The Baz Bus Trip to Durban

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Trip Start Jan 26, 2007 Previous
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  Durban, South Africa
Sunday, July 1, 2007

A much abbreviated blow by blow account of the last few weeks will ensue.

Cape Town
I returned to Cape Town after Namibia. John and I hung out. We ate some delicious foods with Mary, Robert, and Noah. I left on the Baz Bus, a backpacker bus that drops off and picks up from hostels all along the southern and eastern coasts of South Africa. I departed Cape Town and moved eastwards along the Garden Route.

Knysna
Along the garden route are a number of nice, suburban little towns with beautiful beaches, coastlines, and such. Knysna lies on and around a lagoon with some large heads framing where the lagoon meets the sea

01 - Nature's Valley - Tide pools in Tsitsikamma

. It was pretty. Not much going on for a budget traveller. I left after a day and a half.

Nature's Valley
Very nearby the Tsitsikamma National Coastal Reserve is Nature's Valley. The hostel at which I stayed was in the middle of nowhere and had only one other guest. There was also a crazy hippie guy who mumbled to himself and claimed to be a prophet. He had one arm and one leg, and he cooked us up a pretty tasty dish which was a little heavy on the Tumeric spice. I was sick most of the next day. I went on a hike that day down from the hostel (a few kilometers inland) to the coastal forests and beaches of Tsitsikamma. Beautiful, dense, overgrown forest paths winding down to freshwater rivermouths that meet the ocean. Walked along the coastline at low tide, over jagged, sharp tidepools and coastal cliff. Accidentally climbed my way into a precarious hanging position on a vertical overhang about 10 feet over the ocean next to a rock beach. Had to drop down into the 3ft deep water. Cut my hand. Took fewer risks in the ensuing hours.

I walked along the beach after negotiating the rest of the rocky coast, admiring nice sand and hills and such. Took a long, long walk run back to the hostel, which was "really not that far" according to the insane hostel owner lady, but was actually a solid 3 miles or so and took me a while after a long day of hiking

02 - Nature's Valley - Young Grasshoppa

. Left Nature's Valley the next day, as the insanity of the people at the hostel overrode my attraction to the beauty of the area.

Jeffreysbaai (Jeffrey's Bay)
A world-famous surf bum town, featured in Endless Summer and Endless Summer II. Jeffrey's Bay is the larger town just north of Cape St. Francis, the immortalized "best surf spot in the world" from Endless Summer. The first day I got there, there was absolutely no surf. I walked along the beach, checked out the one-stoplight town, avoided the unsafe areas just to the south of the hostel. Nice day at the beach, really.

The next day, the surf came up and I spent about 3 hours watching surfers at the world-class Supertubes spot. Some amazing surfers there. It is a right pointbreak just off a rocky tidepool shore, and if you catch a solid wave at the top and negotiate well, you can ride for probably longer than a minute or something. Most people I watched managed a solid 30 seconds, often barrelling and doing some other sweet maneuvers for which I have no name, as I don't consider myself a surf expert. Dolphins could easily be seen surfing the waves alongside human surfers as well. Pretty cool, really.

Ate horrible, horrible, horrible mexican food

03 - Jeffreysbaai - indigenous flower and bee

. You'd think I would learn, but no, the siren call of burritos keeps me coming back for more disgusting, horribly interpreted, overpriced slop. Absolutely nobody knows how to do Mexican food other than Mexico and the US. I have my doubts even about South America.

Port Elizabeth (PE)
I arrived in PE at 11pm and left at 7am. I've been told it's not worth it to stay by just about everyone, so I took the advice.

East London
Meant to leave East London immediately but due to a miscommunication I spent one night at a backpacker's right off the main surf beach. There's not much to see in East London. The backpacker's did have a very nice lookout tower at which I sat for a lot of hours while waiting for the next day.

Hogsback
A mystical mountain village inland from the coast. Reputed, or rumored, to be the childhood holiday spot that inspired JRR Tolkien to write his books. Who knows. The forests in and around the place were a bit magical, with winding overgrown paths through dense, twisting forest and thick curled roots snaking their way along and over the trails. A large, massive 800 year old yellowwood tree really did feel enchanted. Strange noises followed and preceded my journey on the trail, making you feel like you may be being watched by hobbits or something. I think they were baboons and cows in the forest, which is not too much less hilarious and fun. Some pretty waterfalls and natural rock pools as well.

04 - Jeffreysbaai - The Beach at Sunset

Lots of really fun forest hikes that began in the hostel back yard.

This is also where I spent the 3 nights preceding my birthday on June 23. It was a whole lot of fun. The hostel owners, Brits who never left, played a lot of music for me like Sublime and Monty Python songs, to which everyone sang along. "Eric the Half-a-Bee" was a group favorite and stuck as a nickname for the rest of the weekend. At midnight on the 22nd, a few folks gave me a Mars bar with 23 matches in it as a delicious birthday cake. I ate it. Then I had to drink the billions of shots that everyone bought me afterwards. It was only a few liqueur concoctions and a Jagermeister shooter, but after a massive amazing pasta dinner, I felt like I was going to explode.

