Tag Archives: road-tripping

The open road: Oudtshoorn to Stellenbosch

Adventures, Car, South Africa, , ,

Friday morning. I wake up in Oudtshoorn, in the dorm at the backpackers. Other people stayed here last night. Some people won’t stay in a dorm because they’re scared of the others who might be checked in there too. Sure, they’re sometimes annoying but travel requires a little bit of faith. Nothing bad happens. This morning, everyone is still asleep, except one of the strangers who sits outside with his phone, looking a little dazed. I shower and find some coffee and settle at a table in the garden. The Backpackers’ cat comes over and makes friends.

We head out at about 10am. From Oudtshoorn’s main road take a right and head out towards Calitzdorp. The open road. Not far out of town, we spot a farm stall and stop for breakfast. In front is a large, painted windmill. There are ducks and chickens and geese and a turkey out back. The décor is primary-colours rustic – wooden tables and chairs and benches all painted bright colours – with ostrich eggs and pumpkins adding an agricultural feel. We find a table, in the morning sun, looking out from the veranda across the road, across a wide open valley-plain towards spectacular mountains. Breakfast is delicious. Everything is peaceful. There is a dog.

From Oudtshoorn/Calitzdorp, the R62 winds through sleepy, farming towns, tourist hotspots and spectacular mountains. Often and often, beside the road, little, square farm-labourers’ huts with wide chimney and square windows and, just occasionally, an old man outside smoking a pipe to throw up the tension of poverty and picturesqueness. Fruit trees and vineyards are just beginning to change to their autumn clothes. The vegetation, the colours, the people are beautiful, but it is mountains that dominate the scenery.

Through Ladismith, Barrydale, Montagu, Ashton, Robertson – town after town, nestled in these beautiful, majestic, spectacular folded mountains. Sometimes the rock layers that should be flat, horizontal, are twisted into folds, u-shapes, strange diagonals. It is fascinating to watch as we pass by.

We stop at Montagu. The ‘farmstall’ looks pretty fancy. There is a kiddies play area and an art workshop. People sit outside at wooden tables with umbrellas and order sophisticated menus and wines. Trees and vines sweep between the white-washed buildings. An outside room with wooden doors flung wide open sells hand-made wooden furniture with a sign, “We deliver to Cape Town for R350”. When we eventually find the person in charge, between the fancy cheeses and the sun-dried tomato mustard, he admits that painting ‘padstal’ on the sign may have been a mistake. He sells us a loaf of home-made bread and we hit the road again.

Between Montagu and Ashton, there is a place where the road passes through an arch of rock. On both sides, it is whittled away, leaving clear space. But the mountain still reaches down to the road, just here, and someone, somewhen, has hollowed out an arch for the road to pass through.

It’s Friday afternoon and the work/travel balance tilts. We need internet. Luckly, I know that there is a mall in Worcester. I need traffic signs to find it, partly, in my defence, thanks to roadworks upsetting all sense of direction in the town. Richard thinks it is strange that I know about the Mall in Worcester. How many scattered towns in South Africa are as familiar to me after years of work-related travelling?

From Worcester, through the tunnel and on past Paarl. We are close now. At the end of the N1 that feels familiar to me. I still find it strange to hear the traffic reports on the radio talking about the N1 in Joburg. For me, the N1 is always the Northern suburbs of Cape Town and on to Paarl and Worcester.

We turn off towards Stellenbosch and another home. iKhaya Backpackers is central and convenient. I’ve never stayed there before but I’m happy to be trying it. We check in amid dismay at the World Cup cricket quarter-final South Africa is busy losing. The bubble of travel slowly fades and the rest of the world comes back into focus.

We put down our bags. Richard goes to nap. I return to the reception/bar area to watch the last of the cricket, enjoying the solidarity, the South Africanness of the group. Rugby jocks – white, black, coloured, the stereotype that survived the end of apartheid by becoming multi-racial – are gathered around the bar. They’re the life of the party – friendly, entertaining, engaging. They leave no-one out, isolate no-one intentionally. They seem genuinely nice guys. At a table, a weedy, older man in a worn business suit sits and smokes and sips his whiskey. Eventually a more serious looking, white-haired gentleman joins him and they share small-town gossip – marriages, divorces, affairs, bankruptcies – in between critical commentary on the cricket. Two black guys sit, silently, around a low table at the back of the room. They are aware of all the banter, laugh at the jokes of the jocks, but they don’t engage. They’re seem to watch, to wait, to listen, at the edges of the crowd, welcome but never fully entering into the spirit. Two foreign girls, pretty girls with what sounds like German accents, sit on the couches facing onto the road. They are not interested in the cricket. One of the guys from the bar goes over and sits with them, flirting and complimenting and helping them to plan their travels. A middle-aged coloured lady pops in every 5 minutes or so and laments, loudly, the failing performance of South Africa’s batsman.

Later, cricket lost and TV turned firmly to Rugby, I am chatting to a couple of guys at the bar when Richard comes down-stairs. I like the set-up of this backpackers – it is better suited than most to give people the option of being sociable or being alone. We head off to Cape Town for the evening, to run some errands and see some people. It is after midnight by the time we get to bed, exhausted but, at least for me, happy.

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.