World South Africa Cebe Trading Station

Dave and Ian's African Epic

Coffee Bay May 19, 2005

Dave: Africa at last!

After an epic 38-hour series of flights and layovers from Belize City to Houston to Los Angeles to London to Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth, we arrived in South Africa exhausted and exhilirated, although our baggage arrived not at all. Our major travel plans in South Africa are along the Garden Route - a spectacular stretch of coastline along the bottom edge of the continent, terminating in the "hedonism capital of Africa," (I didn't say it) Cape Town. Remains to be seen.

Our first stop was Port Elizabeth, the fourth largest city and a place called the "friendly city." It most definitely lived up to its namesake, we both agreed. We also became a lot friendlier after the airline found and delivered our bags. For a city and a country that was split with racially divisive laws until 11 years ago (apartheid), the people are incredibly welcoming and gregarious. Everyone we spoke to bent over backwards to help us out, and I sensed not a bit of hostility towards our "Americanism;" rare for American travellers in today's political climate. Yet, contrary to everything and everyone we observed, we were constantly warned to be especially vigilant in certain areas and generally everywhere after dark. The violent crime statistics in the cities here are appalling - daylight muggings are not uncommon, and car jacking rates are among the highest in the world (which reminds me - we got a car, but more on that later). However friendly the people are, they seem to be a bit dismissive, even defensive, about the violence problem. "It's just like New York or Los Angeles," we've heard a few times. Not really. South Africans do seem to be a dichotomous people, I think. Amazingly warm yet live in crazy urban terror. Lovers and warriors?

We decided to delay the Garden Route for a few days to check out an area of the country called the "Wild Coast." We were a little hesistant at first because of the reputation of the Wild Coast for being, well, wild. Note the African use of "wild" should be assumed quite literal, e.g. chock full of man-sized predators that eat entire villages for breakfast, and not the western metaphorical use, e.g. Mr. Toad's "Wild" Ride. Not that a little wildness would deter manly men like ourselves from venturing into the territory, so we hopped on a bus to a place called Coffee Bay.

I'd call Coffee Bay more of a "settlement" or an "electrified campsite" than a town. But really all it needed is some electricity to keep the beer cold and the stereo blaring. On the last stretch of our minibus ride from the inland city of Umtata, the countryside is dotted with farming and herding villages that seem to be in sporadic concentrations - in two hours of driving we saw only one recognizable town. The buildings are made from cow crap and mud bricks dyed with limestone, with straw-thatched roofs. The only distinguishing feature between most of them is car tire at the top, which is potted and planted with flowers of the owner's choosing. The buildings in Coffee bay are no exception, although the lodge we stayed in had a lot more amenities and utilities than anything surrounding it, for which we had to cough up $11 per night. Not cheap for Africa, but WTH, we're recovering from our arduous lives back in the surreal world, so we decided to splurge.

We met tons of good people in Coffee Bay, and had some pretty late nights playing drinking games with the Europeans... our American alcohol tolerances are really no match for them, but I like to think we put up a decent showing. Ian, in a rare stroke of genius, had the idea to buy a cheap guitar (Ian: there's nothing rare about my stroke) that we could travel with. I initially resisted, but we found one for less than $50 and went for it. The guitar turned out to be a major party pleaser, and every night at the Coffee Shack we both went to bed with raw fingertips from taking requests for everything from Abba to Poison. We also surfed in Coffee bay, although we were a little weary in the water because someone at the hostel had a friend that got his leg taken off by a great white in the bay. Yep, we did it anyway, but only because we know that we could definitely outswim a big, sluggish great white... put those in the "wild" category I mentioned earlier.

Next up is Jeffreys Bay, where we'll try to post again.

P.S. A big shout out to our new buddies - Sarah the Terror, Joe, Neil, Luke, Paul the crazy Scot, Paola, and to Chloe and Ree, the lesbians in the bushes.