Hiking Trails, Canoe Trails & Game Drives

Howzit? We've had a great last couple of days here in the midst of South Africa...

We were in the Hogsback mountains for a couple days and stayed at a place called "Away With the Fairies" (I'm sure we'll get some comments on that alone!). It was a nice place with great views, although it did pale in comparison to being in the heart of the Drakensberg. We took a couple lovely walks through some really nice forests to a couple waterfalls. Lots of monkeys in those forests, that we might have missed if we didn't have three dogs along with us to bark incessantly at them.

Here's a look at one of the waterfalls. Sorry, Gracie, I've been playing with other dogs.


From there we drove south to Port Alfred which is on the coast and on the mouth of the Kowie River. We came here solely to do a two day canoe trip up the river to a hut. It was a random thing we read about in our guide book and it sounded like a nice change of pace. So we set out, 20 km up the river silently winding our way through the sleeping hippos and fending off the alligators with our paddles. Just joking. The most we had to contend with was a lazy seal that followed us part way up the river. Being so close to the coast, the tide has influence on the river for the entire journey so we had to time our paddling around the tides to make it easiest on ourselves. It was a lovely two days. We were pretty much the only ones on the river and once we got out of the residential parts of Port Alfred, it was nothing but us and Mother Nature at her best. We paddled through a couple nature reserves and while we didn't see much wildlife, the sounds of all the birds was amazing. It was a very relaxing time. At the end of the 20km we arrived at our hut for the night, where we ended up sleeping outside anyway as there were a few too many spiders inside for our liking (I know....spiders live outside as well...).

Here's what the scenery was like on the river.

The canoe did the job, but it was kinda small. I'm not sure how well you can see Keith in this picture, but this is the morning we headed back down the river (it looks early, but it's really only 7:00), so the canoe is actually much emptier as we have eaten a lot of food out of it.

From the Kowie River we beat feet to the Greater Addo Elephant Park where we saw, well, elephants! Among lots of other game. The park was built around saving the elephants of the area, when at creation there were only something like 11 elephants left. Now there is around 400 and we saw plenty of them. Other game we were able to see was one far off lion, hartbeest, kudu, ostrich, and so many warthogs we were ready to have one for a bbq by the end of our stay there! We stayed at the campground for two nights and enjoyed three game drives (self-driven now, of course!). The park is very well set up. Fabulous camping facilities, and very-easy-to-navigate roads.

The main attraction. One of the many times a whole herd passed right by our car.


We really enjoyed watching the kudu. There are tons of them in the park, so lots of close ups and even a few locking their beautiful horns with each other.


We are currently in Jeffery's Bay, the surfing mecca of South Africa. Not very good surf right now, as we have yet to see a surfer in the water. But we had to come here so that we could say we've been to "J'Bay". From here we'll move a little further west to spend a few days at Tstitikama National Park (definitely did not spell that correctly...).

Wild Coast Beach Life

We have spent the last week traveling down the Wild Coast of South Africa at quite a leisurely pace….enjoying the scenery, seafood and surf.

But I think we left off in Pietermaritzburg….a stopover on the way to the coast. Before hitting the Wild Coast, we passed through Durban and the more populated, vacation destination of the South Coast. Originally we were going to stay a day in Durban, but we heard way too many stories of muggings in the city, and all it is is a big city, so we decided to pass through. We had heard nice things about the big market there and a popular local dish called bunny chow, so we talked ourselves into stopping for just an hour or so to check out the market and have lunch. Well, I think we have been thoroughly spoiled by the beautiful markets of SE Asia. This market was fine, and granted it was Sunday so it was a bit shut down, but it just doesn’t compare to the sights, sounds and smells of an Asian market. Nevertheless we bought a curio or two, had a bowl of bunny chow (a big chunk of bread with a hole carved out of the middle which is then filled with curry). We were nervous the whole time about the Land Rover parked on the street (it stands out slightly in these cities), but we made it unscathed and were off to the coast.

