Wild Wild Coast

5^th September -8^th September - Days 340-343 - Coffee Bay, South Africa

On first appearance, the Coffee Shack was a haven of tranquility. We'd woken up in Mthatha with the usual night bus stiff neck at 7am and tried to get down to Coffee Bay. Fortunately we shared a bus with Klaus, a German guy who worked at the Coffee Shack, and Sophie, an Austrian who was heading there too. The usual headscratching on emerging from a night bus was thus eliminated and we followed Klaus a few blocks to the minibus-taxi station and waited for a small eternity for it to fill up. Mthatha is a tired looking city full of boarded up buildings and radiates the impression that its better days are long gone. Our minibus to Mqanduli eventually left and from there we transferred over quickly and painlessly to another minibus to Coffee Bay. From the stop, it was a short walk to the Coffee Shack where we were made to feel at home and flopped out to compensate for the night bus syndrome.

Transkei minibus-taxi fun

A good start.

The drive down was through true rural Xhosa country – rolling green hills with blue and cream-coloured rondavels scattered all over. Goats and cows wandered through the fields and across the road, people ambled around, schoolkids chased chickens – it was that kind of place. It lacked the spectacular scenery of some parts of South Africa but it was definitely among the most scenic parts of the country that we'd seen so far. It was with this and the ocean as a backdrop that formed a part of Coffee Bay's charm. We whiled away the day playing pool, chatting with whoever came our way, reading books and enjoying what little sunshine there was. It was the kind of place with attracted backpackers from all over and a generous scattering of hippies and vagrants – we met the usual quota of tourists plus people like Marie-Claire, a 50-year-old woman who was born in the Congo, escaped to South Africa as a refugee as a child, was divorced by her husband 15 years ago and immediately hit the road, which she's still on. Her conversation tends to hover around yoga and inner peace and the like, but she has a fascinating story. She made bead necklaces for a living and was waiting for a good sale before she could move on. Two brothers from Johannesburg was also around for a few days – they'd decided that they hadn't seen enough of their own country and rented a camper van for a while to drive around. We spent quite a bit of time with them too. They invited us one day over to their camper van for what turned out to be a rather competitive game of dominoes, and we discovered on leaving that the inlet between them and our tent had succumbed to high tide. We could either swim across, or stay with them. And so it was that we spent our first night in a camper van.

Jungle Speed was a smash hit in Coffee Bay, as it is everywhere.

M considers a swim. And then reconsiders.

As the first day went on, the Coffee Bay silent idyll disappeared and the place turned into a backpacker loud-n-brash bar which was good fun as always but, slightly partied-out by recent weeks, we tended to retire earlier rather than later and started thinking about moving somewhere a bit calmer. In a small twist of fate, we met with one of M's primary and secondary school friends whom she hasn't seen for a good ten years. She was there with a friend of hers who knows several friends of mine and went to school with my ex. Small world? Maybe not, but Finland is a small country...

This is Xhosa country

One of the days, we signed up for a walk off to « Hole In The Wall ». Aside from the fact that it was a hole in the wall somewhere, we weren't really too sure of what to expect. During the 4 or 5 hour walk across the rolling hills, we had a good look around as well as spotting the « Transkei Big Five », where the traditional safari group of lion, leopard, buffalo, hippo and elephant had been replaced by cow, sheep, goat, horse and donkey. At one particularly steep looking hill, some of the group started wondering out loud if it would be possible to go around rather than over the hill and so, with the tide coming in, we hopped from one cave to another, trying our best not to be swept out to sea. We managed it just about without any loss of life, although our poor, long-suffering camera took another pounding as I was partially submerged by waves. It still works, bless it. When we weren't panting our way up hills or expiring at the top of them, we busied ourselves looking at the same beautiful scenery that we'd come through on the way here and M also spent part of the afternoon working on her sunburn, which came out nice and red. Getting to the Hole in the Wall itself was great – not for the hole in the wall itself (which, aside from being a moderately interesting example of hydraulic pressure on rock, wasn't anything spectacular) but we did get toasted sandwiches thrown into the price of the walk. It was a happy moment, one to make me forget that I was feeling slightly worse for wear after the previous evening...

One of the Transkei Big Five

As its name would suggest...

Honestly, it was just tiredness.

Generic Wild Coast coastline shot #8882929737/92.6

In the end, though, we decided that we'd seen enough and the party party scene was getting rather repetitive so we upped sticks and moved a little further up the coast to Bulungula, which a German girl in Coffee Bay had recommended to us (although, this being Africa, it took us about 5 hours to get the few kilometres via an enormous detour) to see what we could find there. We hoped for Coffee Bay minus the party party. Hopefully it wasn't too much to ask...