South African Highlights: Four Week Adventure with Intrepid Travel

           Unpacking South African highlights after touring cross-country with Intrepid Travel is not a walk in the park.  It’s a walk on the wild ‘hectic’ side!  What are the chances that on a four-week trip you are going to get to know a driver with four wives, a man who was expelled from high school and now, between stints as a park ranger and a guide, is writing music, two entemologists who will have their telescopic lens glued to the ground for the duration of their trip, a master’s of education student from England who has just finished

research on gender sensitivity training in South African schools, an Italian woman whose pharmaceutical advice is dispensed while the rest of us are sleeping, and a collective that is working hard for the welfare and economic rejuvenation of their Zulu village?  Pretty good, we found out, if you do something we seldom do – take a guided tour! 

South African Highlights:  The Shosholoza Train

     To get to our tour, which began in Johannesburg, we started in Cape Town.  Next to the Atlantic, spread across a stunning topography of beach flats and sharp mountain tops, Cape Town dazzles. Given that the first thing we needed to do was find the train station, where the Shosholoza train promised to take us across the width of the country in a day, the city’s rougher edges were also immediately revealed to us.  Running the gamut of beggars and hustlers and huddled shapes lying on the street is commonplace in downtown Cape Town and reminded us of certain sections of Vancouver. Seems South Africa, since the closing of the book on apartheid in 1995, has become a bit of a magnet for economic migrants from countries in the north, and the downtown streets in Cape Town and Johannesburg are the first stop on  their journey.

            Fortunately, said economic migrants were clustered more around train stations, than on the trains. Nestled in our four-person compartment on the train across South Africa (being upgraded as train was far from full),

the only interruptions to our wide window viewing was the staff bringing us pillows, blankets, coffee, wine glasses, and announcements that dinner was being served, etc.  Not quite silver service, but for two budget travellers, an unexpected treat, and the trip provided welcome time to acclimatize to a whole new (rather Texas-looking – dry, scrubby rangeland) world.

South African Highlights:  Jo Burg & The Intrepid Team

            Our time in Jo Burg is brief, but revelatory.  No, the taxis don’t rip you off, the train station is not a zoo, our first ever uber rides sell us on the convenience, cost and courtesy, the Apartheid Museum deserves more than 5 stars, Vodacom offers a fantastic data and phone package for travellers, and a little bit of England still lurks in the leafier areas of the city – eccentric antique book dealers, Christmas craft fairs with gin bars, lots of

Twinings tea shops, thatched cottages nestled in wild gardens.  The latter was our B&B for our first night in Jo Burg, and, in addition to the backpacking retired set, it was clearly popular with millenial professionals. Architects and city planners from Moscow, and teacher/IT consultants from Germany (with their adorable ‘coloured’ baby) made for fascinating breakfast conversations.

           On the first day of our tour, at the 5:00 am departure for Kruger National Park, we meet Collen, our Zulu driver, and the truck we will be calling home for three weeks.  Both of them look sturdy and broken in.  Our guide likewise

appears to have been down an African road or two. With a brusque African accent, he touts random statistics about the current state of wildlife breeding in Africa and the price of a hybridized bull at a recent auction, assuring us that we haven’t got someone who has parachuted in from Devonshire for the job. Before long, we have been introduced to the rest of our truck-mates. The most colourful have been

mentioned, and it is clear that all have come with open and even-keeled minds about exploring the tip of ‘the Dark continent’.

            But it was perhaps Collen and Jay (the young guide) that, in the end, gave the tour such personality. If I recall the things we learned, and the sensibilities re-arranged (SA does not belong to the PC-club-set!), it would be largely because of the huge blast of ionized air coming from the front of the truck, regularly cleansing us of our over-politicized realities.

South African Highlights:  Kruger Park Wildlife

     We sweep into Kruger, and the first thing we see is, not a rhino, but a large snake slithering down a tree at the side of the road.  Initially, fascinated by the horror or it, we are all furtively sneaking glances at it.  As it gets closer, our guide is delirious with excitement.

         “OMG – who’s got binoculars I can borrow?  I think it’s a boomslang!  I’ve never seen a boomslang on a tour before!”