The coastline north and south of Durban is a huge vacation/weekend destination for locals, and is consequently quite developed. We skipped the northern beaches and pushed on south for about 50 more km finally stopping for the night in Scottsburg. There aren’t any national parks here, so we had to settle on a very crowded/commercial caravan park, that had thankfully sort of emptied out as the school holiday is finally coming to a close. This caravan park acts as a bit of a retirement village in the winter. Half of the place was taken up by senior citizens that have set up quite impressive camps with no intent of leaving for the next 4 months or so. Our neighbor for the night was quite the friendly chap and gave up plenty of advice and his opinions about South Africa.

Upon reading our guidebook, we discovered that one of the top ten dive sites in the world (according to who, we are not sure) is right off the coast where we are camped. It is called Aliwal Shoal and is famous for its shark sightings, specifically the ‘Raggie’. So the next morning we decided very last minute to go ahead and do one dive. It was OK, but the current was really kicking and the group was a bit too big, so we spent more time fighting the current in order to stay with the group than being able to truly enjoy the dive. No sharks, but did see a turtle and an electric ray.

The next two days were mostly just driving days to get us to the start of the Wild Coast. The Wild Coast, also known as the Transkei, is 200 km stretch of coastline along the southern part of the Eastern Cape. It is deemed ‘Wild’ for its inaccessibility and rough coastline. While there are more dirt roads and the towns are quite a bit more remote, calling it Wild might be a stretch as it all becomes more and more developed and as roads get paved. Nevertheless, the villages are lovely, rural and peaceful. We thoroughly enjoyed our time exploring the area.

Here we are on one of our many short treks around the coast. This one in Mpande.


The first stop was in Port St Johns where we again stayed at a local campground. This time a much more peaceful and less crowded one. We took a walk up the bluff/hill/mountain overlooking the coast, and took a short walk through a very small nature reserve where we had beautiful coastal views and spotted two zebra. From there we moved on to a very small village called Mpande. There is one backpackers there called the Kraal, and is a very remote, eco-friendly, laid back kind of place. No electricity and stunning views of the bay. Right from the front deck of the main building we could look out at the bay and watch heaps of dolphins playing and surfing. Apparently there were whales out there too, but we never saw them. We spent three very relaxed days there where we bought crayfish from the local fishermen and cooked fabulous dinners, took many walks on and around the beach, canoed up the river/lagoon in a leaky boat, tried to surf for about 10 minutes (too cold and we didn’t have a clue what we were doing), and took a horse ride to a waterfall. We got hit with a cold front and a big rain storm while we were there, so it was a good time to just chill out for a while.

Not a bad campsite, eh? This is at the Kraal. We spent most of our time in the backpacker itself, and really only slept up here in the Rover:


Our next jump south was to Coffee Bay, named after a ship carrying coffee wrecked. The coffee trees grew for a while here, but have long since died out. We took the back roads here, which were all dirt, but still quite well maintained and only got a little lost. We stayed at a fantastic backpackers called the Coffee Shack. We still camped (i.e. slept in the Land Rover), but had use of really top notch kitchen facilities, and were able to take advantage of all of the free things on offer. One of which was a free surf lesson. It is amazing what the right equipment and instruction can do for your attitude about a sport. Not to say that we can surf now, but after 1 hour of instruction we were at least able to both stand up a handful of times (granted, it was a very big board and the waves were small).

Here is a look at what most of the villagers' homes look like. The people of the Wild Coast are Xhosa and their language (one of the 11 official languages of Africa!) includes that famous clicking sound. Pretty cool to listen to.


