Category Archives: Eastern Cape

Weekend in motion

Adventures, Airports, bus, Car, Eastern Cape,

The weekend started at 5am on a Thursday. It wasn’t a long-weekend, really, but Thursday was a public holiday, so one day off turned it into one. I woke up anxious. I’m always anxious before travel, worried I’m forget something, scared I won’t wake up on time, nervous bookings haven’t been made, even when I’ve sorted them out myself. None of it ever happens, but the anxiety wakes me early. By the time my alarm goes off, I’m wide awake.

6am. Dawn is breaking over Durban as we speed towards the city. It takes half an hour to reach the bus station. 40 minutes really. It’s the first time I’ve taken a bus from the Durban station, I realise. The first time I’ve been since I arrived by bus, just over a year ago, moving to KZN.

Check in, stow luggage, climb onto the bus. In a curious (and pleasant) twist, I find myself not squashed into an aisle seat next to an oversized mama with fried chicken or, worse, a someone with a baby, but right in front, looking out at a waking city from huge front windows.

We leave almost on time, just as the sun is rising. Through Durban, past landmarks and familiar places. Two of the craziest weeks of my life happened in this part of the world, one at the Expo Centre, one at the ICC. I’m thinking about those weeks as we pass the ICC, Wilson’s Warf, the restaurant where I first tasted sushi. I got a message that morning from an old friend from those crazy days. The memories make me smile.

From Durban, we head south, towards Port Shepstone. This stretch of road I know well from travelling down this way for work. I watch the familiar river-mouths, the clusters of huts, the little towns. The bus drives on and on, gobbling up the road. I’m sitting there with my headphones in, my feet up and my seat reclined. I feel happy. Happy about the coming weekend, sure, but mostly just happy in that moment. Sitting there on that bus, with my music, watching the world go by, I am happy.

Just north of Kokstad, we reach the snow. A heavy cold-front hit the country a few days before, causing snow in all 9 provinces, I read somewhere and bringing traffic between major cities to a standstill. Now, the sun is shining and it’s beautiful. The snowy hills go on for at least half an hour.

We travel south after a stop in Kokstad: Mthatha, Qunu, Dutywa, Butterworth. We stop and pick up passengers. At Butterworth, we get out and walk around. The wind is still snow-cold. Somewhere on the Kei cuttings, a police van passes us going in the other direction and flashes its lights, warning the bus driver about a traffic cop hiding around the corner catching anyone who might be speeding. On and on.

It is dark when we reach East London. The windows of the bus keep misting up. It is cold outside. I rush into the ticket office to pick up another ticket for Saturday but they warn me that those buses are running late. I’ll have to make another plan.

That evening, I have supper with my family in East London and then head home to Stutt for the night. I haven’t been home for ages. It’s great to be able to spend a night at home. Home with the family and a fire and the cats.

The next morning, back to East London. Saturday is out, so I’m travelling on Friday afternoon. We pick up the ticket at a Checkers and head back to the bus stop. Rushed goodbyes and I climb aboard another bus. This time it is a Translux bus. It looks newer than the Greyhound I took the previous day. The bus is almost empty. The stewardess tells me to sit where-ever I like. I find a window seat and settle down. Their sound system is, mercifully, broken. The trip will be peaceful.

Along the beachfront, the sea a perfect blue that day, then out of the city and away. We take the same road as the day before but in the opposite direction, towards King William’s Town. This time, my mind is drifting. I’m miles away as I stare out of the bus window at the country-side that is so familiar.

In King William’s town, the bus fills up, but I still have an empty seat beside me. I put on my music when a baby begins to cry. Children so often disturb the beautiful peace of travel.

I barely see the countryside passing as we head on towards Grahamstown. I know this road so well. I drift in and out, sometimes noticing where we are, sometimes not. The landmarks pass, the familiar curves and twists of the road. How many times have I travelled here? How many trips to and from varsity? How many since?

In Grahamstown, the first thing I notice is that Birch’s is still open. It’s a Friday afternoon. How often I have arrived at or left from this stop. Never while I was at University here. For some reason, I never took the bus then. Since graduating, nearly ten years ago, I have been back so many, many times and each time this is where I arrive, where I leave.

I gather my bags and set off up the familiar hill, familiar streets, familiar houses. It’s a long walk, but a peaceful one. I turn down a quiet street and pass a man walking his dogs. He looks like a professor.

I’m staying at a backpackers. I check in and settle down. The website said they served food. It turns out the website was wrong. It doesn’t matter. The deck outside looks out towards Makana’s Kop. It’s starting to turn towards dusk. I watch the fading Grahamstown sunset. This town used to be home. I wonder if it is anymore. I meet a Canadian who is here to figure out what he wants to study. He talks about his family. They’re coming over soon, to see this strange country that has bewitched their son. We talk of history and ideas and the contrasts between countries and of humour.

I plan to go to bed early but instead find myself reading and catching up on the ideas of my own academic world. The conversation with the Canadian has left me wanting to engage, to think. The others who are sharing the dorm eventually head out for the night and I put away the computer and head to sleep.