Suddenly the mood is changed.  People hang out the truck windows to get the best shot of the snake to give to the guide for examination.  We watch it strike and begin to devour a lizard whole, its mouth expanding to four times its size.  What was before a creepy ‘nature incident’ has become a science lab of epic and privileged proportions.  We had witnessed a boomslang, the most venomous in South Africa, do what so few others witness – dine in the wild.

        We learn later about the animals our guide did feel he needed to warn us about: the water buffalos, hippos, zebras (“360 degrees of kungfu with very sharp hooves”), hyenas, ostrich (“its claws an tear a person apart”), and anything black and white in nature (what – my dearly departed, wrap-around-affectionate black&white cat, Puppy???).  Snakes and spiders don’t even rate a mention.

South African Highlights:  Rivers, Oceans, Mountains

          And we appreciate that he didn’t have a fetish about warnings and safety and all-the-things-that-were-going-to-eat-us in the African jungle.  He trusted us to make our own judgements about how far to stand away from the edge the the mighty Blyde River Canyon, to size up our strength versus the cross-currents of river deltas next to the Indian Ocean, and to be realistic about our competencies as climbers in the Drakensberg Mountains. We

snap photos where the stones are sturdy next to the Blyth River Canyon, we snorkle to the tune of 100 differently coloured striped fish in Kosi Bay while we butt our way against a rib current, and we pay attention to the map advisories upon reaching our beautiful base camp, Ampitheatre Backpacker’s Lodge, in the Drakensberg. 

        We chose a hike in the Drakensberg that is ‘for the young at heart’ (Ken is now 71).  It ascends a vertical rock wall with chain ladders and ropes, and wanders along a windswept landscape that drains, unmarked, into a massive waterfall, and in the mist and pouring rain, we descend, one cautious foot after another, another series of ladders fastened to a massive stone wall of the geological wonder they call the Drakensberg (Dragon) Mountains.  We suck it up.  We do it.  We feel stronger for it, realizing we would have been denied the opportunity to prove ourselves young at heart if Jay had told us it was a trail for only the most advanced or intrepid hikers.  We thank him for that.

South African Highlights:  Afrikaaners

         We also need to thank Jay for the clear-eyed depiction of South African history.  Afrikaaner strongholds, and battle sites for the Boer Wars are ubiquitous across the eastern part of South Africa, and Jay, of primarily British descent, highlighted the hardships and atrocities the Afrikaaners had endured (like the scorched-earth policies and concentration camps they had been subjected to during the Boer war).  Though they might have earned the colloquial titles of ‘rockspiders’ and ‘bootsies’ (due to their tenacious nature), they are a people that are at the heart of South Africa’s flourishing farm, ranch and vineyard agriculture, responsible for much of the health and prosperity of the nation. One senses, immediately upon meeting an Afrikaaner, that these people, to this day, are staunchly, irrevocably, of this land.

South African Highlights:  Swaziland, Zulu Villages & Lesotho Lodges

            Back to the trip…..Our journey, from Kruger, sidesteps into the

Kingdom of Swaziland where life is clearly a little more impoverished (red dirt roads, tiny rondavel huts, chickens in every front yard), but the blazing red blooms on the jaracanda trees and the gentle welcomes – and music – in the Hlane Royal National Park are the things that stand out the most.  Or perhaps it was being told by a Swaziland game warden that the

underground den we were standing on the surface of was that of an African rock python because you could see the telltale ‘tire’ mark disappearing under our feet into the den…..

From there, we steamed right down to the Indian Ocean to the point where South Africa and Mozambique meet. A couple

beautiful tropical estuaries later, we are on the outskirts of Durban, an astonishingly large, metropolitan city that towers above a mile-long stretch of ocean-side beach.

         We have an overnight homestay in a Zulu

villages in The Valley of a 100o Hills lovingly arranged and hosted by Vuk Africa Tours and Max, Thulani and Big Mama. The village is riddled with garbage, burning plastic, and a number of drunks on the streets (Saturday afternoon, beginning of holiday season, we are told) but the sweetness, and earnestness of our hosts keep our eyes (and hearts) focused on the positive.  And what was unique to this village and the outreach programs that fund educational and employment opportunties for the villagers, is that their work is entirely a grassroots effort. 