Our second day there we took a drive out to the famous “Hole in the Rock” and had another unfortunate incident with shoes. What is it with shoes in Africa? Upon arrival to Hole in the Rock, we had two kids approach us: one wanted to guide us to the sight and the other to watch our car. This is very typical of any tourist spot and usually works well. The kid watches the car and you pay him a couple of Rand when you get back. We said no thanks to the guide, told them they could both watch our car for us while we were gone, wanting to do something to help these guys out. Keith had tied a pair of shoes to the roof, as they were quite wet from the previous night's rain. He thought about putting them back in the car, but thought, nah...we’ve got these guys looking after the car. So we scramble up a bluff, and Keith glances back at the car and sees someone on top of it! So he runs back to the car, and lo and behold, finds his shoes gone. One of the boys is gone now, but his shoes are there, and the other kid denies seeing anything at all and suddenly can’t speak any English. We tried our best to scare them into confessing (threatening to call the police and getting as many people from the village involved), but they were steadfast in their denials. Keith found the other kid guiltily coming out of the bushes and thrashed around in there a bit trying to see where he hid Keith’s shoes, but we couldn’t come up with them. We finally left with a very bad taste in our mouths. It’s not even the shoes. Keith had bought a different pair a while ago, and this was just a cheap Bangkok pair that he didn’t even like. The problem is that these kids know it is no big deal for us to replace them, but they don’t realize the longer term impact it has on their village and our perception of it and how it shapes how we behave towards locals in the future. If you can’t trust the guy you are paying to watch your car, who can you trust?

The Hole in the Rock. Pretty self explanatory.


Scenery around Hole in the Rock:


From Coffee Bay we took a larger jump down the coast to the near end of the Wild Coast to another very well equipped and well run backpackers in Cintsa called Buccaneers. More of the same beach stuff and another horse ride, this time running along the beach, which was great fun.

Us with our horses in Cintsa:


We got to 'swim' with the horses as we crossed back over the lagoon back to the fields:



It is truly beautiful scenery along this coast, and you could easily get lost along here, but we decided it was time to shake things up a bit, so now we are heading inland again. We’ll spend a couple days back in the mountains where apparently they just had Christmas in July (snow!)…..maybe it’s time to splurge on a real room and take a break from sleeping in the Rover, i.e it’s cold up there!

Land Rover 101 - Completed

OK. We're back in the city after a wonderful seven days of car camping....or Land Rover camping actually. Why, cause it not a car. It's a LAND ROVER. Not something we are used to in the USA. It's a three-way cross between a Willy's Jeep, an International Scout, and an Abrams Tank. John, the LRs owner, has set it up very nicely with fridge, sleeping platform, and all sorts of camping gear and the LR's condition is immaculate.

The Rig:


Upon leaving Pretoria, we headed for the Golden Gate National Park (NP) for our first two nights of camping. Beautiful park and very nice campgrounds. We did a couple of short day hikes in the surrounding hills and sort of got used to a new independence that we haven't had for a while. We also discovered, even after advice from several folks, that it is quite cold at night, but the days are warm and perfect for hiking.

Camping at Golden Gate.


After stocking up in the small town of Bergville, we headed to a backpackers place bordering the Natal NP. We watched Italy beat France in the finals of the World Cup. It was a great game, tied 1 to 1 after overtime and Italy won it with penalty kicks. After a tough sell job by the owner of the backpackers to try and get us to stay there for more nights, we headed to the actual park for better camping. We hiked up the to the base of the Ampitheater, one of the highlights of the Drakensburg area.

Ampitheater.


Then we headed for the Cathredral Peak area of the Northern Drakensburg NP. Cathredral Peak can be summitted in a day, although it is listed as a very strenuous, long hike, with several non-technical scrambling sections. It is listed correctly. It took us the full nine hours to summit and return to camp, but it was well worth the effort. The views are dramatic and breath-taking. Em and I started early and ended up in front of a larger, guided group. When we passed the group on the way down from the summit scramble section, the guide was very surprised we made it. He thought we must be locals who knew the route. Of his group of 9, only 4 made it to the actual summit, and Em was the only female!

View of Cathredral Peak:




Summit Scramble


Summit!


