South Africa

South Africa: The Garden Route

Finally we set off from Cape Town - despite the temptation to stay till the weekend for a Seventies party at one of the Cape Town bars where we'd made a number of friends over the last few weeks. Not that the guys at the 'Drunken Springbok' really believed we were leaving, after so many previous failed farewells (we seem to make a habit of saying good-bye and then not leaving - friends in the UK will agree!).

We set off, the bike fully loaded, all our bike kit on and the sun blazing - not ideal conditions for nursing our customary hangover. As we moved up the coast the weather worsened until the combination of rolling green hills and low cloud and drizzle reminded us of home. If it hadn't been for the odd ostrich roaming the fields, we would have seriously begun to wonder if we were really in Africa!

Riding the bike through South Africa is made easy by good roads and a relatively mild climate. The towns along the coast vary from quiet beach resorts to large surfing villages where you meet people who say "dude" alot and talk about "catching a tube" - nothing to do with London Underground.

Our first stop was Mossel Bay, the only working harbour on the Garden Route and listed in the Guinness Book of Records as having the mildest year round climate, second only to Hawaii. Needless to say this week was the exception, the weather inclement enough to make a November Monday in Bognor seem appealing. We stayed on the 'Santos Express', once a seven-carriage sleeper train but now permanently sided adjacent to the beach.

From here we visited the Kango Caves in Oudtshoorn - lots of impressive stalagmites and stalactites, made all the more imposing by careful lighting. We chose the 'Adventure Tour' which involved scrambling up a narrow 'chimney' and squeezing through the 'letterbox'. All good fun, so long as you don't suffer from claustrophobia!

We travelled from Oudtshoorn through the clouds and 15-metre visibility, over the Klein Karoo Mountains and the ostrich farming areas of the Western Cape. Several farms cash in on the tourist route offering ostrich rides, but we decided to stick to the motorbike!

Our next stop was Jeffrey's Bay, a popular surfing town. We stayed in a hostel called the 'Island Vibe' which is worth mentioning because of its excellent view over the whole of the bay and because it was here that Mossy, the hostel's jovial Irish barman, introduced us to the 'Harvey Nutcracker', details as follows: -

Half fill one shooter glass with Frangelica (hazelnut liqueur), float Baileys (or equivalent) to the rim, top with squirty cream and down - but watch out for the squirrels!

Canopy Slides

The South Africans like their adventure sports, everything is on offer - bungy jumping, rafting, horse-riding, abseiling etc, etc. The most amusing and one that we had to try, was 'Treetop Canopy'. The name somewhat betrays the activity - a series of nine 'flying fox' cables all more than 30 metres from the ground linked via the hard wood trees of the Tsitsikama Forest. We were fitted out with climbing harnesses and pulleys, given a safety briefing and sent flying down the cable through the forest treetops! Bit like being a kid again!

Transkei and Kwazulu-Natal

We spent a wet night, surrounded by dramatic cliffs and 'jungle', in a small place called Port St John. By now we had moved into the Transkei (although this area is now officially part of the Eastern Cape) and the climate and vegetation had become sub tropical. We sat on the veranda of our hostel watching an electrical storm before retiring for a lesson in backgammon, with the owner of the hostel, on a large home-made board with pieces made out of beer bottle caps.

The following day we set off on a dirt track for Port Edward. This is a town just inside the border of Kwazulu-Natal and at the beginning of the 'Wild Coast', known for its long stretches of unspoiled coastline. The journey was not more than 200km but it took us most of the morning because of the condition of the road. We climbed into the hills past numerous villages. The bike attracted attention. People waved at us or just stopped to watch us go by. But the atmosphere was friendly and whenever we stopped, we were approached with shy curiosity.

Port Edward is a fairly up-market town with its main industry in holiday homes and guest houses. We found a newly opened backpackers up in the hills looking down onto the ocean. The owners of Ku-boboyi billed themselves as a hostel but the standard was more that of a guest house. We decided to have a lazy afternoon by the pool, which was set into the first level of a two-tiered garden with an amazing view down the hill, and onto the ocean. The owners, Eric and Mike, were keen to make us welcome and cooked such delicious evening meals that we were tempted to move in permanently!

Port Edward is on the border of the Umtamvuna Nature Reserve so the following afternoon we took the 'Fish Eagle Trail' along the Mtamvuna River, through the 'jungle' and up 240m, alongside the waterfalls, to Krans Edge. From here we had views of the valley and shared our path with a family of baboons. The walk took 4 hours and made up for our complete lack of any real exercise over the last few weeks!