The day of my birth was filled with hiking, rugby-watching, etc. In the Tri-Nations test, New Zealand trailed until the final 10 minutes before scoring two tries and dealing South Africa a difficult loss at home in Durban. I was impartial, but ultimately I really like the All-Blacks of NZ because, frankly, I just really like two things: their crazy fast style and the Haka, their war dance performed before the start of every match.

Hogsback was fun

05 - Jeffreysbaai - Legendary Supertubes

. I left after a nice, relaxing 4 days in the mountains, heading for the coast.

Cintsa (or Chintsa, everyone is confused what this place is called)
A tiny little summer destination slash village. A beautiful curving white sand beach, with surf for swimming and surfing, when tidal conditions are safe. The backpackers here is "the best in South Africa", and I agree when it comes to location. My 11-person dorm room (which I shared with only one other person) had its own wooden balcony overlooking a lagoon and the beach in the near distance (see photos). The food was pretty good, anyway, and there were "fun" activities every day. If I were in the right frame of mind, or in high school, I would have had a lot of fun playing volleyball and drinking wine, probably.

Coffee Bay
A tiny resort destination, tinier than Cintsa and less affluent, in the middle of nowhere on the Wild Coast. This area is also known as the Transkei, an area that was deemed an independent homeland during the later years of the Apartheid regime. The local culture is Xhosa (the Xh being a back-of-the-throat click which is quite hard to manage for an English speaker), and not many people speak English

06 - Jeffreysbaai - Amateur Hour with the camera

. The homeland was set up to give a semblance of self-rule for indigenous people, but in reality the area is just tribally governed (local chieftains and such), and is extremely poor. Infrastructure such as schools, good roads, anything is extremely lacking. Everyone lives in what is basically a round hut, painted bright green because of a cheap limestone-based paint. There are cultural nuances which are too complicated to explain in great detail, but a good basis for understanding is that this is a traditional, very poor culture. All through the Transkei, which stretches inland from the basically undeveloped coast, clusters of huts speckle the golden hillsides (very similar to California in geography here, coastline like Big Sur, hills like the inland golden hills).

A nasty cold front whipped its way through Coffee Bay for two of the three days I was there. I did, however, get a day and a half of nice, rainless and half-sunny weather to enjoy. I also decided to go on a wander one day and got picked up by a local drummaker named Silas who I met briefly on the shuttle to the backpacker's. He insisted on taking me around all day on his "day off" from making drums, which are sold to backpackers and other visitors. We walked around, he greeted friends and gossipped, we picked up a 20-something guy from Durban who was on a day off as well from doing some sort of construction grading

07 - Hogsback - The view from the hostel

. Silas first took us to a local B&B and bar, where the two had beers and I had a Fanta. Silas got a party-hat Sombrero from the bartender and then decided to take the hat with him.

Oh, before we got into the place, there were five local kids begging at the parking lot gate. One of them must have said something to Silas, because the spritely guy jumped out of the car and chased the kid for about 4 minutes. When he came back, he explained that he didn't catch the child but that the little one rolled off the cliff down towards the beach. The cliff was around 20 meters or so, and to this day I am not sure whether the child died, was seriously injured, or intentionally and skilfully rolled down the cliff. When we left the bar 30 minutes later, there were only 4 forlorn looking kids at the gate... So that was a really weird experience.

An aside and half-explanation for this is that visitors are strongly encouraged not to give to begging children, as this encourages begging over going to school or working. Locals take this seriously - they want their children to be educated and help get the area out of utter, total poverty. So when people beg, it is extremely frowned upon. Instead, children come up to you, greet you, and then, emotively, as if suddenly overwhelmed with a happiness inspired by the most glowing beauty, will proclaim, "I want to sing!" Afterwards, they will expect a small donation for their troubles

08 - Chintsa - the view from the deck

. Other locals make money by selling marijuana to the endlessly demanding tourists. Apparently it's abundant and cheap.

Silas took Jan and I to his "village," which was a grouping of huts scattered across a small vale in the hills. We walked up and into his little family compound, where his Xhosa-speaking parents welcomed us, tried to teach us a bit of the language, and gave us a lukewarm bean-and-white-bland-potato-like-substance stew, which apparently is a Xhosa staple. Here you see what I meant earlier by the main facet of the culture being poverty. This is not some amazing, different dish. This is a dish created out of necessity, by buying in bulk two cheap ingredients and mushing them together before heating them over open fire, leaving a massive pot of it in the corner from which the day's three meals are fetched.

The main source of wealth in Xhosa culture is cattle. The Transkei "big five" are: sheep, horses, cows, goats, pigs. They are all over the place. Men still give dowries of cattle when marrying women. However, due to poverty, there is (from what I understand) a high rate of pre-marital childbirth.