The Drakensburg is a mountain range running north-south and we had one more stop to make before heading to the coast. We chose the Injinsuti area for its great day-hikes and San cave paintings. We also saw the Eland, the largest of the antelopes. We must have seen about a dozen in total.

Eland just above camp:



Em and I are enjoying this part of our trip very much. It's a combination of having our own Rig (THANKS JOHN!), and camping and hiking in great parks, with great facilities. We are cooking our own food, driving where we want, when we want. Next, we head to the Wild Coast!

Sunrise and Moonset above the Drakensberg:

Misc Observations

Here are some random thoughts and observations that I have been making notes of as we've been moving along through Africa. Thought I'd get them onto the computer before I lose my little pieces of paper....

• Every single country we have been to, we have seen young boys pushing tires around with sticks. Funny how universal some childhood games truly are.
• Buying food through bus windows is such a reliable and cheap way to have a meal. Every time the bus stops to load and unload people, you are sure to be presented with the opportunity to buy a snack. Standard fare includes: boiled eggs (our favorite), fried bread, oranges, ground nuts (peanuts), and soda pop (that is if you can drink the whole bottle before the bus leaves - they want their bottle back!). The most entertaining stop we had was when we pulled into a rather major bus terminal but were only one of about 6 people on the bus. Upon pulling into the station, I stand up to stretch and just about die laughing as I proceed to get poked in the head with a bagful of bread suspended on a long stick (we were in a tall bus). I couldn't see the man selling the bread, just a bagful of bread persistently knocking me on the shoulder and head. Hilarious.
• In Malawi especially, there are lots of roadblocks. The minibuses usually fall victim to them the most often. And when the cops see us crammed in there, they invariably want to see our passports - just because they can, I think. Apparently, the minibuses get fined for being overcrowded.....so is it really profitable for them to cram us all in like that??
• Women are fearless about breastfeeding here. Babies are hanging off moms' chests everywhere we look and breasts are whipped out without hesitation to appease a hungry child. It is such a contrast to North America where we require private rooms or complete coverage with blankets. It is really refreshing to see it done so openly here.
• It will never cease to amaze us how frantically people will board a boat/bus/train when it may not be leaving for 2 hours!
• Men often greet each other with what I will call a lingering handshake. After the initial grasp, they continue to hold each other's hand while talking. It is not uncommon to see men walking down the street holding hands. Cute.
• One day sitting waiting for a bus, I noticed a very poor boy clinging to two very used water bottles trying to clean them out. I had just finished my water and instead of tossing the bottle, I handed it to him. Never have I seen a face light up so much.
• People constantly try to charge us extra on public transportation for our large, yes, but neatly compact backpacks. However they don't blink an eye at the local woman who climbs on board with two huge bags of rice, baskets of oranges, and bags of cassava root that are ripping open and spilling all over the place!
• Women carry EVERYTHING on their heads. Except for their babies which are tied onto their backs with a simple piece of cloth.
• In Tanzania, a lot of goods are transported on huge wooden wheelbarrows pulled and pushed by men. A very hard day's work indeed.
• South Africa may be a more modern country, but the evidence of crime is everywhere. Every single house we see has a complete security system - gates, security response, barred windows, and absolutely no cars parked on the street at night.

We are still in Pretoria. We spent the last two days stocking up on supplies for the car and getting familiar with the Land Rover. What is the deal with this car anyway you might be wondering? Well we have these very cool friends back home, John G. and Jenn, who own this Land Rover here in South Africa and keep it parked at John R.'s house here in Pretoria. They have given us their blessing to use the 1989 Rover for our journey through this region. So we spent the last two days with John R. who is an amazingly generous and helpful person. He is the 'caretaker' of the car while it is here, so he gave us all the in's and out's of how to run it and stocked us up on any incidentals we might need in any imaginable situation. Not only that, but he treated us to an amazing BBQ which included warthog ribs! Yum! So we are fully stocked, including petrol (which will be a painful endeavor each time we have to fill up), and will spend the rest of the day organizing and planning our route for tomorrow. We should be able to give you more regular updates again as internet should be abundant and cheap through South Africa.

