South Africa, Lesotho & Swaziland
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St Lucia Wetlands
Hiking in the Drakensberg
Bloemfontein to Cape Town
Cape Town
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Cape Town
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Travel notes from Cape Town
Hi Everyone,
Travelling anywhere from Lesotho will always be a let down and South Africa is no exception. We crossed the western border of Lesotho at the Van Rooyen's Gate and within the space of a few yards travelled from a traditional mountain kingdom to modern day South Africa. We took a minibus taxi straight to Bloemfontein where we stopped for a night. Bloemfontein is the provincial capital of Free State and is also South Africa's judicial capital. The downtown area sprawls over quite a large area with no real heart, although for an inland town it has a waterfront along a lagoon in a park in the centre of the city. I just spent my time in the city sorting out a few things, window shopping at the waterfront and also booked myself on an overnight train to Port Elizabeth on the south coast.
Rebecca and myself parted company soon after Bloemfontein, as I wanted to push on down to the coast and on to Cape Town. We travelled on the same overnight train south and Rebecca got off a few stops before Port Elizabeth to catch a connection to Grahams Town. A couple of hours later I was back on the coast in the 'friendly city' of Port Elizabeth. I have to confess that travelling in South Africa hasn't inspired me like some of the other countries I have visited on this trip or in the past. It is very much a first world country on a third world continent; to me there are few challenges involved in this part of my trip. I've tried to make it a bit more interesting by travelling in the local minibuses most of the way and hitchhiking in the rural areas. South Africa is gradually making sense to me now; it is a unique country on this continent. Segregation is still very apparent although today it is along economic lines rather than racial; the gap between the rich and the poor is a gaping one. Every town or city I visited or drove through was surrounded by townships, some no more than shacks of corrugated iron and wooden planks, others small uniform cinderblock houses, part of the governments housing policy. The city centres were always the opposite, grand buildings and smart houses. Port Elizabeth was no exception, the train rolled past miles and miles of townships before pulling in at the central station, where I was confronted by elevated highways and gleaming office blocks.
I spent a night in Port Elizabeth and amused myself by spending an afternoon following the Donkin Heritage Trail that wound it's way around the city taking in most of the historic buildings as well as the small fort overlooking the harbour. I did some reading on hiking trails along the Garden Route, a stretch of beautiful coastline between Jeffrey's Bay and Mossel Bay and decided to go to Storms River where there was a five-day hiking trail through the Tsitsikama Mountains. Storms River Village was a tiny place set between the Tsitsikama National Park along the coast and the mountains just inland. I was soon disappointed though after I phoned the Forestry Department who told me, as I expected, that I couldn't hike the trail by myself, but that also no one else was booked on the trail for the next ten days. There was also no-one else staying at Storms River who was hiking so my plans lay in ruins. I stayed to do some day hikes in the surrounding forests, which gave me a taste of what the Tsitsikama trail would have been like.
By now I was losing interest in South Africa and decided to make tracks to Cape Town, where I wanted to spend some time. Storms River, being in the middle of nowhere, didn't have any kind of transport hub, so I walked out on to the N2 highway and within an hour hitched a ride the 100km to Knysna. I arrived on the opening day of the Oyster Festival and the town was packed with tourists, as it was also the start of the South African school holidays. Once again I just spent a night in town and went out for the night checking out the local nightlife before crawling home in the early hours of the morning. From Knysna I took the InterCape bus to Cape Town, my original planned final destination for this trip. By late afternoon we drove through the Sir Lowry's Pass and below us lay the Cape, the evening sun slowly sinking into the ocean. After travelling all these miles for the last twenty-four weeks it was great to see this view; I had made it at last.
Cape Town is an exciting city, I've spent six days here and I am now glad that I jumped on the bus from Knysna and came straight through to here. There's plenty to do and see in and around the city and I've only managed to scratch the surface in the few days I've been here. I climbed up Table Mountain, 1,070m, in only one hour and fifteen minutes; after all the treks and mountains I have climbed recently I feel super fit. The views over the city were stunning and the beer in the restaurant cold. One of the must do things here is a wine tour of the surrounding vine yards; I booked myself on a whole day tour and off we went around four vine yards, sipping all the way. Some of the wines were absolutely fantastic, especially the Pinotage, which I hadn't come across until I reached this part of the world. One of the side effects of a wine tour is the amount of alcohol you consume during the day and I don't remember anything after the bus dropped me off until I woke the next morning. I also went on a tour of Robben Island, which lies a few kilometres off shore and the maximum-security prison whose most famous inmate was Nelson Mandela; it was a fascinating tour.
Well, Cape Town was going to be the end of the road for this trip, but as I never had a return ticket I've decided to head north and I am next off to Springbok and the Namibian border.
Regards
Geoff
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