        Many of the economic initiatives in Africa have been spearheaded by

outside missionary foundations, like the one we witnessed in Lesotho –  Malealea Lodge.  The Malealea Lodge and Development Trust has helped income generation initiatives (such as the formation of flourmills, handicraft stores, sewing businesses, welding shops, etc.) and infrastructure improvement (water tanks, latrines, irrigation

equipment, schools, etc.), and  social development programs (HIV/AIDS education, scholarship funds). https://youtu.be/ah7oWIWpri4

The owners of the lodge (former South African

colonialists) have made a sweeping investment in the lives of people in their valley and beyond, one that has won them many awards, and keen support from the ‘responsible tourism’ sector! In Valley of a 1000 Hills, this work is internally generated, managed and tracked.  Hats off, Max et al! https://youtu.be/73855dSNarY

South African Highlights:  The Food

         We also became familiar – due to Jay’s flair for it – South African cooking.  You could count on it being sweet, spicy, fried and always full of fat, hence easy to love! Emerging from a large cast iron pot on the braai each night would be exquisite fish boboties, stewed beef, squash soups, chicken chikka, pap….. Healthful options would be available at breakfast but for Jay, it would mean finding solace in oil-drenched hamburgers and fries or biltong (like dried jerky) at our first coffee stop. Or in  the meat-rich lunch offerings at the Spar shops – the ubiquitous grocery chain in South Africa, always planted in a mall between a bottle shop and a pizza restaurant – which we stopped at daily to fill up our larder. 

South African Highlights:  Our Zulu Driver

       If you were lucky, you got to sit up with Collen in the in cab of the

truck.  Always entertaining, always enlightening, always on the cusp of making himself laugh at his own jokes and dry retorts.  He played on the ingenuity of tourists as artfully as a mbira player, and even I give him that pleasure now and again (so, how do they keep the animals in game parks?).  Most of the time, I keep it cool.  Like when he tells me about his four wives, and the many Rands he’s

had to pour into their dowries to afford the number of cows needed to ‘purchase’ each (in South Africa, it’s twelve cows per wife), and I would only remark that having to work so hard to support a brood like this might limit the amount of time one can spend with them. But you got to feeling he liked being on the road with no one to answer to.  Except for the time he was pulled over for speeding. Using guilt tactics – “think of how many lives in this truck you are endangering by speeding”- the Afrikaaner police officer cowed Collen into promising that, by the grace of God and Joan as his witness, he would never speed again.  Or make sure he was wearing his muti amulet (which consists of a lock of a white person’s hair) when driving through certain well-patrolled territories of the country.

South African Highlights:  Eastern Cape, Storm River, Garden Route to Cape Town

            In entering the Eastern Cape, you cross a border into treed boulevards, stuccoed homes with fenced-in pools, spacious designer malls

– i.e., a fair step up the economic ladder. 

Campsites become a little more frequent and well-serviced and one look at the incredible range and design in people’s camping units tells you this is a serious pastime for the upscale white South African family.  One of the most beautiful campsites we alighted at was at Storm’s River on the Indian Ocean adjacent a deep river canyon. Shore-side wanderings – one of them being the easternmost part of the Otter Trail along one of the most

breathtaking sea cliffside walks there is – a cross betwen Abel Tasman (vegetation), and The West Coast Trail (ruggedness) – keeps us grounded and tantalized by the walking adventures that await the traveller in South Africa.

 

            Canyons, deep valley vineyards tucked into them, and vast tracts of grassland burnt by the sun continue until Cape Town.  A night at a lodge by a river known for its white water rafting brings us close to the liberating feeling of space and possibility I had felt in the Great Rift Valley in East Africa.  The river was virtually dry, but no matter;

the experience, as the late-afternoon sun framed the passageway down the rock-strewn river in a soft bowl of blue, was heavenly.  And so was the so-called ‘resort’.  Why was it that every night we sleep in a tent, it is a divine one?

       Taking care not to run over any elephant dung (the dung beetle’s work – breaking down elephant poop – is becoming increasingly in demand), we drive the final ocean-hugging miles to Cape Town. 

One senses that all of us on the truck are filled with the usual mixture of feelings about farewells and new beginnings.  We arrive, the hugfest erupts, cameras emerge, e-mails are exchanged, and then we are shouldering our packs to head for the home in Bo Kaap we’ve booked for the week in Cape Town.  If you’d like to learn more about this storied section of the city, the best way to get up and down Table Mountain, and where to eat in Cape Town, tune into my next blog!