Posted by Janine and Mikkel
We had a wild couple of weeks the first part of our journey through South Africa stopping in places appropriately named “Wilderness”, ”Nature’s Valley” and “The Wild Coast”. We swam rivers, soaked up sun on deserted beaches, tried to surf some waves, hiked up mountains through thorny bushes, visited a friend in “the rural areas” [read: bad bad roads, no running water, round huts...and bad stomachs], had Tsotsis (gangsters) in our car -we were not in it ourselves fortunately-, and camped on the beach near the most beautiful waterfall where we got woken up in our tent by…ahum, a wave.
This refreshing morning wave was not as pleasant as it may sound; it had been raining the whole night and, in addition, Mikkel’s back was in its worst state ever, causing a painful sleepless night (Janine’s massage had apparently only made it worse!). And then nature mocks you by sending a mini tsunami all the way inside your tent! You may now understand our decision to go back to civilization (for a while). So here we are in the city of Durban, where we had a friends’ apartment waiting for us. Hooray to bed, roof, fridge, bath tub, restaurants, etc.
It all started quite civilized –and un-African, with the over packed holiday resorts on the southern coast (Garden Route for those who know). Here we found out that Afrikaners are real descendants of the Dutch: they also love camping closely together on huge campsites near the ocean. Its not that they bring everything with them from home, but they seem to have a camping dublette of everything: camping chairs, camping tables, camping satellite dishes, camping fridges, camping stoves, camping clothes etc. We did find some lovely spots on the way though, and did an unsuccessful surfing attempt and a lovely hike.
But Mr. Rain was visiting the coastline. So we decided to celebrate New Years in a tiny mountain village, where we met some crazy backpackers and, after a tough hike all the way up the mountain, celebrated the New Year with bonfire, beers and boogey.
We had a wild couple of weeks the first part of our journey through South Africa stopping in places appropriately named “Wilderness”, ”Nature’s Valley” and “The Wild Coast”. We swam rivers, soaked up sun on deserted beaches, tried to surf some waves, hiked up mountains through thorny bushes, visited a friend in “the rural areas” [read: bad bad roads, no running water, round huts...and bad stomachs], had Tsotsis (gangsters) in our car -we were not in it ourselves fortunately-, and camped on the beach near the most beautiful waterfall where we got woken up in our tent by…ahum, a wave.
This refreshing morning wave was not as pleasant as it may sound; it had been raining the whole night and, in addition, Mikkel’s back was in its worst state ever, causing a painful sleepless night (Janine’s massage had apparently only made it worse!). And then nature mocks you by sending a mini tsunami all the way inside your tent! You may now understand our decision to go back to civilization (for a while). So here we are in the city of Durban, where we had a friends’ apartment waiting for us. Hooray to bed, roof, fridge, bath tub, restaurants, etc.
It all started quite civilized –and un-African, with the over packed holiday resorts on the southern coast (Garden Route for those who know). Here we found out that Afrikaners are real descendants of the Dutch: they also love camping closely together on huge campsites near the ocean. Its not that they bring everything with them from home, but they seem to have a camping dublette of everything: camping chairs, camping tables, camping satellite dishes, camping fridges, camping stoves, camping clothes etc. We did find some lovely spots on the way though, and did an unsuccessful surfing attempt and a lovely hike.
But Mr. Rain was visiting the coastline. So we decided to celebrate New Years in a tiny mountain village, where we met some crazy backpackers and, after a tough hike all the way up the mountain, celebrated the New Year with bonfire, beers and boogey.
Then it was time to visit some of the real Africa again. We were in the Eastern Cape, a rural area, full of hills and villages with round clay huts, the X[click]hosa people’s homeland in the apartheid language. A lot of the Xhosas (millions in fact) have moved to Cape Town and other cities for work, but most still return to their ‘home’ each year in December and January. This also counts for Sizwe, a friend from Cape Town whom we visited in his village with a name we could never remember or pronounce. It was pretty much out of the way and we were apparently the first (white) visitors ever. Happy as they were to have us over, (not much was actually happening there, you see) we were received by big hugs from everyone. Within half an hour, the women dressed Janine up in a traditional woolen dress and started dancing and clapping around us. The beer started flowing and as the people got more and more drunk, we got more and more tired, and started wondering how the next day would be when the ‘real’ party would start...
Luckily this party never really happened, and we had a nice and quiet day walking through the village and talking with Sizwe and other people. It was lovely to experience the friendliness of the people, but also sad to see how some traditions were kept so strongly: Women doing all the work and slaving around for their family-in-law (Janine's comment obviously!) and how life was so dominated by poverty and alcohol abuse.
The women were getting the water in the mornings – in buckets on their heads. We got a personal first hand experience of what it means to have ‘no access to sanitary services and water’ (which the Millennium Goals are trying to eradicate by 2015) ; a day after we had left the village, our stomachs both started to protest in the way stomachs do :-(. Luckily we were in a most lovely place on the Wild Coast where the owner took care of us with a herbal mint-ginger tea. The Wild Coast is the most amazing coastline with beautiful beaches, mountains, small huts and absolutely no large scale development and where beaches are mostly shared with cows and playful local boys.
When our stomachs had recovered we moved a bit further up the coast to do a hike to a very well hidden waterfall. A three-hour walk along a deserted beach, a couple of river crossings, up a mountain, along a cliff edge and then down to a spot that could have been starring in both “Treasure Island” and “The Beach”. The night however didn't live up to the beauty and greatness of the day, but this we have already told you about.
We will stay here in Durban until thursday where we will drive towards Mozambique. Mikkel's back seems to be fine again after a chinese guy "restored his energies" back to normal. Hope you all got well in to the New Year. To those of you who have been using sms we are sad to inform you that Mikkels phone got stolen out of our car with both his South African and Danish simcard in. So please use Janine's number from now on.
Enough for now. Take care all of you.
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