Category Archives: Adventures

Chasing Waterfalls

Adventures, Friends, KZN, , ,

I’ve spent so much time living and travelling alone in the past few years that it seems odd to share a place with another person. A new place. Places that anchor me, like Grahamstown and Stutt, Stellenbosch and the Southern Suburbs of Cape Town, are shared places. In some ways that is what makes them so precious. But new places are alone. This past weekend I had the opportunity to share a new place with an old friend. It was lovely.

After spending Friday evening catching up – we haven’t seen each other for months – we set off on Saturday morning to do something tourist-y. We’d done some research. Well, we’d taken a quick look at the tourism websites on KZN. For the record, the KZN tourism websites suck. But a waterfall north of Howick did catch our attention.

GPS all set up, we headed off. The road was familiar. The first part at least is the road I’ve taken numerous times when headed out to visit projects near Ixopo. Three months in KZN and the sum total of the exploration I’ve done so far is traveling for work. It was quite nice to have an opportunity to travel for a different reason.

After a while, and several GPS mis-directions later, we followed the signs directing us to “Falls”. We stopped in Howick, not two blocks from a shopping centre (including Woolworths Food – which is only a thing if you spent years in the much larger Grahamstown lamenting the lack of one). The directions to the falls had ended here, but we didn’t see any falls, so we were searching for an information centre. Across the road was the Howick Falls Hotel, with a row of little shops on the ground floor – curios, healthy lifestyle, a bookshop. We wandered through the main, larger curio shop. Curio shops in South Africa make me a little sad because they’re so generic. As commercialised and kitsch as tourist money-traps can be, at least they should be unique. There is something that feels a little like cheating about selling “I love Cape Town” t-shirts in KZN.

Beyond the generic curio shop was the equally generic tea garden/restaurant of the type that will rip you off for toasted cheese or slightly stale cake. We didn’t stop to try it but moved on to the next building. This turned out to be the museum. Outside the front entrance, on the path, lay a lazy, old dog. The glass doors were dark. The museum looked gloomy. We nervously pushed open the door. Just inside, to the left of the door, an old lady sat at a table looking through some papers. She fitted the part. She and her dog were obviously fixtures, a firm part of the museum experience. When she spoke, her voice was crotchety and her accent recalled a different time.

Her directions took us further along the road past the musuem. We stopped at the street stalls and picked up a few beaded animals and trinkets. And there, across the road, were the Howick Falls. It’s strange to have falls in town. Quite beautiful, and fascinating to see the people doing their laundry in the pool at the top of the falls. Women, children, laughing voices. The viewing area was crowded. Plenty of other people had also come to see these falls. We wander for a bit, looking at the different restaurants and businesses.

Back in the car, we headed off in the direction of what we thought would be the Karkloof Falls – the falls we were originally looking for. We realised as we were leaving town that we had never actually found the info centre and our GPS didn’t seem to know where we were going. We followed the road for a while anyway, not sure if we were heading in the right direction, until we were distracted by signs to a Mandela Monument. As we drove, we almost missed a sign for Belgian Chocolates. Mmmm… Belgian Chocolates… We drove on to the monument, which turned out to be a brick wall, with plaque, on the side of the road and then returned to the wonder of the Belgian Chocolates. Shops like that are bad for me, especially if I have money on me. The variety was impressive for a little shop on a country road. Everything looked good. I was tempted to gifts for family and friends, until I remembered that I won’t see most of them for months and months. In the end, we each bought on small selection and went away before we couldn’t restrain ourselves any longer. I am slowly, ever so slowly, working my way through a beautiful little box of cherry chocolate delights.

Chocolates stowed in car boot, we went back to Howick and found the right road – the road to Karkloof. The road had no signs for the falls, however. We kept wondering if we were on the right track. And then, with no warning, a small, unobtrusive sign on the right directed us off the main road. We saw it just in time and turned into the plantation.

The road was winding and long and not in the best condition. It was still manageable, after recent rains, in a small rental car, though. A while along the road sat a collection of houses and some sheep. Closest to the road, the ruins of a house with no roof and a sign warning visitors not to get to close to the edge of the falls. The Karkloof Falls are rumoured to have taken the lives of more than 30 people.

Further along the winding road and eventually we arrived. The falls are magnificent. The recent rains probably made them even more impressive. The water drops 105m or more. It crashes and cascades down the rock face, leaping and splashing and thundering. It sounds like a cross between a rushing river and a plane taking off. It is so beautiful and a little awe-inspiring. We walked down and crossed the little stream that flows past the picnic area and shoots out across the gorge, falling in a single stream to meet the rushing, swirling waters below. Through the picnic area and onto the path between the pines. The smell of pines always makes me think of Cape Town and feel a little nostalgic.

