Port Elizabeth To Northern Drakensberg

I’ve been to three or four different cities/towns since my last post so I guess I should probably take the time to update you all on what has been going on in my life. My first stop after Oudtshoorn was in Port Elizabeth. The friends I made in Oudtshoorn had already been there and advised me that I had booked at the wrong hostel, I tried to change to the one that they recommended but unfortunately they were fully booked. I wasn’t overly excited about my time in Port Elizabeth to begin with so learning that I would be staying in a crappy hostel didn’t really help matters.

The bus arrived in Port Elizabeth quite late at night so I went to bed immediately after checking in. I woke up early the next morning in order to book a township tour.  I had looked at a few different options online while waiting for my shuttle in Oudtshoorn and was about to book a tour that visited a school and a market when the Internet cut out and I was forced to wait until arriving in Port Elizabeth to book anything. Since I wanted to go on a tour that departed that day I figured booking online probably wasn’t an option anymore and asked the hostel receptionist to help me. He ended up booking me a half-day tour departing at noon.

I spent the rest of the morning trying to catch up on sleep and exploring the area. Well actually I was just trying to find the grocery store and ended up getting lost. The area my hostel was in was not very developed and options for food were very limited but I didn’t feel safe venturing further than a few blocks from the hostel.

When noon finally rolled around my tour guide showed up and informed that I would be getting a private tour. This was not at all what I wanted. I wanted to be with a group of people. The guide lead me to his car then made a joke about marrying me off to his brother or murdering me instead of taking me on the tour. I did not think this joke was funny and spent the next 2.5 hours incredibly stressed out and fearing for my life. He kept pulling over in random fields to talk about apartheid but every time he stopped I was expecting something horrible to happen. This was not at all the tour I wanted to be on; in fact I wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

Eventually he stopped pulling over into random fields and pulled over in front of a row of houses instead. He tried to teach me some words in one of the eleven official languages of South Africa (I really can’t remember which language, it was the least of my worries at the time). He then told me to get out of the car and I was sure I was going to die. Thankfully I was wrong. I was just meeting a lady who lived in the township and getting a tour of her home.

For those of you that don’t know a township is an area where people of colour set up shop after they were forced out of their homes during apartheid which started in the 1940s. Apparently in Port Elizabeth the segregation actually started many years earlier, in 1901 the city was devastated by the bubonic plague and the rich people in town decided to blame it on the hygiene of farmers who lived in mud huts and kept animals in the heart of the city a shipped them away and developed the township that I visited. Once upon a time all of the homes in the township would have been one room shacks made of corrugated metal, but the area we had visited had been developed and was a little nicer. However if you were to drive past an average township in South Africa you would probably refer to it as a shantytown.

The house that I got to visit was roughly the same size as my cabin in Queenstown and for the most part it was a nicer house. And I’m fairly confident the woman living in it doesn’t pay rent (I could be wrong about this and if I am I’m sorry). It was depressing to know that people living in poverty have nicer houses than me; it was even more depressing to know the size of the family living in the small space. The cabin was tight quarters for Jesse and I but my host lived with her husband and two grown children in that tiny place. She also didn’t have a shower or a tub. This was probably the only thing about my cabin that was better than her house. My hot water heater only held about 7 minutes worth of hot water but at least I had a shower. This family had to use buckets to bathe themselves. They did however have a washing machine and a reasonably sized TV so I'm not too sure what their priorities in life were. The family had moved into the house a few years ago (I have a feeling it was part of the “updating” done for the world cup) and told me they were so happy to be there because they now had electricity and the house doesn’t leak when it rains like the old one did.

After leaving the house we got back into the car and I was feeling less worried about my safety until we pulled up to a gated courtyard and I was once again told to get out of the car. Inside the gated area was a group of young adults wearing orange jumpsuits that I could only assume were prison uniforms and on the outside of the gate were several bulls wandering through large trash heaps. I did not want to be on either side of the gate, I just wanted to go home. We ended up visiting the courtyard, which was actually a graveyard for some political heroes. While the monuments to these people were nice mountains of garbage surrounded them, it didn’t feel like a fitting tribute for people who had fought for the rights of the people living within the community. We talked about the people buried there for a few minutes before heading back to the car. I was happy I had not been mugged or trampled by a bull.

We visited another graveyard and a small market. The market seemed to sell two things, maize, and sheep’s head. I was able to see the sheep’s head in various stages of preparation and it did not look enjoyable or even edible at any point. I did however try the maize, which is a lot like corn on the cob but the kernels are larger and not as tender or sweet.

After 2.5 hours of constantly worrying something terrible was going to happen to me the tour finally ended. My guide actually ended up being a really nice guy but he started off on the wrong foot in a situation when I was already on edge. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures from my township tour, it felt wrong to take pictures of other peoples misfortunes. There were thousands of people living in such a small area and it was clear they all had very little, it seemed wrong to try and capture that so I could show my friends and family at home just how good they really have it.

The following day I travelled by bus from Port Elizabeth to Durban. This was the longest day ever. I was on the bus for roughly 15 hours and we got less than an hour of break time all day. We switched drivers part way through but even with that taken into consideration if the laws here were the same as in Canada we would have taken way more breaks. I’m sorry but 15 minutes to go to the bathroom, order food, and eat it after 6 hours on the bus is not enough time. I was not a happy camper by the time the bus pulled into Durban. I was starving but I was too tired to do anything about it so I just went to bed.

I woke up the next morning just to hop right back on that stupid bus. I had originally booked to stay in Durban for three nights but I heard from several people that it is a really dangerous city so I changed my plans and headed to Northern Drakensberg after one night. I was pretty excited about this as it meant I would have a chance to visit Lesotho, and landlocked country high in the mountains.

Shortly after arriving in Northern Drakensberg I learned I would not be able to fulfill my dream of meeting a medicine man and hanging out with a Zulu tribe as the tour would not be running on Friday and I was scheduled to leave on Saturday so I wouldn’t have the opportunity to go. I also learned that the menu posted on the hostel website was not accurate. Several items had been removed but my biggest grievance was that the full menu was not available for dinner, instead a three-course meal was available and your only choice was whether you wanted the option with meat or the vegetarian option. On my first night the options were chicken curry or vegetable curry. I hate curry. I don’t like sauce or spice so curry is pretty much my worst nightmare. I asked the receptionist if I had any other meal options and he told me I could prepare my own meal in the self-catering kitchen and that the closest store was 20km away. I was pretty fucking pissed at this point, not only could I not go on the tour that made me stop at this stupid hostel in the first place but now I was going to go hungry.

Luckily I had bought a fair deal of snacks during one of our rest stops so I didn’t starve but I was in a foul mood for the rest of the day so I locked myself away in my room and avoided human contact. I did order lunch before going into hibernation since I actually had options during lunch. I ordered pasta in a cream sauce and was once again disappointed. The pasta was somehow overcooked and cold at the same time, and the cream sauce had been so watered down it didn’t even stick to the pasta, it was like a broth at the bottom of the bowl.

I spent my last day in Northern Drakensberg lazing around the hostel. I could have paid $75 to go on a 14km hike at some crazy altitude in the sweltering heat but I decided to work on my tan by the pool instead. I probably missed out on some spectacular views but I think I made the right choice. Today I travelled from Northern Drakensberg to Johannesburg and the day after tomorrow I leave for my 11-day safari, which is going to be pretty full on, so I needed a day to relax. Tomorrow I am catching up with a friend I met in Paris a little over four years ago so I am confident the next 12 days will be amazing so stay tuned because I’m sure I will have plenty of awesome stories to tell.