The Movie - Part 3

This is the third and final instalment of our trip - four and a half months in Africa. The video is embedded below (it's from facebook, but you don't have to be a member watch it). To switch to full screen, hit the white square in the bottom right, after you've hit play.




If the facebook version fails, use the lower quality video below.



Part 2 is below, and part 1 is here

Jo'burg

It's a long way from northern Kruger to Jo'burg, so after the morning game drive, I had to lead-foot it to make it to the airport before dark. It was going so well before we got pulled over by the police doing 162kph. Now, apparently, there is no spot fine for this speed, so we would have to go the the police station and pay 1000 rand bail. After doing a U-turn across the dual-carriageway onto the grass mid section, the cop suggested that this was “very unfair to tourists”, and if we just paid him a “fee” of what we could afford, then we could be on our way. I handed over 800 rand (£70), which was probability too much, but still less than the bail. As it was, with the traffic around Pretoria, we were 90 minutes late to the airport, but so was our hostel pickup. With the end of a confederations cup match clogging the streets, it took nearly two hours to get to the hostel.

We had two days in Jo'burg before the start of the overland trip, and in that time we needed to get a grand or so in US$, take a tour of Soweto and watch a rugby match. Easy? No. None of the bureaux de chance at the mall would change rand for dollars - some wanted an airline ticket (they couldn't grasp the concept that we were leaving by land), while others simply didn't have dollars. So after a futile visit to the mall, we returned to the hostel to start the Jo'burg/Soweto tour.
















We started of in a rich walled compound suburb (Mandela has a house out here), before plugging into crime ridden Hillbrow; we'd been driven through here the night before, and it is defiantly a suburb that has seen better days – to walk around here alone, at any time of day, would be lunacy. From Jo'burg we headed out to the infamous Soweto (South Western Townships), a place that today is full of sharp contrasts. On the edge sit large houses with well maintained gardens, some of which boast swimming pools in the back – all the trappings of a middle-class life. At the end of the street the large rows of male dorms start; during apartheid, Jo'burg had an appetite for cheap labour from rural areas, but not the families of these men, so the workers were housed in sheds with no electricity or indoor plumbing. Most of the housing stock of Soweto consists of two room family houses, many of which have now been extended beyond all recognition. However, on the wasteland between the various townships, live the very poorest, in unofficial tin shed shanty towns.
















The 1976 Soweto uprising started out as a protest by school children about having Afrikaans forced on them as a means of instruction – it was seen as the language of the oppressor, and eliminated any chance of bright students going to English language universities either abroad or in South Africa. The protest culminated in the police firing live rounds at groups of students; the youngest to die was 13 year old Hector Pieterson – the excellent museum in his name tells the story of the uprising, and more generally of apartheid.
















The next day we needed to get back out to the airport to get dollars and transfer to a hotel of that the trip was departing from. The hostel provided a car, but not the minibus they had picked us up in. The car, a VW, was an early 1970s model that pumped out thick clouds of smoke. At one point the driver aborted turning down a street because there was a police check point - he explained to me that if the police stopped the car they would impound it. So to avoid the police, he weaved through the back streets of Hillbrow, as we prayed it wouldn't die on us. The fact I'm writing this means we did make it, just.

Kruger

After a quick night stop in Nelspruit, where we experienced yet another South African shopping mall, we entered the southern end of Kruger National park via the Malelane Gate. This area has the highest concentration of game, but as a result it also has the highest concentration of cars. Whilst we found the cars immediately it took us took us a good few hours to find the game. In the end, all our searching in the bush for glimpses of movement of change in colours were in vain. Instead, our first significant sighting of the day walked right across the road in front of us, and was pretty hard to miss, given it was a group of five elephants.














Unfortunately, we had set ourselves a rather ambitions target for our next night's accommodating, so had to put in quite a lot of driving to make our way sufficiently far north. Still the driving is made much more interesting when you don't know what you will find around the next corner. We mostly found giraffes and elephants. Unfortunately, because it was a holiday weekend, we didn't manage to secure ourselves accommodation in the park for the first night, so instead stayed in a comfortable lodge around 20km out from Orpen Gate.














The concentration of animals is meant to decrease as you move further north in the park, but we actually had much better luck the next day finding a group of 4 lionesses (they were easy to spot given the 5 or so cars parked beside them), followed by a frisky bully elephant and many giraffe. The scenery around the central area of the park is also very beautiful, in particular the stunning view of the Olifants River that you get from the Olifants Rest Camp.

