Jefferys Bay

I'm a strange sort round here. People don't quite know what to make of me. An Australian who doesn't surf.

I can't really offer then any explanation. "I live in Melbourne, it's not exactly Byron Bay" I say. They shrug there shoulders. "What's wrong with the South Coast?"They say. I shrug back at them. "I want to learn" I explain apologetically.

Tanned and freckled, blonde and built like a tank, the man strolling up the steps of our hostel was unmistakably our surf instructor. His excited dog lead, a sheep dog with a few dreadlocks hanging from behind his ears.

"How'd you get the scar on your leg?" asked Steve.
"Motorbike accident" Adrian answered gruffly in a thick Afrikaans accent.
"Awww!" said Steve, throwing his arms in the air "I can't believe you didn't say just say shark attack!" Adrian didn't think this was funny. He also didn't like waiting while we posed for photos in our wetsuits.

After two hours I'm not sure you could say I surfed. But it was a lot of fun crashing and falling, and laughing at the stupid look of glee everyone got on their face the instant they made it to there knees. I could do with some more practice.

But what a place to start. Jeffery's bay was made famous by the 1964 film Endless Summer, which earned it the reputation as the perfect wave. Its arguable that previously the bay was just a few rocks and the town was created on the back of the movie. The supertubes as they are know are actually just up the coast at Francis bay, but the main beach at Jeffery's gives you a good surf in waist high water, which is great if you just want to muck around.

Aside from surfing, there not a lot more to do. There's a fair few surf shop factory outlets, all Australian brands, Billabong, Quicksilver, etc, which sell clothing surprising much cheaper than at home. You can get t-shirts here that say "Billabong, Bells Beach" for $30. I feel sort of cheated by that.

Ive been staying at Island Vibe, the party hostel of the town. Friday night when we arrived with a bus load of newbies the party mode was just starting to kick in. By Saturday night the dorms were full and it was all on.

Perched up on a sand dune at the end of the main beach you get 270 degree views of the beach from just outside your dorm. Some of the serious surfers have been here for months. There not here for the party though. Early to bed every night and out by sunrise, surfing is there only priority.

For us just here to try it for a few days, we didn't really have the discipline. Sunday was my birthday, so everyone made sure they celebrated every minute of it. At midnight the whole bar sang Happy Birthday. We hit the local clubs, or rather club, an absolute dive called Alcatraz, and danced with a few locals back in town on school break. After a few hours we headed back home, back to the bar, and back to bed around the time we were meant to rise for the waves.

But on a flat winters day, its when you really notice what a way of life surfing is. Everyone grows restless and annoyed. Those of us for whom surfing for two days has been quiet difficult on certain muscles, I thanked god and hire a video.

The Cape and beyond

My crew had begun to clear out on Tuesday. By Wednesday night, James and I were the longest serving residents of Ashanti Lodge, sitting up at the bar, remising on the departed backpackers of days gone by.

On Tuesday night I went dinner down at the waterfront with a group of five who had all arrived in Cape Town that day. Syd from England put his video camera in my face, commentating “We are lucky to have Courtney with us, Cape Town Veteran, taking us for dinner tonight, and showing us the sites of the city”. It was time to go.

The weather had cleared up over the weekend, and they reopened the Mountain tracks. I meet Steffi at the hostel, and convinced her that walking up the Mountain was how she should spend the next day.

Plattiklip Gorge is not the prettiest way up the mountain, but it’s the most common climb. We were told it was “steps”. Not so! It was rock and some of them were huge. It was so steep you could use your hand a lot of the time to crawl up. It was relentless, I was thinking perhaps just past my point of sight perhaps there is just a little bit of walking track, but there never was. It was by far the most grueling walk I have ever done in my life. But and hour and a half later we reached the top of the Mountain.

At first the view wasn’t so great. But after a while I recovered and was able to get up off the ground I was lying face down in and it was beautiful. You could see Cape Town in one direction, the seaside suburbs spotted down the coast behind you, the Mountains that stretched all the way down to Cape Point to the left. It was worth the effort.

There was still a lot more I wanted to do in Cape Town, but there was also a lot more of Africa I wanted to see. James booked a ticket to Namibia, and I chose Wilderness, a town about 8 hours out of Cape Town. I wanted to go somewhere quiet.

The drive was spectacular. South Africa has more mountains than you can possibly imagine, appearing though every window of the bus. The fields are so green, and every so often an old style English village would appear in one of the valleys.