Saturday is an early start. I am the only person awake in the place except for a lady lazily cleaning the kitchen. She opens the door for me. I settle down on the veranda to wait for my lift. I’m travelling with two people I don’t know. I want to be ready when they arrive.

Bags packed we head off towards Nieu Bethesda. I’ve never been there before but I assume the driver knows the way. Strangely, it doesn’t bother me when he intimates that he’s not 100% sure. Someone these roads, this part of the country, feels familiar.

We take the Cradock road, driving along through miles and miles of countryside. My countryside. When I travelled to Kenya a few months ago and found myself nostalgically feeling like I’d come home, this was the home I was thinking of. At Cradock, take the road towards Graaff-Reinet, past the Mountain Zebra Park.

I’m jerked back from staring at the passing landscape by a sign for Colesburg. We’re on the wrong road. We turn back and find out way again. How did I know? Colesburg was the wrong way. I get strange looks as we head off again.

At the T-junction with the Graff-Reinet road, we see the first sign for Nieu Bethesda. A few km onto the final stretch and the road turns to gravel. I realise I’m not driving and it’s not fair to say, but gravel roads through this countryside in this part of the world feel peaceful. Perhaps it is because the gravel forces a slower pace. You notice more. We pass a beautiful antelope in the camp next to the road. There is snow on the mountain peaks.

Nieu Bethesda is a tiny, tiny town in a ring of beautiful mountains. It is well known for its more eccentric inhabitants, most notably Helen Martins who lost the plot after her father died and turned her ordinary, small-town home into a crazy place full of sculptures and stained glass and paintings, known as The Owl House.

We meet the groom at the pizza place. A place as small as this could only have a pizza restaurant because of the tourists. The pizza is good. We go back to the house where they’re staying, right near the micro-brewery where they will get married.

The rest of the day passes in a blur of laughter and getting dressed and prettiness. Everyone helps to get the place ready. The moment arrives. It is relaxed and beautiful and intimate. There is beer. There is crazy, intelligent, interesting conversation. There is cake.

It’s a lovely evening, followed by a gorgeous, crisp morning in Nieu Bethesda. The snow-topped mountains sit in the bright sun. The trees look wintery and beautiful. The houses are the settler houses I love, all perfectly maintained and whitewashed. We have breakfast at a place called The Karoo Lamb. A few of us take the opportunity to visit the Owl House. Nieu Bethesda is not what I expected but it is beautiful. Definitely worth a visit.

By 11am, we’re back on the road. On and on, past the Mountain Zebra Park, past Cradock, past Bedford. We are driving into heavy, dark clouds. It seems appropriate. I feel such heartache at leaving the Eastern Cape.

In Grahamstown, I stop at one of my favourite restaurants for a quick late lunch before heading to the shuttle and out of town. On and on. The window of the shuttle bus is broken. Icy-cold air howls through the vehicle.

It is a relief to get to PE. I take the usual quick lap around the PE airports, remembering all the times I’ve been here and, more often than seems fair, been stuck here. Through security and, unsurprisingly, the flight is delayed. Luckily, the delay is short and soon we are making our way towards the plane.

We land in Durban after 9pm on a Sunday night. The driver of yet another shuttle is there to pick me up. Just another hour and I’m home. I’m tired but happy. I get caught up watching the Olympics closing ceremony.

Walking home from work the next day, I realise what this feeling is: I feel peaceful. I have no doubt, in fact I am certain, that it will not last, but just for a while, just for now, for a change, I do not feel restless.

Snapshot: Rural Eastern Cape

Eastern Cape, rural areas

Drive out of King, towards Peddie, on the road I know so well. The road I used to travel to and from University every holiday for those years. And so often since. The road to Cape Town. The road to Grahamstown.The road home.

Pass the turn off to the Steve Biko Garden of Remembrance and wonder once again whose idea it was and who is supposed to maintain it. Pass the garage where the bus stops. Under the railway bridge and on, to the open road.

It’s late summer and everything is green. The grass is long, ready for winter. The thorn trees are rich, dark, close to the ground. It’s been a good summer.

Past houses and open veld, a graveyard near the road. Past men working to build a fence around a patch of ground.

Around a bend and there, a small settlement beside the national road. Beside a dam. Behind a fence. I can’t remember it clearly from the early days. I think it was smaller. Just one or two huts visible from the road. Now it is more built up. Houses with gardens. Fields. A sign on the main road – turn-off to a Zimbaba. A real place with a real name on an official name-board. How much of a difference does that make?

We turn off, across the grid, onto the dirt road. A couple of hundred metres on, the road T-junctions at a medium-sized dam. The water is calm and blue on a beautiful, sunny day. Rippling across the day. Gum trees line the other side. They’re invader-trees and are technically no longer welcome in SA but they’re still beautiful beside the dam.

The dirt road is not bad, especially considering the recent rains. We pass some rugby fields. A few soccer posts lie, stricken, overturned, obviously unused, but the rugby field is newly mowed and freshly marked. This part of the world is rugby country.

Turn right after the sports fields and follow a poorly-graded road. Just as we leave the first settlement, three horses are grazing in a paddock not far from the road. They look rich and well-kept after the good season of rain and grass. All the animals look healthy and well.