As we were staying the night in the park, at Mopani Rest Camp, we took the opportunity to do a night game drive. This started well with a beautiful male lion sat right in the middle of the road. We also met some hippos who were out for their evening grass eating. After this, things went downhill and we had to make do with bush hares.



















We spent our third day in the park exploring the northern region of the park. This area is much quieter, and for one stretch of a couple of hours not seeing any other cars, which makes the experience of finding animals much more exciting. We spent much of the day following the course of some of the many rivers, which gave us some excellent hippo sightings. We also found a herd of around 20-30 elephants together with a lone hippo, who had made their way down to the river to drink. We had a spectacular view of them down the river bank which was made even more special by the fact that there were no other cars around.














We were reminded of just how intimidating these creatures are when, a little earlier, we rounded a corner to find ourselves confronted by a startled elephant. I'm not sure if had decided if it wanted to charge us or nor, but to be on the safe side I accelerated out of the way pretty quickly, skilfully (well luckily) avoiding hitting any trees. It took quite a while for my heart rate to get back to normal.














Our day ended with another treat, a group of around six giraffes, including one who was having a good go at rutting.

We spent our final night in the park in a 'tent' at Punda Maria Rest Camp. Now this is my kind of camping. Our tent came equipped with double bed, bathroom and a fully equipped kitchen. We set off early the next morning to fit in a quick game drive before the long drive back to Jo'burg. Unfortunately we got stuck in traffic Kruger style, that is behind a very large bull elephant, so ended up leaving the park much later than intended.

Sodwana Bay

Sodwana Bay is home to the world's southernmost coral reefs, and the most popular diving location in South Africa, so as we were in the neighbourhood I couldn't resist booking us in for a day. Unfortunately, on the morning of the dive we woke up at the required ungodly hour to find it pouring with rain – not exactly the beach paradise we had been promised. With some effort we dragged ourselves up and unenthusiastically made it on to the dive boat. Like our diving south of Durban, they use small inflatable boats (rubber duckies) and you have to cling on for dear life as the skipper skilfully (well hopefully) waits for the right moment to bomb it out through the breakers.
















Our first dive was at 9 mile reef, which is unfortunately one of the furtherest away, so after the thirty minute journey we were pretty cold. To add to this, Rich, who had come down with a stomach bug, was vomiting over the side of the boat. Not to be deterred, we rolled off the boat backwards into the water James Bond style, to find it actually pleasantly warm compared with the conditions above sea level.
















The main draw of this dive area are the lovely coral reefs, and they were certainly very pretty, helped by excellent viability and several interesting swim-throughs. Also, there weren't the strong currents like on our previous dives at Aliwal, so it was much more relaxing, or was until I realised just how cold I was and the shivering set in.
















On the way back to land we met a pod of dolphins who were eager to play, swimming right up to the boat. Unfortunately they were too close to the breakers for it to be safe for us to get in a and join them.
















Back on dry land again, and warmed up by a cup of cocoa and a hot shower, the sun was finally making an appearance making me feel much more enthusiastic for the second dive. This was at the much closer 2 mile reef (the clue is in the name). Again, this was a lovely reef dive with plenty of colourful fish and and a few turtles. The reef covers quite a large area so you can drift around with the current and still have plenty to see.
















The next day we decided it was time for a new country, so headed on northwards to Swaziland. As Rich was still feeling rather poorly (note to self that stomach bugs don't mix well with rough boat rides and scuba diving), I took over the driving. After negotiating the numerous potholes on the way back to the main road, I steeled my self to the madness of African driving. I soon relaxed and successfully executed my first two truck overtaking manoeuvre without crashing into the oncoming traffic.

Hluhluwe

From Dundee we had another longish drive over to Hluhluwe in the heart of Zululand. The Hluhluwe game park is relatively small at 96,000ha, but its hilly terrain does make it rather attractive.

Not long after we entered the park, we passed two safari vehicles watching a herd of elephants passing in the valley below. However, the disadvantage of having a saloon car is that you can barely see over the shrubbery, leaving you sitting there wandering what everyone else is looking at.

Things improved after coffee, when we ran into a very large bull elephant wandering down the road, followed quickly by a male White Rhino. After checking us out, the rhino got on with rubbing his bits on a large log. White Rhinos are fairly common in this park, judging by the two groups we ran into in the afternoon.