In Wilderness, Chris met me out the front of the 200 year old homestead he had converted into a hostel. I told him I was from Melbourne. “So were in relation to Tasmania is Melbourne?” he asked.
“Just across the water” I replied, a little surprised. “I use to live in Tasmania, have you been?”
“No” he said “But I think ill move there. It sounds like the sort of place I would like to live”.

The grounds of the hostel were amazing. There were trees and watering holes, gardens and little spots to hide in, where a huge big old tree and a flower bushes created a little corner enough to hide a solitary chair. I spent the afternoon lying around reading, writing and sleeping.

There were about 5 others staying at the hostel, they wandered home in the evening and we chatted as the sun set from the patio overlooking the river. It was a beautiful place, but everyone was leaving the next day, and there was no booking for the hostel over the weekend. A bus would come past at 4pm, and I decided to move on as well.

The bus driver, Sam, was crazy. 15 mins away at Knysna, he ran the bus into the footpath. He got out, ran to about 20 meters away and just looked at the bus for a few minutes. There were about 5 passengers and we were all quiet when he came back.
“Can somebody else drive the bus now” asked Sam “I don’t want to do it anymore”.

Back on the road, a few hours later we heard a fire truck coming up behind us. As everyone else pulled over Sam though it the perfect opportunity to tailgate the fire truck, avoiding all that pesky overtaking we would only have to do later on anyway. A bit further down the road, he simply overtook the fire truck as well. Its not done in South Africa by anyone, but at this point I put my seatbelt on.

Some how we made it to Jeffery’s bay in one piece. At Storms River we were joined by a few guys I knew from Cape Town and a girl I knew from the bus the previous day who were all heading to the same hostel as me for the weekend. They had been skydiving and bungee jumping so we spent the night watching all the videos. It’s the same thing over again most of the time, expect for one Canadian chick that passed out at the end of her sky dive, just as they were landing. As she was lying on the ground coming to, someone passed her a coke and said, “Drink this”. She looked at it and passed it back.
“Its not diet.” She said.

Robben Island

On Sunday morning I took the ferry to Robben Island. The island is located about 12km off the shores of Cape Town, while its has had many uses in the past 400 years; as a training and defence station during WW2 and a former leprosy colony, its most famous resident was Nelson Mandela, who served 18 years of his life sentence at the brutal Robben Island prison. In 1997 the island was listed as a world heritage site and now serves as a museum.

Our tour began with a bus trip around the island taking in the sites; the former townships used to house service personnel, the leper colony & graveyard, and the gun built to protect Cape Town during WW2, which was completed 4 months after the war finished, and has never been fired. Our tour guide pointed out Whale rock, the site of Robben Island’s only bus crash. In 1995 a function was held on Robben Island, and Hillary Clinton was invited. But her people declared that the buses on the Island were not fit for the First Lady and alternative arrangements would have to be made. A late decision by the South African government to buy a bus for the sum of 1.3 million rand meant that on the day before the function, there was no sea transport to bring the bus over. Instead they used a helicopter to transport the bus. A cable broke and 1.3 million rand came crashing down into the sea below.

Once we arrived at the site of the prison, our tour guide introduced himself. His name was Sahed. He had been a political prisoner of Robben Island for 20 years. But he bid us farewell. He had vowed never again to step into the prison, and he would take us no further.

He introduced us to Eddie Daniels who would take the rest of the tour. Eddie, an Englishmen, had been involved in the anti apartheid movements for quite some years, in protests and the like when he determined that the situation had worsen to the point where much more dramatic measures were required. In 1961 Eddie formed the African Resistance Movement, which operated illegally under his instruction for 3 years until he was imprisoned in 1964, for 15 years, for opposition to the Government policy. He was sent to Robben Island to serve for the duration of his sentence.

Robben Island was home to the worst of South Africa’s prisoners, rapists and murderers exiled to the Island for bad behaviour in mainland institutions. Prisoners were classed according to their crimes as status A-D. A represented the less serious crimes or was a reward for good behaviour. C was the entry category for transferred prisoners. D was reserved for the perpetrators of political crimes, who suffered under the worst conditions.

It took Eddie 5 years to be promoted to category C. Six months later he was downgraded again to D. The prison wardens explained “We are trying to rehabilitate you”.
“No. You are the ones that need to be rehabilitated” replied Eddie.

For 15 years the only people Eddie had contact with was the 30 other political prisoners he was interned in Section D with, one of which was Nelson Mandela. “Aside from religious leaders, I believe Nelson Mandela was the greatest man ever to walk the face of the Earth.” says Eddie “After the years of torture, brutality and oppression he suffered, he embraced his enemies and forgave”.