Cheers to all, and go Italy! :)

Mozambique...and into South Africa

We swore to ourselves that we would never put ourselves through the agony of an absurdly long bus ride - we just don't need to be in that kind of hurry to get anywhere. So how is it that we were on a bus for the better part of 28 hours to get to our primary Mozambique destination of Tofo? We aren't really sure, it just kind of happened.

Our crossing from Malawi to Mozambique went smoothly. It was minibuses the whole way, but they all left surprisingly promptly upon our arrival. Our only moment of discomfort was at the border when we had to decide whether or not to change our Malawi kwacha on the black market or not. More than once, we've ended up with large stacks of currency from the previous country that no one would exchange legitimately. Our guide book lists the dire consequences of getting caught trading money on the black market in Mozambique so I asked the immigration official if Tete (the city we were headed to) had facilities to change kwacha. Nope, they say. Any legal exchanges here at the border? 'Nope. You must use the black market.' OK. So we've got an official person telling us to do something our book says is highly illegal....that's got to be worth something at interrogation, right? Not wanting to be stuck with the money, we decided to risk it and went as a group (there were three of us at this point) and did a very conspicuous exchange (literally surrounded by about 20 guys with handfuls of Mozambique meticais). We managed fine, and called them on several calculator errors, managing to not get ripped off too badly.

So, enter Mozambique. They speak Portuguese here. Supposedly Portuguese speakers can understand Spanish, but not vice versa. So, right away I tried my very limited knowledge of Spanish in attempts to clarify our requests or conversations. The results have been mixed - sometimes I get instant comprehension, and sometimes I get blank stares. Everyone gets a kick out of my trying anyway. Luckily the numbers have been very similar, so that has made bargaining and shopping easier.

We stayed one night in Tete. Nothing much there except the mighty Zambezi River (flows from Victoria Falls). We quickly learned the new standards in accommodation here. You pay a lot more and get a LOT less for your money. Buses in Mozambique leave refreshingly on time (as long as you're not boarding a minibus), but they leave obnoxiously early. So at 4:00 AM the next day we were boarding our home for the next 28 hours. One hour into our ride, we were stopped, broken down at the edge of a very small village. 'Welcome to Mozambique', our travel companion, Carin tells us. It took the guy running the bus 10 minutes to fix the oil leak and two hours to flag down/track down enough replacement oil to safely start the engine again. In the meantime a tire went flat.

Waiting patiently...you can see our bus driver in the background pleading with the driver of that truck for some oil:


The rest of the ride is a bit of a blur. The seats were very uncomfortable, but as people got on and off we were able to rearrange to the best possible options. We ate entirely from food sold through the bus windows, save for one longer stop where we sat down to some local grub. The three guys running the bus (1 driving, 2 taking money and soliciting business) turned out to be real quality people. At our stop in one of the larger cities, we had all gotten off the bus to stretch and search for snacks. Apparently as Carin was re-boarding she was pick-pocketed. The bus guys saw this happen and proceeded to knock the culprit down, hold him down and hit him until he relinquished the money. Where the aggression was a bit disturbing, it was nice to see these guys looking out for us. We've heard plenty of mugging stories where people just stand by and watch...maybe shaking their heads in dismay, but not doing much else.

We got to our originally planned stop at about 10:00 PM. It was still a chapa ride to the town of Vilancula itself, and by this point, Carin had convinced us to push onto Tofo, where she had worked for six months as a dive instructor and where she was headed. She said we weren't missing much in Vilancula and we were keen on the idea of more time in one place. However, at this point, the driver was ready to sleep for a while. Our seats were quickly taken over by the locals stretching out and making beds, so we were fortunate that Carin had a tent and let us crash inside with her for a couple hours of attempted shut-eye. Up again at 3:30 AM and off. The roads in Mozambique are considerably worse, so it wasn't necessarily a smooth, flat or clean ride. However, I still think the ride in Cambodia takes the cake in terms of discomfort!