We spend two nights at Isinkwe backpackers, about 30km from the park, where we were the only guests. Meanwhile the guides sat around the fire, swapping stories of people who had been killed by agitated bull elephants – must keep more distant in future (or a least learn how to reverse at high speed).

Before moving on to Sodwana Bay, we paid another visit to the park. We had a good start by almost reversing into a giraffe. After another group of white rhinos, we were on our way out of the park when we ran into a pack of nine African Wild Dogs lounging by the side of the road. Now these creatures are really quite rare, so it's lucky to come across them at all. They didn't seemed bothered by us, and got on with a bit of play fighting, before eventually wandering across the road and off into the distance.

Bloemfontein

Crossing the border back into South Africa, you stay on the high flat plane, but the rondavel disappear to be replaced by huge fields of wheat. The landscape remains featureless until the smoke stacks of the industrial east of Bloemfontein appear. This was not the most welcoming approach to a city that we've made, as we passed by some of the most dire looking townships thus far.
















Things did not improve when we got to our home for the next two nights, Navel Hill backpackers. The Lonely Planet describes the place as über cool – this is another classic from someone who most likely hasn't been near the place. The reality is a large warehouse type building, with the floor area partitioned up with sheets of corrugated metal to form 'rooms', but with no ceilings. If you're after the feeling of sleeping in a detention centre, this is the place for you. Rather than hang around, we drove down to the Waterfront (a mall with some bars by a manmade lake) with Lee, a PE teacher who'd quit his job to follow the tour.
















After a few hours of warm up drinking at the waterfront, we walked the short distance to the ground for a couple more. Apart from the mad Scottish woman a few rows behind us, we were surrounds by Cheetahs fans – so I have no idea what they were going on about; just a lot of swearing in Afrikaans I think (probably something about the Boer war). With the match narrowly won only by the luck of a missed drop goal, we filed back out to the drinking pen.
















It's still quite early in the tour, so there were only a few hundred Lions fans willing to put the full five weeks in. Among them were a bunch a Welsh school teachers, currently working in Lesotho (the young members of the group would later redecorate the ladies toilets of our hostel). There was a bloke running round naked at one point, but other than that the rest of the evening is a little hazy. This of course made the six hour drive back to Dundee the next day really fun.

Battlefields and the Drakensberg

Zulus, thousands of 'em – yes that's right we've been to Rorke's Drift. But firstly we must return to Durban and the tail of woe with the latest hire car.

We'd booked a 4x4 through an agent specificity because we wanted to go up the Sani pass into Lesotho (the SA boarder will not let you up in an unsuitable car). The actual rental firm was Hertz, and this is when it all started to go wrong. The car was a Nissian Hardbody, fine, except there appeared to be no shifter for the 4WD. The sour faced cow at the Hilton Hertz had no idea – in fact there was no shifter because it was a 2WD. After some phone calls they found an Isuzu that was due back at the airport in 2 hours. Two-and-a-half hours later the car arrived at the airport. After past experience I checked the spare under the car – it would not release. Three blokes from Hertz spend the next 30 minutes shoving a rode into the back of the car to no avail. They then tried to offer us a Kia automatic, which is just a Chelsea tractor; we refused. The Hertz manager drove us to the dealership in Durban. After some considerable time, the mechanics lifted the car on the hydrolic jack, and continued to stare at the spare wheel. Eventually a crowbar was brought in and the wheel made it off. So seven hours after picking up the first car, and with the spare wheel now in the back, we drove into rush hour traffic leaving Durban for the four-and-a-half hour drive north. What a fun day.

This part of KwaZulu Natal is littered with battlefields from wars fought between the British, the Boers and the Zulu Nation.

First stop was the Talana museum in Dundee. This is the site of the first battle of the second Boer war, in 1899. Along with some historic buildings, Talana house has a display on all the conflicts fought in KZN.

After that it was on to Blood River, where in 1838 a group of Boer trekkers (voortrekkers) successfully repelled an attack by 12,000 Zulu warriors by forming a fortified circle (laarger) with their wagons – the counter attack left the river running red with the blood of 1000 Zulus; hence the name. The battle has an almost religious significance for some Afrikaners, who view the vow taken the night before the battle as prove of God's hand in the victory (December 16th was celebrated as the Day of the Vow, until the democratic South Africa changed it to the Day of Reconsideration). The site is somewhat bizarrely marked by 64 full-sized copper wagons depicting the laarger – whilst it's suppose to be a sombre place, it comes out a bit Disneyesque.