The psychological pressure inflicted on these strong protestors was extraordinary. They were kept separate from the other prisoners, and banned from the hospital no matter how sick they became. Apartheid was still practiced in the prison. Only non African prisoners were given bread. The few prisoners with this privilege, including Eddie, would cut all the bread into 21 thin slices. Among 30 prisoners, everyone took turns in missing out on bread each day. In winter, the Africans were not given warmer clothes. They appealed to the wardens and this was changed eventually.

Eddie took us through the prison showing us the different sections. He took us to Nelson Mandela’s cell, a tiny 2 x 2 grey block, and then his own, identical, just a few doors down.

When Eddie was finally released in November 1978, for 15 years he had not seen anyone expect the 30 interned with him. It was a summers day when and he remembers the sight of the first woman he had seen in 15 years, in a floral dresses. And babies. In 15 years he had not sighted a baby. To this day he holds these images in his mind as the most captivating he has ever witnessed.

Today Robben Island is a symbol of reconciliation. Both former prisoners and wardens work together operating the museum and tours.

In 1995 there was a reunion held on Robben Island for all South African political prisoners of this time. Nelson Mandela spoke and as he left the quarry where the prisioners had toiled under hard labour and he put down a stone. Everyone followed. This pile of stones is the only memorial on the Island, dedicated to the struggle against the oppressive regime, the different shapes and sizes of the stones representing the different colours and creeds of the people and Nations that fought against it, and different people that form the free South Africa today.

The Fairest Cape of All..

It has been argued that Cape Town is possibly the world's most beautiful city. I'm not sure that anyone has been able to say this for certain as yet, as nobody has visited them all, but I certainly see were they are coming from. On Thursday morning, we drove into Cape Town from the airport, I had my head pressed against the front window of the car, trying to comprehend the sheer magnitude of Table Mountain, its rocky and steep surface that seemed to rise straight up from the ground next to me.

James, a young Kiwi whom I had met at Perth Airport was waiting for me when I got to the hostel. He had arrived earlier that day so we walked into Cape Town to get our bearings.

After seven months of warnings, I was very surprised at how safe I felt walking down the streets. That night at the bar I met a guy who had lived in Cape Town for 30 years, and had never been robbed, but attributed this to always being cautious.

I did, however, see my first machine gun. While we were walking a van dramatically pulled up next to us. About five armed guards with machine guns ran out and jumped behind the nearest tree. James and I panicked! We were right in the middle of all these guns. We looked around furiously for the possible maniac that was about to blow us up. Then a guy stepped out of the van with one of those old fashioned shopping trolleys and went in to the nearest bank. He came out a few minutes later and all the machine guns got back in the van. South Africa's version of Armaguard!!!

On Friday I decided to face my biggest fear head on. The public transport system. While in Cape Town there are plenty of options favored by backpackers to avoid the trains, in other sections of Africa, for me there will be no options but public transport. I will have to do it eventually! In the morning I walked down to the station, through the markets, hundreds of people yelling trying to sell everything from cigarettes to hair extensions. I must have looked to nervous. My bag was zipped inside my jacket. I bought a daily ticket for 22R (About $4) fumbling with my wallet, trying to keep it out of sight. The train wasn't for another 40 mins, so I went and waited in a nearby department store, rather than on the platform. When I boarded the train I nearly burst out laughing. From the storied you hear around the town, I expected gangs and thugs cramming into each compartment, pick pocketers at the ready. Instead the carriage was almost empty, except for about 5 old ladies, with purple wash through thier hair, a girl about my age, and an old man who said good morning to me when I sat across from him.

The train ride was fantastic. First it followed the mountains, past Table Mountain, along the various outcrops that extend down the Cape, and then wrapped around the coastline, along False Bay, the longest beach in Africa. The view was exceptional. The Sandrigham line I use to catch to uni everyday has a lot to answer for. I took these photos from the train windows:









The end of the line was Simonstown, a cute English style holiday village. I wandered through the shops, looking at antiques and local art, then had fish and chips down by the water. Further down the beach was a penguin colony, of African penguins found only along this coastline. My first African animal!? I watched them waddle around and swim for about a while before I headed back to Cape Town.