How to meet the locals

We set off early from Port Edward, sad to leave the pool with a view and the excellent food at Ku-boboyi backpackers. We consulted the map and opted for the 'scenic route' to Zastron, a town just South of the border with Lesotho. The plan was to spend the night there and then set off early the next day for the border crossing. Most of the morning was spent on tarmac. The scenic route turned out to be fairly breathtaking. Rocky hills on one side and across a wide plain on the other, we could see the mountains on the Lesotho border.

We stopped briefly, to stretch our legs, in a small town called Mount Fletcher just before the start of a 70km dirt road. We attracted the usual small group of on-lookers, from which an elderly man stepped forward and, in broken English, asked us about our route. He smiled, toothlessly, and told Goose he was very brave. Then he asked if I drove too and Goose said I did. At this he shook both our hands, nodding enthusiastically, "very brave, very brave, and brave wife too!". Goose hadn't explained that I wasn't actually doing any of the riding on this trip and that, in fact, I was still a rather wobbly novice on the motorbike, so I felt a bit of a fraud accepting his praise.

We set off for the dirt track that started abruptly on the edge of the town. Goose has done a fair amount of dirt riding, much of it with me on the back, but I have to admit the generous layer of golf ball size rocks spread over the compacted earth track didn't inspire me. Shortly after joining the track a rogue pile of pebbles rushed out from the side of the road (at least that was Goose's version of events!) and brought our ride to a crashing halt - much to the amusement of the small crowd of kids that gathered literally before the dust had time to settle.

Goose's language would have shocked Bernard Manning, I wasn't sure if it was due to the bike laying on it's side in the dirt or the embarrasment of falling off at under 30kmh, either way it was pretty colourful. My knee hurt, although I was sure nothing was broken, I took the precaution of sitting down and resting while we evaluated the situation.

Apart from a big hole ripped in one of the aluminium panniers, the rest of the bike appeared to be intact. Someone poked a finger at the tear in the side of my trousers and I remembered that my knee hurt. Goose took off my boot and we gingerly lifted my trouser leg to reveal a bloody gash in my knee. The children in our audience squealed excitedly and backed away, retreating only a few steps before a morbid curiosity brought them crowding round again. The older onlookers made sympathetic noises and kept saying "sorry, so sorry" as if it was somehow their fault!

I was helped into a local's pick-up and driven to the nearest hospital, fortunately only a kilometre away. After a series of x-rays established that nothing was broken, I was given a local anaesthetic and four stitches. Not a particularly pleasant experience, but I squeezed Goose's hand so tightly that I think he shared some of the pain!

Goose went off to find a local taxi to take me back to the last town since the one we were in didn't have a guest house. The taxi man was not happy with the price he had agreed with Goose and asked me if he could pick up other passengers to make up the difference. I gathered from what the other passengers were giving him that we had paid hugely over the odds - but he had agreed to take me door to door, which was not the way these taxis normally worked, and we were tourists so what did we expect! I shared the taxi with two women, a man, a chicken and an assortment of bags and suitcases. The drive back along the route we had taken that morning was very different. The sun had been replaced by black storm clouds and as we drove, I looked out at an impressive show of lightening over the mountain tops across the plain.

Apart from a near miss with a truck and a close shave with a stray goat, the journey went fairly smoothly and we met up with Goose in Matatiele. He had gone ahead on the bike to find accommodation. We booked into a bright little chalet on the edge of a caravan park that offered an evening meal, a bar and a pool table - a winning combination! The guys in the bar were more than helpful: Goose came to bed with offers to help weld the panniers, take us on a 4x4 drive, an invite to the neighbour's braaie (South African BBQ) and seats at the bar for the England v South Africa rugby game the next day. Not the first time that we'd been surprised by the warmth of South African hospitality. They had even tried to think up some imaginative ways of making a pair of crutches for me. Needless to say the local hospital had not been able to supply these, but since the total bill for my hospital treatment came to 65p we were not complaining! I don't think we'll be bothering our insurance company about that one!

We will, however, be a little more selective with dirt roads from now on. Shaun, one of the guys in the bar, was working on the construction of the road we had been on that afternoon. He said if we had come on our trip two years later, the road would have been tarmac!

Photographs

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