The Kingdom In The Sky

13^th September-15^th September – Days 348-350 – Port Alfred, South Africa to Semonkong, Lesotho

Leaving Port Alfred was about as complicated as getting there was. Not spectacularly so, but probably more so than it should have been. Megan had given us a lift into town at 7.30am, dropped us off at the minibus taxi rank and gave us a cheery goodbye as she disappeared off to work. There was only one minibus in the area so locating the one we needed wouldn't be hard, we thought. That was until we were told that this was the local minibus station and to get anything else we'd need the other station which was accurately described to us as being « somewhere over there », accompanied with a vague waving of hands. We walked around in circles until the sight of a shopping centre reminded M that she hadn't had her morning coffee and so we ducked into a Wimpy so that she could get her fix for the morning. This was also useful as the Wimpy staff were slightly more helpful than the minibus taxi drivers – we'd have to get a local minibus to an intersection somewhere out in the townships where we could get onward transport from there.

We were aiming to get to Maseru, the capital city of Lesotho, but we weren't yet quite sure how to do it. We'd originally thought of going through Port Elizabeth but I thought that, given that P.E. was in the wrong direction, that might not be such a great plan. We decided on trying to find our way to Grahamstown again and get a bus from there to Bloemfontein, from where we could get something to Maseru. Easy. And in fact, for once, it turned out that we did make it easy. Grahamstown was sunny, as it always seems to be. M and I tried our hand at tennis, which we realised that we weren't very good at, and we got invited by Grant and Bast for a game of touch rugby, which I realised that I wasn't very good at. Rather than realise that she was crap at two sports too, M trekked off to the Pick N Pay to pick up some supplies for the night bus we'd arranged up to Bloemfontein.

M practises her backhand...

...and shows a distinct lack of coordination with the tennis racket

...but T's attempts with a rugby ball make her feel much better.

Now, not only was this a night bus but it also arrived in Bloemfontein at 3am, meaning that we'd have to find our way to the backpackers place that M had called up during the day, call up a guy inside to open a door for us and pitch up our tent in the middle of the night. It just seems that we're suckers for punishment – you know that line you always come up with after a heavy night? "I'm never going to drink again"? I'm starting to have that with night buses. Always uttering the same words yet, when it comes down to it, you always end up doing it all over again. I guess it's useful in a way for us as we have somewhere to sleep and don't need to pay for a bed for the night. In this case though, we'd arrive at 3am and would pay to spend the night in Bloemfontein anyway. Fortunately, when we eventually got there and woke the guy up, he seemed to take pity on us and offer us a dorm bed at a tent price. And in any case, that was the only bus going from Grahamstown to Bloemfontein so we had no choice. The fact that it was Greyhound, one of the smarter companies with nicer buses, didn't seem to make any difference – sleep was just difficult to come by. I think this is down to several factors: a) the movie on TV is always loud enough to prevent you from sleeping, but quiet enough that you can't really follow what's going on. Given that you can't sleep, you try to watch the movie but only catching half of it gets annoying. This in turns further prevents you from sleeping; b) you will always end up in the close vicinity of either a screaming baby, or an extremely large person who spends the night either clearing their throats of snorting like a hippo (as happened on this particular bus). This will be the only such person on the entire bus and is always either in front of, behind or next to you; and c) you will be woken up at every stop by a booming voice on the loud speaker. « WELCOME TO ALIWAL NORTH, WE THANK YOU FOR TRAVELLING WITH GREYHOUND. IF YOU WERE SLEEPING, TOUGH SHIT FOR YOU. YOU SHOULD HAVE WORN EARPLUGS. PLEASE TRY AGAIN. ». Of course, the only time that you would potentially sleep peacefully through this announcement is at the town where you are supposed to get off, which means that you spend the entire trip paranoid that instead of waking up at 3am in Bloemfontein, you'll wake up at 8am in Johannesburg. This paranoia, in turn, prevents you from sleeping. In this case you'll either be utterly tired when you get off the bus, or you'll pass out at 2.50am, and end up Johannesburg just as you thought. Miraculously, M and I found ourselves getting off the bus exactly where we should have, and by 4.30am we were sound asleep.

M poses before Naval Hill Backpackers, one of Bloemfontein's more arresting tourist attractions

Bloemfontein itself is one of those places that is nice enough to wander around for a day – pleasant and green, a few nice old buildings and an easy layout that means that you won't get horrifically lost very quickly. It's also big enough to keep you from stumbling upon the same thing every 5 minutes but also small enough to be walkable. Not the kind of place I'd take a 3-week holiday in but nice enough to while away the day waiting for a bus. It's also got a « Waterfront » shopping centre which is quite funny, given that Bloemfontein in the middle of the Free State, which is itself in the middle of South Africa and hence nowhere near the sea from which Cape Town's equivalent gets its name. We went there, split a pizza, and kept on walking. I had quite a headache for some reason, so we trudged back up to the backpackers and had a lazy evening (easy enough since we were the only guests there, by the looks) before turning in for the night. The owner was one of those guys doesn't seem interested in running a backpackers at all, but rather prefers watching horse races on TV and occasionally coming out with the odd racial slur, but he had a Franco-German guy working for him who was friendly and helpful and recommended to us that we go directly to Semonkong as Maseru was just a town with nothing much going for it. Besides, from the look of the maps, the road to Semonkong looked like a dead end so we'd have to bus it up back to Maseru anyway. The decision was made, a taxi was called for 5.30 the next morning, and we slept again.

