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Archive for June, 2009

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Stellenbosch and the winelands

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

The bus trip from Knysna to Stellenbosch was slightly under 1000km and
took around 9 hours. It felt like the bus ride that would never end, I got on at noon and arrived long after dark, the bus was pretty full due to the group of loud, annoying american university students traveling on it. This was the 2nd bus ride I had to endure with the same group of people (who are remembered by most bazbus travelers I’ve met along the route since Durban) luckily it will also be the last. We did pass some great views along the way…

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Day 1 in Stellenbosch was wet, miserable and very English in nature. I walked around the town centre a little in the morning, it’s a great setting with lots of tree lined streets and old colonial buildings.

the main church

typical road in stellenbosch

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I spent the rest of the day at the hostel to avoid the weather (along with everyone else staying there), fortunately the french open was on tv all afternoon. My second day I did a wine tour of the areas winelands, it was a full day out visiting 4 wineries and cheese factory and stopping for lunch somewhere in the middle (where exactly I don’t recall). There was a great bunch of people on the tour, apparently on avg we all had about 1 bottle of wines worth of sampling during the day, the weather couldn’t ruin the day. Got back to the hostel just before dark and had time for one more drink at the bar with everyone else before I had to leave and catch my bus to Cape Town. Fantastic day out, wine tours ftw!

the winelands

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the garden route

Sunday, June 7th, 2009

I arrived in Jeffreys Bay at 9am following the short bus ride from Port Elizabeth. Only four people on the bus for the last two legs now, and two of the others have gotten off at the same stops as me. It’s amazing how few backpackers are here now! Jeffreys Bay is a home to a crescent shaped bay and almost continuous beaches running around the bay, it’s also supposed to be one of the top 3 surfing spots on earth (I hear it’s slightly better on Venus though). My hostel was a great chilled place 2 minutes from the beach, this is my view of the surf from the balcony.

view of the surf from my hostel balcony

The weather was perfect so I grabbed one of the boards from the hostel and went to fulfill the previous days goal. After a couple hours of not the most successful attempts, I dried off and went down to explore the town itself. Not that disimilar to the Australian and NZ surfer towns I’ve visited. There’s lots of surf shops, various sorts of accommodation all over the place with coffee shops and trendy restaurants lining the main street. One of the hostel staff recommended a good and unique seafood restaurant here (this stretch of coastline is known for good seafood) so I tried that for my belated birthday meal since all I managed the day before was a meat pie at a service station on a brief stop on the bus. The restaurant was out of town at the marina, on the beach. No floor, it was a semi permanent building (tarp walls and a solid roof) with an open braai and tables and benches on the sand, a pretty cool way to serve seafood. I had a good sized platter of all the good shellfish, served with freshly made bread and dips all for about $20usd. Now that’s good value for seafood!

I left J-bay the next morning for Knysna, passing seemingly endless amounts of tree farms along the way. Aside from the fact that several South Africans had told me not to miss it, one of the reasons I decided to spend a day here was that they had their own local beer brewery here, making something other than piss poor lager, this is extremely rare in South Africa. Since I’ve looked for, and found good beer in most countries I’ve traveled too (before anyone gets excited I did fail to find good local beer in Taiwan or Korea) I was convinced that there had to be something here, hell even Japan had some good beer. So after I got off the bus and checked into my hostel I went straight into town looking for lunch and a the local beer, found both and the beer, a english bitter variety, didn’t disappoint. I am looking forward to even better beer available everywhere in one week exactly when I arrive in London, South Africa has flown by.

Knysna is built on a tidal lagoon, protected by the costal cliffs, making a very sheltered harbourfront. Since I only had time for a one night stay here I didn’t have a chance to do any of the activities around the areas, just checking out the town, which was what I was motivated to do anyway. It’s safe to walk around, full of shops and cafes and lots of oyster restaurants.

looking out to sea through the cliffs

Knysna harbour

Now that I have had a good beer in South Africa my next stop is Stellenbosch (last stop before Cape Town!) in the heart of the winelands. I went through three different wine regions in Australia and none of them disappointed, so I’m looking forward to touring this one. It’s also been recommended by pretty much every South African I’ve met.

