Coffee Bay, yet no coffee…
So we travelled for most of the morning and into the afternoon to get to Umtata, which is where we were to pick up the shuttle to Coffee Bay. We travelled on Greyhound and it totally kicks the American Greyhound to the curb. They serve tea and coffee…air conditioning…an actual cabin attendant…
Anyway, we then hopped into a mini-bus with 2 others – a Brit who was also starting his RTW trip and a French-Canadian woman who was travelling for a couple of months. Everyone we have met is like either on a really long trip or travelling for “just a short time” – meaning 2 months. Hello, 2 months in the states is a long time on vacation! – anyway, the mini-bus driver was not the usual one because he had just gotten into an accident that morning and was in the hospital with a broken collarbone. Apparently there are plenty of mini-bus accidents. And considering there’s like 25 people in a standard mini-bus on a road with cow, goat, and other vehicles…stands to reason! After a couple of hours we got to coffee bay.
It was like paradise. Except for the mosquitos. And no coffee. In coffee bay. Well, they had the usual instant stuff you find everyone around here but no coffee. It’s really sad because, capitalists that we are, we automatically think of how they could capitalize on this by branding a coffee from coffee bay and develop a co-op for the people of the region. Which I’m sure would really happen. Especially since I doubt this is even a region where coffee can even be produced.
During our stay we hiked to the hole in the wall. On our own. Instead of with a tour. I don’t get this whole tour thing. Everything’s on a tour. Like you need a guide to walk along the coastline. And it’s not like you could miss this huge hole in this huge rock. But we picked a guide up along unintentionally anyway. His name was Bonita and he was 13ish. John loves talking to all the kids and introducing himself to them and this one stuck and showed us almost to the big hole. He showed us a waterfall and the “little hole in the wall”. He didn’t take us all the way there because I think there’s an unspoken rule that when you get to this beach near the big hole in the wall that the kids on the beach get access to tourists too. Because then they can guide you the rest of the way. Which is like 2 feet away. Oh well, everyone’s out to make a buck. On the way back we took the road and we were like the pied piper. All these kids wanted to either sell us water (literally, they would find a used bottle and fill it up partway with some nasty water) or wanted to be our friends. We will be your friends for 2 Rand. Oh my gosh, if we wanted to be all your friends we’d have to go home early – we’d have no cash.
Anyway, we spent the rest of the time lazing around, lying on the beach…I know, it’s a hard life for a traveller…
Tags: RTW Trip, South Africa
JohnCin
Leave a Reply