The Bloemfontein skyline at sundown. Nice cooling towers.

The final day of the trip to Semonkong was a beautiful one. From the modernity of South Africa to the rural charm of its smaller neighbour, from the flat plains of the Free State to the towering mountains of Lesotho, we saw just about the full range of sceneries within a single day. The bus left bang on time and by 9am we were walking through the Maseru Bridge border crossing and before we knew it, we were in Lesotho. Arriving here was just like arriving in Swaziland – people suddenly started waving and smiling at you in the streets, people said hello to the tourists and we were asked if we needed help. We were pointed towards the minibus rank to get into town, where we went through our normal « new country » routine of getting a sim card, looking at the new money we got as change for it, and then wondering where the hell we were. In Lesotho, the fun was added to by the fact that many people spoke Sesotho to us and seemed quite taken aback that we couldn't understand them. The fact that they didn't speak English either restricted the depth of many conversations. In the end, we asked in the fabulously named « Hip Hop Shoe Shop » for directions to the Semonkong bus, and a woman inside said she'd show us the way. We weaved through market stalls, in and our of roads, stopped as our new friend had a chat with various people, and eventually got to the central bus station. The bus was due to leave in three hours but we were too tired to wander around with the huge backpack. Consequence being, we sat on the bus for three hours and waited.

Lesotho smiles at us in one of those "out of the bus window" pictures that turned good

It's a bumpy ride down to Semonkong – half of the way it's a gravel road, and the other half is pothole with a little bit of tarmac here and there. We rolled along the sides of mountains, up and down, left and right. Half of the time on such a ride, you'd be admiring the beauty of the mountains. The other half, you'd be thinking « Gee, I hope the brakes don't fail on the 1870s-built bus-like contraption, or we'd be rather finished ». The fact that this 1870s-built bus-like contraption appeared to have done the run from Maseru to Semonkong every day since its construction probably helped me to believe that it would be OK. And hence, with about 90 people on board, the chattering of Sesotho all around and M humming the Vengaboys to my left, we bumped our way through the countryside for quite a while. Every time we'd come over a pass, the mountains and valleys would spread before us without any sign of life or habitation bar a few herders on horseback here and there. People did get on and off quite regularly though, making the more inquisitive minded European wonder where the hell these people are going/where they came from. I guess Lesotho is just one of those places where people will walk 3 weeks over mountains to get back home just because they think they may have left the gas on, and then wander back without a care in the world to pick up the next bus. My aimless thoughts were crudely interrupted just after we crossed the Makhaleng river by the delightfully familiar sound of KABOOM coming from underneath the bus. We'd blown a tyre in a spectacular way and I realised everything that I had missed since being in South Africa, the country where things just seem to function well. In other parts of Africa things never go according the plan – things break down, things go the wrong way and things blow up, and that's part of the fun. I tried to count how many passengers were squeezed into our bus-like contraption several times but lost count and then it was time to get back on. We went repeatedly over passes again, and as night fell, I started to think that Semonkong was just an urban legend, an Atlantis of Southern Africa. We'd just drive through the night and eventually arrive back in Maseru tomorrow morning. « Semonkong » was just Sesotho for « Circular route » and the whole thing was an inside joke to be played on the monthly tourist.

Back in Africa!! T waits for the puncture to be fixed, one of his favourite pastimes

Like many of my imaginative and unlikely scenarios, this one also came to nothing. We pitched up in Semonkong which, in the dark, looked like a village with a population of at least 6. We were approached by several people asking if we needed help to get where we were going and one guy walked us half way across the village to give us some directions, wished us a pleasant night and turned around, walking back where we had come. How nice. This is Lesotho, it seems. In fact, there wasn't really much point in asking a foreigner with a backpack where they are going at night because it seems that Semonkong only has one place to stay, the Semonkong Lodge. But it's a good one.

Boat Camp

10^th September-13^th September – Days 345-348 – Port Alfred, South Africa

I don't want to get too far into the complexities of getting to Port Alfred from Mthatha where we were dropped off by the approximately 103-year-old driver from Bulungula. Let's just say that getting to East London was an easy minibus ride but that we had to seek hard and long to find onward transport from there and ended up in a shared taxi that cost us the same price for an hour's drive to Port Alfred that it had cost us for the 4-hour ride to East London from Mthatha. But we made it there in time before the next day's event and that's all that counts.

