A week on the South African coast

This posting gives a description of some of what we have experienced and thought about in South Africa, followed by a rather large number (35) of photos from our even larger collection of them. We hope this sequence means that people with slow internet connections can read through the text while the images are still downloading. Please let us know if that is not working for you, and we can try to improve this blog's design accordingly.

After a series of very happy (and definitely a bit sad) send-offs with friends and family in Melbourne, Daylesford, and Sydney, Becky and I set off from Sydney on Monday 6 December 2004, flying Qantas flight 63 to Johannesburg. Our plane was very late leaving Sydney, then forced to wait at Durban because of storm weather in Jo'burg, then we thought we were about to get mugged in between the international and domestic terminals at the Jo'burg airport, but we managed to catch the last connection to Cape Town that night. At 0700 the next morning we were booked on an Intercape bus to Plettenberg Bay, so this was a relief.

The bus ride was amazing in several senses. First is what you see on the outside. The highways are long, people drive hard there. But I was more struck by the number of pedestrians walking along the roadside, even of the freeways. Slow drivers use the same shoulder to pull over, to let tailgaterss pass them, so it looks dangerous to say the least. And both of us were even more struck by the number and the size of the squatter camps all along the way. Huge suburbs consisting of single-room shacks, made of cheap planks nailed together. Most of them are rooved only with plastic tarpaulins weighed down by rocks, so you can imagine how they get when the winter winds and rains come through. While we were in the country, one of these suburbs got a fire in it and left over 4'000 people homeless. Meanwhile the countryside is so dramatic, the coast is so wild, the mountains are so sheer and bald, that it is hard even to focus on the terrifying poverty for too long.

Also amazing was the inside of the bus. In many ways, it felt like I remember tour buses on Queensland's Sunshine Coast of the 1980s. The trip begins with a prayer for safe passage and ends with thanks to God. KFM, your Cape Radio Station, played a very idiosyncratic mix of latest memories greatest hits. A low cost of labour, combined perhaps with security concerns, means four staff accompany the driver on the trip. When the bus breaks down (as both buses we caught did), some of these crew come into their own as technicians. Meanwhile, the hostesses are there to deliver a complimentary cup of tea every two hours. They carry a tray of 20 styrofoam cups of tea and coffee, no lids, up and down the aisle while the bus hurtles, bumps, swerves, and shudders along -- and they seriously do not spill a single drop (unlike a certain passenger, who got a bit complacent and put his cup down on his tray-table). Becky asked whether they receive any training in this circus-quality task. They do not.

And then, there is the amazing experience of reading a newspaper on your first morning in a new country. John Hansen later teaches us that the Eastern Cape Herald of Port Elizabeth is a better paper, and we find that the Cape Town Argus is pretty good as well, but on this bus trip we are reading the Cape Times of Cape Town. Lead story is a young hippopotamus called Hugo, who is in grave danger of death as he has run away from his wildlife park (chased off by a stronger but impotent older male called Brutus). Over the next four days, three lead stories in the Cape Times are dedicated to Hugo, who is eventually rescued from his tenuous vagrancy by a dedicate team of humane trappers.

Meanwhile, on pages 2, 3, and so on, 1.1 million South African children lost their parents to AIDS last year. There is an extremely high incidence of sexual assault against children aged under 5. And tourists seem to be dropping like flies as muggings turn nasty. Outside the bus windows, there is razor wire verywhere. Entire suburbs hire armed guards to supplement the police force.
If I may paraphrase the things that South Africans have said to us this last week or so, this is a country facing the enormous challenge of making it through, of turning a revolution (everyone we spoke to seemed happy to use that word) into a hopeful future. If the next 10 years can turn around theft and muggings, sexual violence, the HIV infection rate, the nationwide housing crisis, 50% unemployment in the squatter camps -- not to mention road safety -- then the country's big decisions of 10 years ago will be locked away as unmitigated successes. Against that rosy prospect, there is a widespread acknowledgement (and gratitude) that the country has not turned towards civil war, that the hatred between ethnic communities seems to have diminished slightly, rather than blown out of control.

Now to Plettenberg Bay. This town reminded us both of Anglesea or Lorne (indeed, the whole Eastern Cape reminded us of the Great Ocean Road and surrounds), with the exception that there is a squatter camp of 30'000 former Transkei residents right on the outskirts. The feeling as you walk around the town is fine, it is a beautiful town, but household security has obviously become a huge issue for residents and tourists. So perhaps imagine a Lorne or an Anglesea with a huge squatter camp, and razor wire protecting most of the houses.

In Plet we stayed with John and Joy Hansen. John's father Otto was the brother of my great-grandmother Anna Lodewycks (nee Hansen). Otto was an engineer as well as an officer in the South African army. He was a tunneller on the western front in WWI, then an adviser to Wavell in the north African campaign during WWII. He and his family built a farm in the hills east of Plet, where John took us to see his grave near the old homestead, and the remains of the paddocks and buildings.