We disembarked our bus in Maxixe, then boarded a small local ferry and crossed over the bay to Inhambane. From there it was one more minibus ride up the peninsula to Tofo and our final destination of the Bamboozi lodge/backpackers. Whew!

Tofo is a very small town that sits right on the Indian Ocean. The main industry there now is tourism, but not obnoxiously so. Most of the accommodation is pretty basic and modest. We chose to stay at Bamboozi, which is about 2 km up the beach from the Tofo city center. A nice, mellow place with a very quiet stretch of beach. Accommodation is either camping or very simple huts (grass huts with pavement floors and two mattresses and a mosquito net). The first day there was just settling in and napping.

The next day, the weather was beautiful, so we went right out and did a couple of dives. One of the reasons we wanted to stay here longer was to take advantage of the superb diving that is on offer. Both were beautiful dives. Huge fish, nice coral and the biggest moray eel I've ever seen. Carin, being a dive instructor signed me off on a deep dive so that I could go out and do the most popular dive called Manta Reef. The second day there was another beautiful, sunny day and we decided to take a 'day off' from diving and just chilled out, taking long walks on the beach with plans to dive Manta Reef the next day.

Carin and I after the first dive:


Keith and crew unloading. Very nice boats and equipment...


Then the weather changed. Some freak weather pattern came in and we got hit with winds, rain, clouds, and cold for the next 4 days. It felt like we were on the Oregon Coast! The weather was too harsh for the boats to launch, and the conditions too rough for diving anyway. So we waited. And waited. Our time was spent watching lots of World Cup football in the evenings:


We would get out onto the beach or into town when the weather broke up a little bit. Otherwise it was lots of reading, cards and eating. We also took advantage of the bigger, crashing waves and rented some boogie boards.
Am I running from the wave or getting ready to ride it?


The air and wind was quite cold, but it made the water feel all the warmer. We both got quite a kick out of catching some good rides.


On a walk into the town of Tofo. This is on the road between Bamboozi and Tofo.


Just when we were starting to really go stir crazy and really wondering if the wait for Manta Reef was worth it, the weather sort of broke, and the dive was on. It was a gnarly launch....even on a calm day, getting that boat out over the breakers is a challenge. But we got out and had a very nice dive. It's about a half hour ride to the site. The visibility wasn't great, but we did see one beautiful, huge manta ray right at the end of the dive. Not to mention more moray eels and some of the biggest grouper fish I have ever seen. While we were down there, we all heard some indistinct sound that sounded like muffled voices. When we got to the top we were told that some whales came and swam right over our heads! How cool. And on the way back we saw several whales breeching not too far from our boat. Very nice. Not long after getting back to shore the weather turned to crap again. We were quite lucky to have had the opportunity to get out at all.

So that afternoon, we set out for Inhambane, stayed the night there and caught the 5:30 AM express bus to Maputo the next morning. 1 km out of town, the bus broke down. It died and would not restart. So for the same price, they put us on the next bus that came by which we were quite sure was not an express, despite their insistence that it was. Nevertheless, it was a fine ride and we got to Maputo by late afternoon.

We spent just one day in Maputo. It is the capital of the country and a pretty big city, sitting right on a bay. Very close proximity to South Africa, so a bit more modern. Not the prettiest of cities, and by this point we are pretty anxious to get to South Africa and pick up the Land Rover and be completely independent. We booked tickets on a luxury coach and yesterday rode in style from Maputo to Pretoria, South Africa (just north of Johannesburg). Riding on the roads of South Africa is quite different than Mozambique. It feels just like being at home (big freeways with passing lanes, shopping malls, rest stops) the only difference being that we are on the other side of the road. We settled into a very cozy backpackers last night with a gaggle of girls and their parents in town for the majorette drum competition. Now it is just some logistics then if all goes well, we're off on our own to discover South Africa!