Port Alfred is a little seaside town at the mouth of a river on which all of SA's biggest universities (and some international ones too) come to compete in the noble sport of rowing. The annual boat race is a big happening for the student population who come here to drink and soak in on the sun while shouting for their university's team to row quicker and beat the arch rival – whichever university that might be. We were here to support Rhodes University as one of Bast's friends, whom we'd also met earlier, was the captain in the team. So we reunited with Bast and Grant and their various friends on the river bank armed with beer. Or we would have, had we not got separated from our crate as a result of a badly organised day. The lovely manager of the backpackers in town, Kim, took us out onto the riverbank in the morning and stored our beers in the fridge of her office not far from the river. We then lost Kim after finding Bast and Grant as she was out with her baby and the dogs and hence couldn't come down to our spot on the river but instead gesticulated that she'd come and find us before heading back. She never did, and so we went dry-mouthed for a while (despite Bast and Grant keeping us supplied with what they had) before we embarked on a mission to find her – at the pub not far from her office. We'd walked all the way back to the backpackers just to get her mobile number before we caught up with her again and she kept us at the pub for a few rounds before we managed to pull back to the riverside, which caused us to miss a good part of the day.

Spot the cox (har har)

"We've lost a soldier!"

The party had continued all the while we'd been gone, of course, and we had to pick up the pace in order to catch up with the mood. Somehow we didn't manage it, however, and felt a lot more tired than our fellow celebrators (Rhodes had apparently done well). After ending up at the party in one of the boathouses later in the night – via Bast's friend's house party where we spent some time in between and where we got the free tickets for the boathouse – and not being able to get excited over the standard concept of a drunken student fiesta, we decided to head back to the backpackers not too late at all. The fact that the dorm room was embraced in the sweet smell of weed and that someone was watching movies with loud sound on didn't bother us one bit as we crashed and snored within minutes.

T tried hard to fit in with the students in the background but something was amiss...

The next day we were invited to Bast's friend Megan's house just down the road for breakfast and to stay for the next night if needed. We sort of missed the breakfast but happily took on the offer for a free bed for the night. Bast and Grant headed back to Grahamstown with the rest of their friends early in the day, and Megan was feeling tired from the festivities and slept through most of the day, so we got the lounge and TV all to ourselves for the day and benefited whole-heartedly by watching soppy movies and eating noodles in front of the telly.

The outcome of the weekend would suggest that we really are getting too old to keep up with the pace of the party, but I am refusing to believe it. Lesson learnt: look after your own beers.

Familiar faces...?

Party Interlude

8^th September-10^th September - Days 343-345 – Bulungula, South Africa

Coming from Coffee Bay to Bulungula was like arriving at a harbour of tranquility, and like T insinuated in the previous post, this was exactly what doctor had ordered for us. Bulungula is not really a village in itself (even if we think one of the villages close by might be called something similar) but a patch of land right on the Wild Coast that is remote from the surrounding bigger habitation centres and acts as some kind of a “resort”. It's mainly of interest to those who like to spend some slow hours in a natural setting observing the local, simple way of life.

Bulungula camp at sunset

Our hosts welcomed us warmly and immediately took us on a tour of the essentials of the place: the compost toilets and what they call 'rocket showers'. Bulungula runs on the principle of sustainability, and these two elements were at the core of their operations. Compost toilets I believe everyone is more or less familiar with, but as for the rocket showers, I'll tell you that they are showers that work on liquid paraffin which you place at the bottom of the water pipe and set on fire in order to heat the pipe which then provides you with hot water for a full eight minutes. So not only do you use little energy but also minimise the consumption of water while showering. The quick tour ended with the introduction of the campsite right next to the ocean and the main lounging area where a delicious home-made dinner was served a bit later. We were very appreciative of all the amenities and started our two days of ultimate chilling there and then.

Takin it easy by the coast. Life is hard.

We spent our days at Bulungula catching up on our newly-bought novels and getting to know the other inhabitants: an American girl who was studying in Cape Town, an English traveller guy, a Swiss pair of siblings and a small group of Germans who we'd already seen in Coffee Bay but hadn't exchanged many words with so far. We also booked ourselves on one of the community based tours, namely the herbalist trail, which included a meeting with the local medicine man, tasting some of his potions (some black powder made of extracts from sharks, snakes and some roots) and familiarising ourselves with the plants that he collects from the local woods. The tour ended at a local “restaurant” where we were served very nice pancakes.

De medicine man, man

The scenery here was much of the same as around Coffee Bay: traditional Xhosa huts scattered on rolling hills and a few schools to keep the kids of the area busy with the experience of learning. The bushy forest lining parts of the coast provided us and the other guests with relaxed surroundings for sitting around and conversing about the multitude of stars above us on the clear night sky, among other things. To write here about what we actually did or talked about during our time at Bulungula would be both uninteresting and pointless, as you just have to be there to share the uneventful moments in order to appreciate them.

De herbalist man's huts. One broken, one cool

We would have liked to stay at Bulungula for longer but had also planned to make our way to Port Alfred for the annual boat race between all the universities' rowing teams. According to Bast, the one who had invited us along, things were going to get “Hectic!” so I was glad we'd stopped here to charge the batteries before that.