The hospitality of South Africans is generally superb, but we suspect John and Joy are copmpeting for the national title. They drove us around everywhere, and it became quite difficult to pay for anything in their company! Swimming and surfing are very good there, and we took a day to walk around the Robberg Peninsula, a nature reserve on the edge of the town (see numerous pictures below). While in Plet, we also met Dennis (John's brother) and Barbara Hansen, as well as their daughter Ingrid and her family Howard (husband), Jamie, and Steven (12yo twins, I think, and very nice 3rd cousins at any rate). Dennis and Barbara Hansen live in the same retirement village -- one is tempted to call it a resort -- as John and Joy, and Dennis does the best BBQ pork chops you will ever taste. The boerwors was unbelievable, spiced long curly sausages, packages of deliciousness.

On 10 December, we were booked on the 0945 bus back to Cape Town. It was a bit late, as expected. The bus driver hopped off and told us that we had to call a number in Cape Town urgently, before we could board. It was Paul Hansen, who had received news 2nd-hand that Becky's grandfather Keith had died in Deniliquin. You will understand that it was a rather poignant 8 hours down the road. Becky rang her family when we stopped at Mosselbaai (Mussel Bay), and we discussed the chances of getting travel insurance to send us back to New South Wales for the funeral, but that proved impossible to arrange. Poor old Becky really wanted to be back for her family but not to be.

Paul and Helen Hansen work in tourism, and they very kindly arranged a nice inexpensive hotel for us to stay in the suburb of Seapoint, next to the Victoria & Albert Waterfront (a kind of nautically themed spivvy shopping/eating/drinking/entertainment precinct a la Darling Harbour, Fremantle, or the Hobart docks). From here we walked around the inner city every day, beginning with a very helpful and entertaining walking tour led by a Jewish woman called Rheina, who really adores her home city. Many many things to say about Cape Town, but there is no way to explain how unbelievably and dramatically beautiful it is. Perhaps like a real world Minas Tirith, but then so different as well. Table Mountain, the coastline, and the history of the city's development constantly took our breaths away. Almost everywhere you go, you are within view of all three things, so that it becomes quite hard to work out how the various suburbs connect to each other, and you need to keep a compass in your head.

As the photographs will show, we took a boat out to Robben Island and looked around the old prison. The prison closed in 1994. Tour guides there are former political prisoners. Our guide, Len, had been betrayed by a comrade in Mkonto Wesiswe while they were running sabotage raids against state infrastructure in 1984. The story of the prison, which of course is partly his biography, was staggeringly callous and cruel. An unimaginable state of affairs. And then it all ended so quickly, almost as if the end was arbitrary rather than the despotism. From Robben Island, in particular, the view of Cape Town is acheingly beautiful.

On our final morning, Paul very kindly drove us around the southern end of Cape Town in his Land Cruiser, including taking us out to the Cape of Good Hope proper. This wild rocky outcrop has seen many shipwrecks, and we thought we might be watching another one as we drove along the coast road -- a madly overloaded fishing boat struggling to haul in its nets in a very placid sea. But no sinky sinky, fortunately. Our imaginations were just running away with us. Paul's sons are Thomas (5) and Gabriel (2). They sing the Xhosa verses of their national anthem very sweetly and with much feeling at only the slightest provocation. Adele Clark may be interested to know that Thomas has a similar smile to hers. Paul also took us to met his wife, Helen, at home. We were very grateful to them both for their help, both setting us up in a hotel and then showing us the spectacular coastal fringe of their city. Paul mentioned that he is likely to visit Australia in March 2006: he has a standing invitation to come and see Wapengo then, and he is keen to catch up with Roland again -- preferably to meet some of his wines too!

Finally, we met Tony Hansen for lunch -- John and Joy's youngest son. He reminded us both very much of both his parents: enthusiastic, thoughtful, and genuine. Over the course of lunch we seemed to discuss almost everything that was interesting to all of us. Which is quite a lot in just over an hour. And then it was time to go, to leave the land of old-fashioned service stations, of gun collection points in the airport terminals, and of more seals than you can possibly imagine ...

We are in London now, about to head to Iceland tonight (see itinerary in the first posting below). It is grey, greasy, damp, and dark. But it is a bit less hard-edged, too. And we are with Becky's cousin Nicole and her husband Morgan, who are always good company. We had a gorgeous dinner last night in honour of chunulkah and of just being family together in another part of the world. This post has gone long enough. We are thinking of each of you often, and hope to see you again before long.

Love,

Tomnbecky.

Posted by Tom in London (with corrections by Becky)