January 1, 2005

The morning after the night before

I’ve never seen so much sky before. We left the coast today and headed inland inching our way towards Malawi. Abby and I had our first taste of life behind the wheel. Was pretty good to drive the old Landrover Defender. We covered about 600km today - only another couple of thousand to go. We stopped for the night in Bloemfontein.

Anyway, enough driving and dodgy provisional towns, there was the whole unfortunate incident of New Year’s Eve. Well things turned out OK in the end. Abby and I ended up in the abandoned wastes of Grahamstown. “Grahamstown is the capital of the settler country and borders and it still feels like a strange English transplant. The large student population breathes life into this otherwise conservative, Victorian era town” (Lonely Planet Guide to Southern Africa). Now if you disregard the student life bit then you’re nearly there. Seems that some people have hung on to the Victorian era values too. Try “The black townships? Well, they’re no worse than Ireland in 1840…” Hmmmm. After a couple of drinks later we stumbled back to the farmhouse for dinner and to mingle with the other guests.

Dinner was cool, a laid back affair where everyone helped themselves and plenty of wine to go round. Then materialising like some apparition the hymn sheets and music arrived. Now I can’t really describe what happened next but luckily for everyone we took a few pictures and … with James Bondesque stealth I managed to record some of the proceedings onto my camera with the handy in-built microphone.

We did ring the NewYear in as promised and it was certainly a memorable way to start 2005.

Posted by jon jack at 10:47 PM

December 31, 2004

Calling all campanologists

Managed to make an arse of myself at the beach yesterday with an agile leap into the kayak we hired and promptly capsizing the thing. Never mind though. It’s been a cool week in Sedgefield and many thanks to Mike for making us very welcome on our stay here.

Hit the road today with a 5 hour drive to Grahamstown where we will bring in the New Year. Now I’m not sure if this will be the usual ‘drink too much, talk shite and throw up’ kind of New Year.

We’re staying at a cool little farmstead on the outskirts of town, downside is it’s a cool little farmstead on the outskirts of town so no pubs or off license to be seen either. Don’t panic though - we have been reliably informed that there will be singing after dinner. Plan is to then head to the local cathedral with a bunch of bellringers and ring in the New Year. Let the bell ends ring. Let’s get the party started!!

Happy New Year to all our readers.

Posted by jon jack at 4:41 PM

December 28, 2004

Montague Pass and Prince Alfred Pass

Did a bit of driving around the Garden Route area, taking in Montague Pass. It’s a single track dirt road with vertigo inducing drops that winds high up into the Outeniqua Mountains. We continued for about 70km before we came to the pass that would take us back towards the coast. A sign said ‘road closed’ but after having consulted with a local who’d approached us swaying slightly and rolling his eyes and reliably giving us the thumbs up, we decided to follow his advice and carry on over the pass anyway.

We ended up Knsyia for lunch, where we saw … a man wearing a Celtic top. What’s the world coming to? Eh Frank! Yesterday, Mike (our host in Sedgefield who also used to be the mayor) took us for a look around the local township “Smuttsville”. It’s quite hard to get your head round the contrast in standards of living between the ethnic groups. Mike seemed to know quite a few people there and explained that in the last 10 years things have definitely been improving. It seems odd to us to be relaxing on the beach and boarding one minute and then driving around groups of shacks the next.

Posted by jon jack at 8:27 AM | Comments (2)

December 25, 2004

Day one. Cape Town and the Garden Route

7am and we shambled off the plane after 13 hours. The flight was cool - big thumbs up to Virgin Atlantic for keeping us entertained all the way over with loads of movies and TV etc on your TV screen (even if you’re flying back with the cattle in economy). We tried for an upgrade (again) but even offering a bottle of champagne didn’t seem to work. If anyone knows the trick to getting complimentary upgrades please let us in on it.

Roger met us as soon as we got through an unusually friendly passport control; normally these guys give you so much grief. We loaded up the jeep and headed off. Now the first thing you see when you leave Cape Town Airport is a massive sprawling Township (I think it’s called Crossroads). This place is huge. I was totally taken by surprise by this; not by the size but because it was right there as soon as you enter the country and it’s apparent that there is still a long way to go to bridge the gap between the haves and the have nots. Worryingly on the plane one of our fellow passengers was giving us the low-down on things to do in Cape Town and she told us “Just ignore it when you get out of the airport, it’s not the real Cape Town”. Seemed pretty real to me. I can see where that would come from though as my in flight guide to Cape Town didn’t mention this aspect of the city, only the jazz clubs and night time hotspots.

We weren’t actually going to Cape Town though, we were heading straight to Sedgefield, a little coastal town backing onto the Indian ocean. So we had an extra 5 ½ drive on top of our overnight flight. It’s good to be here and to be able to relax at last. Spent a fantastic afternoon on the local beach watching fishermen pull hammerhead sharks out of the sea.

Posted by jon jack at 9:46 AM