolling green hills rising up from the ocean. A coastline of beautiful golden sand beaches with waves. Paradise, bar the sharks.

Were hoping to stumble across a McDonalds for breakfast but as yet we've had no luck so sit with bellies grumbling. I ...

Jo, geil hier. Bin jetzt seit drei Tagen in Coffee Bay, einem kleinen abgelegenen Oertchen inmitten der ehemaligen Transkei. Die Transkei war zu Zeiten der Apartheid eine der "Homelands", wo man alle Schwarzen hinsiedeln wollte, um ihr eigenes Land zu haben (und sie so loszukriegen). Das merkt man auch heute noch, denn die Region hier gilt als die "afrikanischste" Suedafrikas und ist gekennzeichnet von vielen kleinen Doerfern, Kuehen, Ziegen und ...

For info on Coffee Bay read my blog from Storms River.

For photo highlights of Coffee Bay:
http://www.facebook.com/album.p hp?aid=1564&l=81095&id=50789969 8