SOUTH AFRICA Continued
From Bloemfontein
to Plettenberg Bay
Thursday,
May 24, 2001
Our four year wedding anniversary!!! Woke up and broke camp.
Got ready to go, but did some last minute chatting with the Phipps´
and they even had an anniversary present for us, a bar of South
African chocolate. Traded our info, and Clinton offered to help
us get our airline tickets out of Zimbabwe, stopping in Durban
& then into Tanzania for the Cheeseman safari. On our way
out, we bought some straw baskets. We had seen the women collecting
the grasses for the baskets during our hike yesterday, and we
decided to help out the local economy some more. We stopped off
at the Village Coffee Shop outside of Harrismith and ordered
pancakes, but they weren´t your mother´s pancakes.
The waffles, however, were very good, and we ordered a couple
of them, and the coffee was not instant! But it wasn´t
like the coffee shops at home, and we both felt homesick. Then
on to Bloemfontain. We talked with Rusty, now that we were back
in cellphone territory, and we made plans to stay with him and
Luke in Capetown. Once in Bloemfontein, Laura went to a doctor
to have her skin looked at, since she had had a rash since the
Seychelles, but the doctor called it ecsema and that was that.
For our four year wedding anniversary, we stayed at the Hobbit
House, got the best room, ate the best dinner, and had a very
special anniversary. We stayed up talking with the owner of the
Hobbit House about J.R.R. Tolkein, who had been born in Bloemfontein,
and who was the inspiration of the bed and breakfast. The Hobbit
House was one of the best places we´ve stayed it on our
trip, and we got very lucky.
Friday,
May 25, 2001
Headed off early for the long drive to Port Elizabeth. Laura
sat in the backseat and Aaron drove, and a good time was had
by all. We needed some time apart and it worked perfectly. The
roads, the gas stations, they were all so similar to what we
knew back in the U.S., but there were subtle differences. The
graves alongside the townships were one, an ominous sign of the
AIDS epidemic in South Africa, and at a roadside truck stop Aaron
ate boerworst, not something you´d find in America. We
had trouble finding our hotel in Port Elizabeth, and we had to
make a bunch of phone calls, but eventually we got lucky. South
Africans cannot give directions. I think that the original Dutch
settlers were trying to get to the New World and got lost. Hence,
every Boer descendant can´t give directions to save their
lives, and the funny thing is, people warn us not to get lost.
Well, with their directions, we can´t do anything but get
lost. We had Debonair Pizza for dinner and finally met up with
Rusty and another American named Mike, from Illionois.
Saturday,
May 26, 2001
We spent the day with Rusty, Mike, and bunch of their friends,
mostly Indians from Durban and people who would have once been
called "colored" during Apartheid. We danced to funky
African music and watched the ocean break on the shore. It was
going to be one of the last times we would see the Indian Ocean,
and since there was a storm, it put on a show for us. The weekend
was a real shot in the arm, and it was great getting to know
all of the people. It was one of the best days in South Africa,
and we had a great time, talking politics and culture and having
fun.
Sunday,
May 27, 2001
Rusty was going straight home, but we wanted to take our time
down the Garden Route, the highway that stretches from Port Elizabeth
to Capetown. It was like being back in Northern California. During
our travels in India, we had met a British couple who had told
us to go to Plettenberg Bay and stay at a place called Cottage
Pie, a nice B&B right off the ocean. The drive down to Plett
(as the native´s call it) was beautiful. We drove through
the Tsitsikamma National Park, with the mountains on one side
and the ocean on the other. Very, very pretty. We stopped at
the Storm River gorge and looked down at the narrow, snaky ravine
from a bridge over the highway. From our cellphone (thank God
for Vodaphone), we called Cottage Pie and they had room for us.
We got in, unpacked in our wonderful room, and decided we were
done camping. Sure, we could have saved money, but we were staying
in a Carmel type place with South African type prices. What would
have been easily 100 dollars in the U.S. was half that in South
Africa. It was chilly and nice in the town, and we ate dinner
at the Boardwalk Cafe, where there was a poster from Santa Cruz.
We talked with the owner, and her son was a very successful skipper
and had sailed boats all over the world. That night, we slept
in a bed, in a warm house, and it was lovely. Remember its winter
in this part of the world in May!