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Durban and the Wild coast

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

I spent a couple nights in Durban, partly because something I ate the other day didn’t agree with me and I didn’t feel too great my first day there. 2nd day, much better. I was actually able to walk around the city! Hadn’t done this anywhere in South Africa yet! I walked all the way from the upperclass suburb I was staying in, to the city centre, the harbour front and checked out the Indian section of town. There’s a huge Indian population here, and plenty of market stalls and shops to show for it. It was busy, but didn’t seem dangerous apart from their being pickpockets around, hardly the first place I’ve been with pickpockets. I didn’t take many pictures, none in the market area, following advice about not being pickpocketed here.

What’s amazing to me is how you can walk through one area and see 75% white people, then walk into the city centre and not see a single one. The problem for me is, the upper/middle class white areas aren’t really interesting, just shopping malls, typical western food restaurants and peoples houses. All the hostels seem to be in these sorts of areas, to reassure people about the safety. At least here in Durban the hostel staff gave me the options of: city bus, taxi or walking into the city centre. Much preferable to Pretoria where it was, “stay on one road if you walk to the mall and taxi if you want to go anywhere else”.

I left Durban and spent about 10 hours on the bus to get to Cintsa, a small beach town on the wild coast home of supposedly the best hostel in South Africa. I had to see what that was all about. I arrived just after sunset but there was still just enough light to see the perfect view of the awesome little cove I had from my window.

view from my room

Maybe it’s a good backpackers in the summer when it’s busy, but not this time of year. I spent my first day just chilling around the beaches, when I was finished with that, early afternoon, there wasn’t much else to do!  The internet wasn’t working and there was hardly anyone else around that I saw.  In the evening a few more people arrived on the bus, like me the day before, and after eating dinner in the bar we were playing cards when just before 10pm they called last drinks at the bar.  10pm, at a hostel, last drinks.  At that moment the title of best backpackers in South Africa became a laughing matter to all of us there.

The next day, which happened to be my 22nd birthday, was decidedly uninteresting.  All of the (few) events put on by the hostel were cancelled because it was too windy, I was going to go surfing. Instead all of us sat and watched the french open until the bus came to take us somewhere more happening, sort of. Got the bus to Port Elizabeth, for the only reason that it is a compulsory overnight stop on the bus route, the next morning I continued on to Jefferys Bay to do something a little bit more interesting for my birthday..

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Lesotho

Tuesday, June 2nd, 2009

Since I’d already done the hike available to me from the hostel and had another day before the next bus to Durban came along, I decided to take their other day trip the next day into Lesotho. Lesotho is a tiny nation completely surrounded by South Africa in the Drakensberg mountains. It’s a place of nice views and people still living in traditional round huts. Unfortunately since the border closes at 4pm you don’t really get to see a whole lot on a day tour, you don’t even get to any of the towns, just the rural border area.

maize field in the mountains

We drove in, this takes a while since the roads are very poor here, stopped by the rural school and took a short hike. The weather was perfect and the scenery is nice, though not quite as dramatic as the previous days hike. After that we stopped by one of the huts to try some local sorghum pineapple beer, interesting. Then we met one of the village medicine women, tried a local dish and before you knew it the time was up and we were back on the road to the hostel.

piles of maize

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A somewhat interesting day, though not as good as I thought it could’ve been. We didn’t even get our passports stamped entering Lesotho since they took down that border post several years ago because not enough people were using it! So now my passport shows I left and re-entered South Africa on the same day but doesn’t show what country I left it for! Scam!

Caught the bus to Durban the next day, arriving a couple hours early (the benefit of the bus not having hardly any passengers on it all day). Nice being at a hostel where I can walk around the (upmarket) area surrounding it without any real warnings!

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