We took the gravel roads between the battlefields, which wind through fairly rural areas complete with rondavels (this time unpainted) and a constant stream of cows blocking the road. Next up was Insandhlwana, scene of a massive British military disaster. In 1879 British forces under Lord Chelmsford invaded Zululand, after the Zulus failed to capitulate to British demands. The central column of some 1,770 men crossed the boarder from Natal at Rorke's Drift, and camped at the base of the Insandhlwana hill, but did not fortify the area. A British scouting party were therefore quite alarmed to find 25,000 Zulu's siting in a valley to the north. The Zulu's attacked immediately, quickly cut off any chance of retreat, and after several hours overran the camp; barely a handful of Redcoats made it out alive. 

Today the site is a massive grave yard - the Zulus buried their 1,000 dead at the scene, leaving the 1,357 British to be buried a few months later when fresh forces arrived (a truly horrendous job I imagine). There are a dozen or so marked graves, presumably those with rich enough families, but the rest are just marked with plies of whitewashed stones.

Just 10 miles away is Rorke's Drift, the second part of the story. Desperate to see action, and group of 4000 Zulus who'd missed out at Insandhlwana, disobeyed orders, crossed into Natal on the same day, and attached the mission station at Rorke's Drift. The station was garrisoned by 100 members of the 24th Warwickshire, some of whom were hospitalised. For twelve hours they fought off the attack, earning eleven Victoria Crosses. The film wrongly depicts a welsh unit (there were actually 37 welsh men at Rorke's Drift), but it only became the Royal Brecon two years after the battle. Nor, disappointingly did they sing Men of Harlech to the withdrawing Zulus.

From Dundee we dropped back south to the Drakensberg along a gravel road. As we planed to head up the Sani Pass (notoriously steep and rough) into Lesotho the next day, I tried out the 4WD. For reasons best known to themselves Isuzu's now have electronic shift on the 4WD, which refused to engage the system. After running with the freewheeling hubs locked for 20km (as per the manual) we tried again – the 4WD light lit, quickly followed by the Check 4WD warning light. Another flick though the manual had the helpful advice, “take the car to a dealership”.

The guy at the Sani Pass lodge, who has ran trips into Lesotho for the pass 13 years, suggested that trying the pass in 2WD was risky – we may make it, but he'd never tried it himself. After dozen phone calls and 30 hours later, a bloke from Hertz turned up with a replacement car – a Toyota Hilux. This of course knocked a day off out time in Lesotho, with a consolation of allowing us time to do a short hike in the Drakensberg.

The Aliwal Shoal

I was beginning to feel deprived of diving, so after a very long drive north from The Wild Coast, we arrived at uMkmoaas. This small town, around 40km south of Durban, is where the dive boats launch for the Aliwal Shoal. Often quoted as being one of the top 10 dive sites in the world, it is known for the abundance of sharks, in particular “raggies” (ragged-tooth sharks).
















We set of early in the morning with Aliwal Diving Centre. The launch here is a slightly hair raising affair – they use small inflatable boats which speed out from the river across the surf with the divers hanging for dear life. Getting back in is equally fun as they head the boat straight at the beach and go as fast as possible to avoid having to drag it up too far.
















The cage diving near Cape Town was freezing, so we were somewhat concerned this would be an unpleasantly cold dive. However, as this is now the Indian Ocean, and we were wrapped up well in 5ml wetsuits, it was actually fine. The visibility was reasonably good, but the currents were strong and unpredictable, buffeting us around quite a lot and making the going pretty tiring. We did two dives, and whilst not the most exciting we have done recently, we did three see three raggies, a bull ray and several stone fish. The reef is also an interesting landscape, covering quite a large area, meaning that it doesn't matter if you drift around with the current, there is always something interesting to see.
















After our day's diving, we drove up to Durban for a two night stay to allow ourselves to get organised for the next stage of the trip. Despite all the horror stories the locals had told us in Cape Town and on the way up, about how unsafe Durban is, we felt pretty comfortable, albeit we used cabs to get around and didn't leave the security gated and electric wired hostel. The motto of our hostel, Tekweni Backpackers, was “Tekweni goes off”, so the second night we felt obliged to join the staff in an excess drinking session. Other than that, we spent much of our time trying to book a 4x4 hire car to take to Lesotho, and touring the city's malls. The latter activity was focused on buying sleeping bags, and other equipment, that we need for our overland tour from Jo'burg, and for Richard's proposed Kilimanjaro climb. We were duly conned into spending far too much money in the kit- tastic Cape Union Mart (probably equivalent to the UK's Blacks). All the gear and no idea...
















