Up The Coast

We arrived yesterday morning in Durban, exhausted and disorientated from a 17 hour bus ride. Going against the tourist norm of either hiring a car or catching the “Baz Bus”, a sanitized tourist shuttle which literally plucks you from one backpackers and deposits you on the doorsteps of another, we chose the incredible cramped local Option. Squashed between the overly generous curves of an African mama and her squirming toddler, and separated from my love by a tiny aisle, we bounced through the night, jerked awake every time our eyes dared to close, by the fluorescent lights and the sounds of children vomiting.  The CityLiner buses are used almost solely by black Africans and are the cheapest long distance public transport available. The bus company had certainly maximized the number of seats available, by squeezing three across on one side and another two on the other, separated by a narrow aisle, which forced any person larger than an eight year old child to walk sideways down.

During our journey up the coast we spent a few nights at Knysna, part of the Garden route, before busing up to Jeffereys bay. The countryside between these places is absolutely beautiful, rocky mountains, plunging down to sandy white beaches and fields of greenness.

Jeffereys bay became our home for the good part of the week. A somewhat scruffy, lazy, surf town, Jeffereys bay is a home to ‘Supertubes’ said to be ‘the most perfect wave in the world’, in the winter months.  Juho and I however, did little more than sit on the beach and watch the surfers and the fishermen. At one point we witnessed some local guys reel in a baby great white, and that was enough to convince us they we really did not need to do anything more adventurous than just sit and watch.

Durban, population over 3.5 million, is a fairly intimidating, crime ridden city. It is also one of the most interesting, given the large concentration of people of Indian descent.  After securing our Mozambique visas, Juho and I wandered the streets sampling Indian curries and the infamous “Bunny Chow”, a hollowed out loaf of bread, stuffed with curry. We stumbled into some pretty rough areas, and decided the road was ultimately more safe to walk on than the street, at a certain point, when a large group of bulky African men closed in on us , muttering “Whatcha doing White boy”, in fairly intimidating tones.

Tomorrow we continue on to Maputo, Mozambique via Johannesburg. Already I can hear the first few chords of Dylan’s “Mozambique” beckoning us forward “I’d like to spend some time in Mozambique, the sunny sky is aqua blue, and all the couples dancing cheek to cheek….”