Silas introduced us to Johann, an insane 40-something cowboy-hat-wearing white South African who basically, from what I could gather, showed up at the doorstep and decided to stay indefinitely, in order to help the greater Xhosa culture bootstrap itself out of its moneyless predicament

09 - Coffee Bay - The Hole In The Wall

. He's learning how to farm in order to, within 20 years or so I guess, create a communal, profit-turning, self-sustaining farm that is run by the Xhosa people. He spoke very ideally and was rather taken back when I was asking him practical questions like, "how long are you staying?" and, "so, what exactly would you like to see done in, say, x years?"

We almost got stuck in the muddy paths through the vale up to Silas's shack, but we found our way out and to a local Shebeen. This is an illegal drinking place. A dark shack, really, a tin or wood-and-mud shack where people drink very cheap alcohol while sitting on the mud floor or on tiny wood sticklike benches. We bought (Silas ordered) three cartons of iJuba, which comes in milk cartons. It is apparently shaken vigorously for about a minute and emptied into another vessel, which in our case was a rusty old tin bucket. After the containers were emptied, the iJuba was passed around the place. An old mother, Silas and his brother, three white guys, and the Shebeen bartender all drank from this tin bucket. A pantsless child played on the ground near a smoldering pile of sticks. I think he was the son of the mom.

That was basically the end of the day, really. By the end I was a bit overwhelmed. Probably the closest I had come to non-backpacker-circuit Africa since John and I had explored Livingstone's residential areas and markets. I was happy to have seen what I saw. The next day my confidence inspired me to hike up the hill to a roadside shack that I had seen on the way into Coffee Bay, which proclaimed itself as a VodaCom Phones sales point as well as the local mechanic. I took a picture of the shack after asking. The folks there were more amused than anything at a hairy crazy tourist guy who wanted to take a picture, of all things, of their vodacom/mechanic shack

10 - Coffee Bay - Bomvu River Store

. In fact, this is how the conversation went, more or less:
"Hello. How are you?"
"Good, how are you?"
"I am good. May I take a photo of this?"
*brief discussion and laughing* "Yes." *some more discussion.* "Why?"
A car passed and the guy yelled at them that I was taking a photo. It was all terribly amusing.

Durban
After Coffee Bay, I took a long haul Baz Bus to Durban. There is a massive beach festival on here right now, which encompasses the Mr. Price Pro surf competition. This is a world-class competition, with the best professionals here to compete on their tour. Kelly Slater will be vying for his eighth! consecutive world title.

Durban is also known to be a bit of a rough-and-tumble city. There have been demonstrations related to the general national strike lately, as well as a series of ATM bombings (nine of the fifteen free-standing ATM's in the city have been bombed - no injuries, just for stealing money)

11 - Coffee Bay - The huts speckled on the hills

. Other ATM's such as bank or shopping-mall ATM's have been unharmed.

After rigorous questioning, I set out from the hillside suburb backpackers for a three-mile walk into town and to the long beach front known as the Golden Mile. Here in Durban, the dead of winter means 75 degrees or so, sunny, and warm waters of 70 degrees. Pretty nice, although I was told there was a bit of a cold front recently.

The city is bustling, and alive-feeling. Tons of different types of people. Lots of blacks and Indians, Christians and Muslims and Hindus, all packed together in a city center. Not many white people, out of fear more than anything. The center doesn't feel necessarily as safe or friendly as a big American or European city, and there are certainly no-go areas, but the fear saturating the white population is paralyzing and a bit unnecessary. The first step would  be to encourage whites to walk certain areas of the center with absolutely no personal valuables and with the confidence that comes with that, and with small groups. Many people in these areas greeted me with a smile. Many also greeted me with the characteristic stoic ambivalence with which everyone in the world in downtown districts greets each other. It's another city here. You have to take precautions, and there is certainly blatant crime

12 - Coffee Bay - Silas and his "village"

. But one major problem, that I see anyway, is the unwillingness for the richer populations to take a little risk, not with their money, but with their actions and intentions.

As it goes, Durban seems to be more progressive than other cities anyway. Out of necessity, I guess, when a place becomes a melting pot. It is nice to see people of all colors and cultures intermixing along the beachfront, where, unfortunately, there is a lot of petty theft. However, during the beach festival, the beachfront felt extremely safe, optimistic, fun. Watched beach volleyball, small fashion shows of terribleness, a bunch of skateboarders at a skatepark, the Mr. Price Pro Junior and Bodyboard competitions, ate Indian food, etc. All in all, another great day.

I go to the Drakensberg mountains next, for three days, before ending my South Africa leg in Johannesburg. I hope to hear from any of you some time soon - feel free to email me questions or comments, and I will be sure to respond. As Kurt Vonnegut declared in Man Without A Country, "I love talking to people." Bless his deceased heart.

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13 - Coffee Bay - Sheep, more huts, and ocean	14 - Coffee Bay - Abandoned Shack	15 - Coffee Bay - VodaCom / Mechanic shack	16 - Coffee Bay - Typical hilltop in Transkei
17 - Coffee Bay - bad picture of pretty bays

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