Sadly, there was no other spot from which we could see the falls clearly. I’d been hoping to find a place to look down from above, but the brush was too thick. Perhaps if the falls were in a more built up area but here in the middle of a plantation, there is no-one to cut back the brush and clear more viewpoints for. The viewpoints that do exist, and the picnic area and facilities are all well maintained. It would be a lovely place to spend a whole day.

After a while we moved on. We’d headed out that morning, on a whim, to find a waterfall and ended up finding two, the tourist attraction Howick Falls, with all the restaurants and curios a visitor could want and the majestic Karkloof Falls, hidden away in a beautiful, deserted clearing in the middle of a plantation forest. Karkloof is my favourite of the two – a hidden gem well worth the dirt road and the less than ideal directions. A precious moment of thundering water, blue sky, a sparkling stream far below and forest clinging to the edges of a far-away gorge. In the distance a bird floated on the air and the breeze rusted the far-away trees.

Fest in retrospect

Adventures, Arts, South Africa

This blog has been sadly neglected lately. This is a piece I started writing on a plane on the third of July and only got back to now. So, my impressions of this year’s National Arts Festival… late, but still…

…

The sunset sky is fading as we leave Grahamstown. After a while, the darkness begins to close in. To the east, the sky is still alight. The lighter blue stretches down towards the horizon, fading to sunset colours. Shreds of grey cloud are scattered across the world’s edge against a background of sky the colours of a ripe peach. In the few moments before it fades, it is beautiful.

The sky grows darker. Above, the clear dark blue is jewelled with stars. It’s not clear enough to see the Milky Way here, as it has been at the beach house these past few days, but still there are too many stars to count. Around the horizon, lighter blue recalls the recent sunset.

We come over a rise and the city of Port Elizabeth stretches before up, a front of glaring electric lights creeping closer and closer as we move. The cloud above reflects the light, the jagged storm front waits like some ghastly, orange glowing beast crouching over the city. Waiting, dark and stormy.

The last few days have been amazing. A wonderful blur of family, friends and something approaching what an overdose of culture would look like if I believed for a moment that it was possible to overdose on the theatrical arts. I am sad to be leaving so soon. The festival will continue for another week – a full 11 days of AMAZ!ING (just like it says on the box).

It is difficult to capture a single top moment or best show. Over a hurried lunch one day, we started a game of trying to come up with a single-word review of each show. Some are easy. ‘Evocative’ is such an obvious explanation of Anatomy of Weather, a physical theatre/contemporary dance piece that has won an Ovation Award since I saw the show. Of course, it does not capture the whole show but it is the strongest description, for me, of the emotional experience of the show. After a while, the game ran dry. Some shows are difficult to describe in one word. Some need a thesaurus and a dictionary. “What is the word for when the performer has the whole audience in the palm of his hands throughout the show?” Dirt, an amazing one-act play that has the audience so sad over the plight of an imaginary dog that some people seem almost in tears. And we’d have to invent a whole new word to describe Raiders!

I feel as if I have to capture the shows, capture the experiences now before they float away, become intangible. Become mixed with the ordinariness of real life. Sie Weiss Alles on Thursday was great. I’ve seen both actors before and love their work. This is a little different. Different even from the write-up in the programme. I found the lightness an excellent spotlight on the realities of the situation.

Lightness. Perhaps I can choose a favourite show. 3Acts of Love. Richard Antrobus is fast becoming my favourite South African performer (although it remains a hotly contested position). His physical theatre has a way of shutting down the brain in order to reach out to the senses directly and sweep you away in a visual fantasy that is at the same time moving, simple and intensely captivating. But without trying to alarm or ambush the brain. It is gentle and beautiful; pleasure and beauty as a medium of communication. You let go, forget the world and enjoy it. And then you’re walking out and the messages of the movement, the words, the juxtaposition, shows up in your conscious brain with no effort at all. The senses absorb and absorb and deliver the memory of the experience without waiting for the analytic mind to catch up.

And laughter. So many shows forget that comedy and tragedy are two sides of the same coin (or masks, as the case may be). I saw some stand up this year, of course. My younger sister is a huge comedy fan and has a knack for picking the best of a good bunch. We saw Rob van Vuuren (of course). I enjoy his ‘real theatre’ more than TMAS. His stand-up is funny and this year felt a lot more mature than the last show of his that I saw. More personal.

I was pleasantly surprised, too, by the Durban Comedy Invasion. Amusingly, at least to me, they seemed pleasantly surprised by an audience who could understand jokes requiring slightly more knowledge of the world, politics and grammar. Perhaps it was a gimmick but it worked for this crowd.

I also really enjoyed Ryan Dittman’s one-man show Stranger things have happened. I’m particularly fond of the kind of one-man show that has one performer but 10 or so characters. I like the technical skill and the funny people.