Monday,
May 28, 2001
Slept in! Yippee! Then packed our backpacks for real, as if we
were on our way to the Fish River Canyon (tent, sleeping bags,
freeze-dried food), and then headed to the Tsitsikamma National
Park for some training. The coastal park was lovely. We walked
up to a lookout point and admired the sea. Saw a group of one-legged
Germans who we had seen off and on during our whole time in South
Africa, starting back in Soweto. They were tubing down the Storm
River and having a great time. The hike was hard, the trail disappeared
into rocks and surf, but we got an appetite and we solved that
problem at Cornuti´s, an Italian food place and our favorite
eatery in Plett.
Tuesday,
May 29, 2001
Started the day talking with a French couple at breakfast who
were nearly done with their own year long trip around the world.
They were tired, and they admitted to only being able to handle
half-days. They were very nice, and we talked about the places
we had seen and the things we had done. We wished them luck on
the last month of their trip, then we packed up our bags again,
and headed to the Roberg Nature and Marine Reserve. Hiked a long
out to the peninsula, saw and smelled the seals there, and it
all felt like being in California again. Except we did see a
school of dolphins playing in the waves as they crashed down
on the rocks. Roberg is known for it´s very unique geology
and we saw a place where early humans lived. We also saw the
beach where the first Portuguese sailors camped when they were
exploring Africa. Vasco de Gama, that guy really got around.
We got lost on the trails going back, but we thought that that
was probably good practice for the Fish River Canyon as well.
Again, had a lovely dinner at Cornuti´s.
Wednesday,
May 30, 2001
Woke up early, yeah, even in our nice place, and walked along
the beach with our packs, to get our training out of the way.
Quickly had breakfast and met two Germans who we would later
run into in Capetown. They were old school friends who would
go on holiday´s together, and we talked about their travels.
Later, we met up with another German, far less sane than the
two we had talked with over breakfast, who took us kayaking out
to the bottom of the cliffs we had climbed the day before. While
we kayaked over to the Roberg Marine Reserve, the German guy
chatted about his time with the Reverend Sun Young Moon in his
commune in Oregon. He was living in South Africa, but he had
definite ideas on American politics. Of course it was the CIA
that ran the moonies out of Oregon. We nodded, smiled, and paddled.
At the base of the Roberg peninsula, we kayaked with the seals
we had seen the day before, and up close, they smell even more
like dirty, wet dog. But they are cute! We weren´t up to
a lunch with the crazy German, so we went back and ate on the
ocean front, did email for a little bit, dinner at Cornuti´s,
and a night avoiding bad South African television.
South Africa has their own soap operas, but at the same time they import American and Mexican soap operas. There is enough drama on the TV, you´d think there wouldn´t be any in their country. We watched one South African sitcom called "Madam and Eve" about a white widow and her black maid, and the trouble the maid gets into. Think of it as "Sanford and Son" meets "Benson." The episode we saw was about how Eve set up her house as a shabeen, an illegal bar where tourists go to see the real Africa. An American couple, Marty with a "y" and Marti with an "i" were American tourists at their worst, fat, loud, stupid, obnoxious, rich, and did I mention stupid? It was interesting to see what some of the stereo-types of Americans are. I also watched an episode of "The West Wing" and I was surprised at how much I liked it.
Thursday,
May 31, 2001
The Cottage Pie filled up and so we had to move. After a morning
walk, practicing with our packs, we had our last divine breakfast
with the madam and the perfect way she presented everything.
Every morning while we were there, she would say in her perfect
South African accent, "We have the egg, the bacon, the sausage,
the tomato...would you like a little bit of everything?"
That too became a working part of our language together. We left
that B&B, went to another one, and then did email and some
shopping. We found some beautiful artwork by a local artist of
African women and we bought some. Another Cornuti dinner and
that night we got to watch the last part of The Full Monty on
TV. And so ended our stay in Plettenberg Bay.
Our room at the Hobbit House in Bloemfountein,
where we stayed for our 4 yr wedding anniversary
View from Roberg Nature and Marine Reserve, Laura's favorite
Views from our early morning hike along the beach in Plett. So beautiful!
We got quite close to the seals during our kyaking trip