Having had our fill of shopping malls, we were picked up the next day at 9:30am to get our 4x4 hire car. However, we didn't manage to leave Durban until about 6pm, and in the dark... a whole story in itself which I will leave until the next entry.

The Wild Coast

After East London the N2 starts to curve inland as the coast becomes increasingly more rugged, making a straight road impossible. This area is considerably less developed than the rest of the south coast, with undulating hills scattered with traditional rural settlements. It is considerably poorer than the other areas of South Africa that we have visited so far, having previously been the Transkei homeland that was disenfranchised during apartheid. The majority of the people living in the area are Xhosa and live traditional rural life styles. The area is also known as being the birth place and home of Nelson Mandela (he was the son of a Xhosa chief).















After a couple of hours we turned off the N2, onto one of the only tarred roads that head back towards the coast. The hilly landscape is scattered with rondavels, which are the traditional brightly coloured, mud-brick, round houses. The journey is made more fun by having to swerve around the every increasing number of potholes whilst dodging the goats, cows, dogs and mules that appear from nowhere then insist on standing in the middle of the road.














After a bit of scramble up a gravel road covered in boulders, which probably did no good to our hire car, we finally arrived at the Coffee Shack, our accommodation in Coffee Bay. This has a picturesque setting on the beach, at the river mouth, and our room had the added bonus of being a rondavel. We whiled away the evening in the bar entertained by an African drumming session whilst trying to ignore the hostel's attempt to get the party going by having drinking rules in the bar, and the constant offers to sell drugs from the guys hanging around outside (this is a big dope growing area).













Next day we had signed up for a day's hiking and cliff jumping along the originally name “The Cliffs”, just north of Coffee Bay. We set off along the cliff path equipped with all our usual hiking gear as our local guides bounded off in front of us in bare feet. The walk has spectacular views of the incredibly hilly coast line and after a bit of scrambling it drops down into a cave which is rumoured to have been used as storage for weapons by the ANC. After some slightly hairy rock climbing and wave dodging, we got to the cliff jumping spot. Rich was game, so after watching the guide's expert jump, duly flung himself off a couple of times from dizzying heights into the churning sea.













After being dropped back at the Coffee Shack we rapidly set off again as we needed to make it to the rendezvous point for our next accommodation by the pick up time (as the last part of the drive can only be done in a 4x4) and before it got dark. We had to follow our hand written map very closely as there isn't the remotest hint of a sign post, few land marks and the locals mostly don't speak English. We did stop briefly to give a lift to a couple of local ladies in traditional long skirts. They didn't speak any English but seemed very entertained by us and that we had actually stopped for them. By some miracle we arrived at the pick up point, where we were bundled into a Land Cruiser with a couple of other guest. Another hour of incredibly bumpy driving in the dark we were relieved to arrive at the very remote Bulungula Lodge.













The travellers' haven of Bulungula is as much a community project as it is a lodge. It is a joint venture between the local community and the traveller who set it up. The rooms are again in rondavels with a chilled out bar and lounge area looking out over the river mouth and ocean. Much of the proceeds from the lodge go back into the community, with most of the vegetables being bought from the community farm, and the activities and tours being run by locals. You could easily spend weeks or months chilling out here. We, unfortunately, only stayed two nights, but still enjoyed traditional Xhosa dinners, the novelty of the paraffin lit rocket showers, learning a few words of Xhosa (although not sure we really mastered the clicks) and an african drumming lesson by the fire.













One of the highlights of our stay was a guided tour of the village. Despite only having 800 inhabitants, this takes a good few hours, as the houses are spread out over a number of hills. It does make you feel a little pathetic when you are puffing and panting up a hill, and an elderly lady passes you balancing a huge water container on her head. We also got to see the five boys staying in a “circumcision lodge” were they live prior to the ceremony, dressed only in a blanket with white covering their face and body.














We left Bulungula sadly, and set off on the bumpy road back to the N2. This was followed by a long drive through several very poor looking towns villages , including the village were Mandela lives near Mthatha, and finally leaving the Eastern Cape into Kwazulu-Natal.