…

So much has happened in the past two weeks that I’m almost struggling to remember what else. Almost. The ballet was lovely – my first Swan Lake. I was particularly pleased to see some of the male dancers showing real style and elegance. Cape Town City Ballet has been working hard to develop young male dancers in the past few years and it’s great to see it working.

Flicker was another great physical piece. A beautiful exploration of relationship and time. Mouche was still beautiful, although more aggressive than the previous time we saw it.

My last day was a richness of music, with the Grahamstown Sextet and the always-fantastic Gala Concert conducted by Richard Cock. A wonder end to a weekend.

All in all, a great festival. This year was a short weekend for me but I’m planning to work very hard to make sure that the next one is a full, long immersion in the things that make my brain tingle and leave me smiling for weeks. Thanks to all the performers and organisers for making it amazing and my wonderful friends and, particularly, family for the joy of sharing something as special as Fest.

Backpackers fail: Banana Backpackers, Durban

Adventures, bus, KZN, ,

South Africa has some excellent backpacker spots, in Cape Town and Joburg and I’m sure in Durban. Banana Backpackers is not one of them.

My bus was nearly 2 hours late leaving East London. The trip was mostly uneventful except for that minor incident when some muppet on the side of the road threw a glass bottle at the bus managing, by some miracle to hit and subsequently shatter the right-side front window. No-one was sitting in those seats (I was a whole row back), so no harm done but seriously, our cricket team should think about drafting in the person somewhere between Kokstad and Port Shepstone who can hit a moving bus at 20 metres with a projectile as unpredictable as a coke bottle!

Other than that, uneventful, if particularly pretty. As a result, it was pushing 11 by the time I arrived at the Backpackers. At this point, things got weirder. The cab dropped me off on a city street, beside a run-down building. The front door was open and the security guard directed me up the creaking stairs. On the first floor, the rickety-looking black gate was opened by two girls at reception. Over the thumping, distorting noise of music in the adjacent bar area, I was told to follow them to the dorm. I dragged my suitcase past the central courtyard area, where people were braai-ing and drinking.

Just off the central courtyard, in a dark hall, the reception person knocked on and then just pushed open an orange door. The 10-bed door looked pretty standard – white linen, pillow and thin duvet on each bed, bunks that look like they’ve seen better days. I was sharing with one other person, who was already asleep. I put down my bags and returned to reception to check and pay. The girls at reception could hardly hear me over the music. I went out onto the balcony – hunching against the wall to avoid the rain – in search of somewhere I could hear myself think. Pretty soon, I gave up and headed to bed.

Which meant braving the bathrooms. They’re not the worst backpacker bathrooms I have ever seen – that honour is reserved for a particular hell-hole in Mozambique – but they’re a good, solid second. And they shared the problematic characteristic of being available for general use by the bar patrons, most of whom were not residents. The place was a mess. The kind of mess where you simply grit your teeth and get through it because you’re not going to find anywhere better tonight.

By this stage I was tired. All I wanted was to fall into bed and sleep. I got to the dorm and turned to close out the noise and the people. The door wouldn’t close. No matter what I tried, I couldn’t get the door closed. I went to fetch someone from reception. She said she’d send someone later. I objected until she came herself immediately. She explained that I couldn’t have a key because it was a dorm (for the record, this is absolutely not standard practice at SA backpackers). I explained that I could live with not having a key, if I could only have a door that would close. She shrugged and said it was a difficult door and there was nothing she could do. And that was it.

I lay in bed for hours, fuming, tossing and turning, attempting to find the mosquito that was hunting me and wishing there was a way to block out the thumping music and the screeching people (like a door, perhaps!). Through the un-curtained windows, a street lamp blinded me whenever I turned over. After a couple of hours two girls, clearly a little worse for wear, wandered through our dorm to the balcony to have a chat. The other person in the dorm got fed up, threw them out and found an old, plastic chair to put against the door. That didn’t close it, but at least it was obvious that it was supposed to be closed.

In the morning light, the dusty floors, the dirty bathrooms and the noise were glaringly obvious. The linen on the beds seemed clean, but beyond that there was little to recommend the place. I’d initially picked it because of the location but I’d certainly rather have been a bit further away and had a backpackers that was closer to the usual standard of SA backpackers. The place obviously used to be quite pleasant – walls painted, posters advertising adventures, 24-hour reception. Plus, paddle-pool and braai area. But those days are long gone. And all this for exactly the same price as I recently paid for a classy, clean, comfortable backpackers with excellent service and even better location in Cape Town

For the record, anyone seeking a better SA Backpackers experiences could start with Cape Town Backpackers, iKhaya Stellenbosch Backpackers, Penthouse on Long (Cape Town) or The Backpackers Ritz in Joburg, to name just a few.