By rbhargava
Continuing on from my last post… after a memorable night in Chintsa, the six of us left for Coffee Bay – much further up the East coast of the country. The several hour-long drive was possibly one of the most memorable as we left the “developed” part of South Africa and entered into the Transkei, which was a Xhosa homeland during the apartheid era – and thus was left out and neglected from the western development of much of the rest of the country. It was an interesting scene to cross from one side to the other – and we were pleasantly surprised by the beauty of the Transkei and the circular huts that were seen across the landscape as far as the eye could see. During our drive, we stopped in a town to eat lunch and buy groceries, and found ourselves the only non-black people in the entire town. It was an experience like no other – as for the first time – all of us really felt out of place and in the minority.
Moving on, after a flat tire in Qunu (Nelson Mandela’s hometown) and a mostly cloudy day on the road – we arrived in the evening in Coffee Bay at the Coffee Shack backpackers. The next day we went on a beautiful hike along the coast to the underwhelming “Hole in the Wall” – which is a small island just off the coast with a hole in it in which water crashes through. Although our 3 hour hike to the Hole in the Wall was not the most exhausting, we decided that the overcast weather was a little too much and we were able to ride on the back of a pick-up truck back to our backpackers. That evening was a full moon, and the backpackers arranged a nice little party for all the backpackers there. Talking to people at backpackers, one will find the most interesting people – and I was treated with great conversations with a French man traveling around the world for 2 years, a British consultant working in Joburg, Danish high school graduates traveling before university, and many more people.
After Coffee Bay, we drove almost all day to get to Port Shepstone, a town 2 hours south of Durban. Here, we stayed a the Spot Backpackers where the Britisch couple managing the hostel told us about how they traveled across the world on motorcycle. Starting in the UK, they had motorbiked all the way down to South Africa, shipped their bikes to Southeast Asia, biked there, then did the same in Australia and South America. Fascinating!
The next day we all woke up for the sunrise at 5am – but were greeted with a cloudy horizon on the beach. Nonetheless, the sunrise was beautiful and it was quite the treat to be able to walk out of our backpackers directly onto the beach to watch it. Later on we went to the nearby Oribi gorge where three of us went zip-lining across the gorge on 15 or so different lines. It was quite the experience and we were lucky enough that the weather kept sunny the whole day. In the afternoon we enjoyed the beach and went kayaking up a stream near the beach. As another fun day came to an end, we prepared to head to Durban the next day – our last stop on the trip before all of us would go on our different ways.