The Wild Coast
Trip Start
Nov 07, 2005
1
74
75
Trip End
Nov 04, 2006
Cintsa / Coffee Bay / Umzumbe / Durban, South Africa
Sunday, October 29, 2006
We'd decided to head along the coast for Cintsa, but after driving 300km and wondering why we hadn't seen the coast for a while we did a quick map check which revealed we'd somehow ended up driving inland and were now heading bacl towards Namibia.
As much as I loved Namibia, it wasn't part of the plan.
We tried to see the funny side of our 3hour detour - at least we got to stop off for a magnum when we filled up with petrol; at least we'd now got some sunshine, as it'd been raining on the coast and more to the point - at least petrol was cheap!
The hostel we were headed for in Cintsa was supposed to be one of the best hostels in South Africa but it was impossible to find with the directions in the guidebook. I can confirm that they do sell the best chocolate brownies in South Africa though. Possibly the best in the world. The best of my life.
It was quiet now with just the two of us, and I really missed our little truck family. A few guys from the hostel in J Bay had followed us (well not quite cos they took the correct road) to Cintsa so we had a few drinks and a lot of shots and it was quite a fun night in the end.
The weather was still a bit miserable the next day so we just chilled out and took a stroll down the beach looking for shells, and Brent trying to teach me how to throw them and then laughing at me cos I can't.
We had a long drive to Coffee Bay the next morning, passing lots of little Xhosa villages along the way. The wild coast reminded me of East Africa but with considerably more hippies at the hostels. There were barely any whites in these areas apart from tourists and the recurrence of amusing shop signs: Good Fashion Clothes and Top Class Supermarket and a sign on a bus that read When days are dark, friends are few - whatever that means. Brent thought it meant we were going to get shot.
When we eventually arrived at Coffee Bay it was raining, but we got a free drink on arrival so that was nice. We had to paddle through a river to get to our room, alongside a child who was jumping across the rocks making me look very stupid as I wobbled around trying to maintain my balance, and singing me a song, after which she demanded money and sweets. Yep, just like East Africa.
There were signs in the hostel telling tourists not to give money and sweets to the kids as it was encouraging a begging culture, and that to only give them something if they helped you or sung you a song. Well this kid wasn't stupid and had obviously benefitted from singing before. But now she'd reduced her performance to a two line, 10 second song, which she expected to be rewarded for.
It seemed to be one big happy family at the Coffee Shack hostel, mostly because everyone was stoned. Apart from us. It was smokers paradise cos there was nothing else to do and I doubt police ever made it down the 80km stretch of pot holed road (which Brent treated as a rally track) to bust anyone.
We all ended up at the hostel next door and it was a great night until I had to trek through the river in the pitch black to get back to our dorm, almost slipping over and causing further damage to my already totally wrecked shoes.
We left the next morning - partly because we wanted to head north for better weather and partly becuase Brent hates hippies.
We drove through a few more non-descript towns, one of which smelt of "dead things", as Brent put it.
Shortly after driving through the town which smelt rotten, we were stopped by about 20 army officers and the vet services. I quicly checked the back seat and confirmed that we weren't carrying any stolen livestock, although we had earlier seen a guy with a dead sheep (presumably roadkill) strapped to his car roof.
They informed us that they needed to check our bags for meat products due to the outbreak of swine fever in the Eastern Cape area. I told the lady I only had some beef droewors but then she pulled out half a pack of bacon and said she'd have to confiscate it as it was pork.
To be fair it had been there for 10 days so it had probably gone off anyway.
I'm still none the wiser as to how confiscating already dead, cured meant helps control an infectious virus, but there you go.
We checked into a funky backpackers in a town 100km south of Durban caled Umzumbe, which Brent seemed to particularly enjoy saying the name of, and made use of their jacuzzi in the jungle with a couple of fellow backpckers.
We played table tennis. I lost miserably.
We playyed scrabble. Brent narrowly won. Only because I didn't dazzle him with all my two letters words, most of which he didn't believe.
We played trivial pursuit. I won something, finally. Admittedly mostly by guesswork.
The next mornign we drove the last leg of our trip in the smurf to Durban. Emptying out the car was interesting as I seemed to have acquired more stuff than I'd thought, and now had to compress it into luggage fit for a plane.
Despite this, I still managed a tad more shopping in Durban, although my mission had been to find new shoes to replace those I've been wearing for a year which are full of holes, and even though I had them mended in Vic Falls, they're in pieces again. But I'm kind of strangely attracted to them as they've been everywhere with me and have a strange proudness that I've actually managed to completely wear a pair of shoes through. Maybe I'll take them home and frame them.
Not much was done in Durbs - we dropped off smurf, with no major damage done, which was quite surprising given my excessive speed and Brent need to do a handbrake turn anytime he sees a patch of gravel, no matter who's behind the wheel.
Other than that we just chilled out by the pool and played the game of pool. Hard life.
We both left Durban on Halloween - me to Cape Town and Brent to Jo'burg - where he anticpated being shot.