Along the road, driving slowly on the gravel, we pass sheep and goats. A lamb looks back at me before its mother hurries it over a small rise beside a pool of water. We stop while three donkeys take a leisurely (and reluctant) stroll from the middle of the road. One is a young one, with a shaggy coat in many colours and mournful, watching eyes.

At the village, we pass the high school. It looks well-kept – fresh white paint on the walls, a row of new toilets. Someone must have run a school garden project here once but the garden has gone to grass and weeds. The fence around the school is all intact and shiny and the gates are closed and locked during the school morning. A few younger children watch the car pass from the verandas of their homes.

Brick homes, often with several buildings on each property. And glass windows. Such a contrast to the stark desperation of urban poverty. Poverty here is more subtle, less spoken of, carefully hidden away from the prying eyes of a small community. No less deadly. We pass a house with a 4×4 in the driveway. I wonder who lives there.

Most houses have animals of some sort. A sheep or two grazing in the garden. Some chickens wandering the yard. A goat in the vegetable patch. Cattle. Donkeys. Pigs. There is something so real, so normal about it. My heart sings just a little. This is how the world should look.

Beyond the houses and gardens, the chicken hoks and goat-herds with their animals, past the kraals enclosed with poker-red flowering aloes and the full farm dams, the yellow-green hills of the Eastern Cape roll away into the distance and a thunderstorm begins to gather on the horizon.

Road-tripping: Stutt/Grahamstown to Oudtshoorn

Adventures, Car, Eastern Cape,

Waking up at 4:15 to catch a bus. The bus leaves just after 5. You need to be there 30 minutes before. A little extra time to get ready. My phone blinks at me as I open my eyes. An sms. “We regret to inform you…”. The bus is late. I lie there. Not enough time to go back to sleep. Too early to be awake. A cup of coffee. An energy drink.

The bus eventually leaves at 6:10am. Finally on the move, on the go. I sit in my little window seat. Early morning light splashes golden across the green, late-summer veld. The forests between Stutt and King William’s Town. The rolling hills between King and Peddie. The game farms between Peddie and Grahamstown.

Grahamstown morning. I wander up to Dulce’s and order a coffee. I have a few hours to kill in Grahamstown – a few hours of work to put in. I sit at my table and drink coffee and order breakfast and work, while the sun from the window makes its slow migration across the table-top.

Strange people in come in for breakfast. The curt, abrupt businessman harrying the waitress, rushing through his food, hurrying to get on with his day. The older, less wealthy man who argues with the waitress because they’re increased the prices and he has just enough for breakfast with a sausage and a coffee. The regular who knows the staff and order the same thing every time. The fussy woman who wants to swap out half the ingredients in the meal and then spends breakfast on her phone, loudly planning a busy social life.

I answer calls, too, wishing fervently that today wasn’t the day people decided to contact me after weeks of not calling. I tire of working. Time to take a break.

The noise of singing and bustle lures me out into the road. I have shopping to do anyway. Outside, a little further down the road, a group of 50 or so people sing and dance outside the High Court. A political protest. I am struck, amused, by the passing comment of a waiter as I am leaving the coffee shop. He sighs, clicks his tongue and says dismissively, “ANC again”.

Shopping done and I move to another coffee shop. More calls, more work. This is one of my favourite places in Grahamstown. I used to stop her often when I was a student.

A little later in the day, we set off: road-tripping. From here we will drive clear across the country to Stellenbosch. Two people in a small car filled with luggage and things and CD after CD of random music. We stop occasionally. Nanaga to pick up a late lunch, Kareedo to buy airtime.

We watch the landscape. We both like to travel, both notice the land. We drive past game farms, past sheep and mountains of solid rock, through fruit and farming valleys. We stop and buy a bag of mostly not-rotten – although Richard discovers later that they taste funny – apples from a man with at least one arm and several teeth missing, who cannot speak English but is extremely determined.

Beyond Joubertina, Misgund and Kareel, the cloud is low and it is starting to get a little dusk-dim and misty. In the dim light, the windows of cottages glow orange. The look safe and solid and warm in the growing darkness. Richard explains that our eyes switch from seeing colour to seeing contrast at night. I didn’t know that. We talk about blue mountains as silhouettes. Earlier. Earlier, also, light through clouds on majestic mountains like driving through an inspirational poster.

The conversation moves back and forth. The kind of conversation that soars and plunges and drifts and meanders. We reach no conclusions but share and tease and turn over ideas. Back and forth.

At some point we hit something that jumps up from the road in front of the car. I think it’s a frog. Richard thinks it is brown and furry. Later we realise that we have, someone, at some point, lost a front number-plate.

It is dark by the time we arrive in Oudsthoorn. Dark and beautiful. The streets are almost deserted. The buildings stand in their old-age glory. With the help of cell-phone internet, we local and head for Church Street and the backpackers. We check in and then head out for something to eat. The car guard is surreally friendly and polite and offers the following days weather predictions. Dinner is great – Karoo Ostrich. We return to the backpackers to work and, finally, to sleep.