I’m still walking fairly early and yesterday morning after I had been sitting outside for a few hours reading my guidebooks, trying to form some type of itinerary, Yon, a Dutchmen in his 70s, staying at our hostel came around to chat. He has had an amazing African journey, beginning in Egypt, spending a lot of time in Ethiopia before traveling down to Cape Town. He’s traveled most of the world. I explained that I was worried, with only 4 months in Africa, and so much I wanted to see I just couldn’t seem to squash it all in. Even in Cape Town already I felt that I was missing out on so much. The weather has been too bad to climb the Mountain, and I will probably come to Cape Town and miss out on seeing Cape Point, as there is no public transport out there, and the day tours as extraordinarily expensive. He laughed. “Yes! The day trips are criminal!!” he said. “But believe me, in the world there are many beautiful things to see. And you will never see them all. So don't try. If you can't see it, appreciate the other beautiful things you have been lucky enough to witness.” From were we were sitting the Mountain had turned orange as the sun was rising. He was right. It was enough to just be in Cape Town. I didn't have to run around taking pictures of it from every angle. The angles I had seen where beautiful enough. We talked for about an hour, until Darren, the Englishmen sleeping in the bunk above me wandered out. “Sorry to interrupt, Courtney I have hired a car for the day and I'm going to drive out to Cape Point, would you be interested in coming along?? “Yon, ill catch you later!” I said. Yon laughed and waved me off.

Long flight to Joburg...

Yesterday I was on edge the whole day. I took my seat on the plane next to a loud Californian named Tim. Tim was traveling to the Congo, he does every month for work. He was a oil rig supervisor. I was so nervous I was shaking. "Scared of flying?" asked Tim.
"Oh no" I said. "I can fly".

Before we took off Tom got something out of his bag. It was a little bracelet made of string.
"I want you to have this. I worked with a lot of Thai people and this bracelet has been blessed by a monk. Never take it off and no harm will come to you" he said.

If your already nervous about the whole international thing, the worst thing a stranger can do is to give you something - no matter how small.

I panicked. I didn't want the bracelet. When I felt it, there was a piece of metal or something woven into the string. I've always had a wild imagination, so while I reasoned that it was proberbly unlikely that I was a drug mule for a 10th of a gram of cocaine, I did imagine the senario where the bracelet gave of just enough of a scent to allow sniffer dogs to detect it, resulting in hours of searches and interrogation at Joburg airport, providing enough distraction for Tim's more well endowed mules to escape undetected. At the time, this seemed viable.

Tim had a few bouborns and fell asleep. I took the bracelet off, and wore my polarfleece for the rest of the flight so he wouldn't notice.

After 11 hours the pilot announced that we had landed on African soil. A prag of excitement ran through my body. Buses pulled up to take us to the terminal. On the bus I was crazy. There were building materials everywhere - all over the tarmac. The sun was setting behind them. It was beautiful.

Every couple of seconds I would look around and remind myself I was actually in Africa. It was like the best dream I had ever had, and it just kept going. In a crammed bus after an 11 hour flight, my smile hurt. Everyone else looked like they were ready to kill.

"Joburg Airport has no rules. Its like a rugby league match" warned Tim before getting off the plane.

Passport control was about the size of a basketball court. There must have been 500 people there, as 240 had gotten off my plane. There were 3 checking counters open. It took a few minutes to issue each person with a visa. The Aussies were cracking it. I could hear them above everyone else:
"This is ridiculous"
"They should open more gates"
"They would have had to have know there was this many people arriving"
"Oh (sign) for goodness sake"
I counted 9 signs advising were you could send your complaints to.

Customs wasn't what i had imagined. I walked up to the officer and he gave me a "What do you want?" look, and waved me on. I felt like turning around and yelling "Im not carrying any fruit or vegetables - not that you care!"

I got to the hotel easily and flaked. I jumped into bed with a cup of tea and watched that movie were Nicholas Cage gives away half his lottery ticket. I woke at 8am Perth time. 2am South African....

Perth

Well I’ve now left Melbourne. Lots of goodbyes, which I managed, lots of stuff to clean up, which I didn't manage quite as well. Big thanks to Tess (my sister) who has been left behind to pack up all the stuff that didn't go in my backpack.

I also forgot to write the will I promised my mother I would do before I left - so here goes: Its my last dying testament is that everything I have (soon to be simply credit card debts) will go to her - unless I get a cat - in which case ill have to reconsider my loyalties.

Anyway – Perth. I use to live here about 17 years ago, and this is the first time I’ve been back since. The few memories I have of the place suggest that Thelma and Uncle Poppy’s garden path is still the same (I remember running down it when I was little), but my childhood friend Lee is a hell of a lot taller.

My Mum and I have been swaning around (get it – ‘swaning around’ – cause WA emblem is a swan!) I’ve also slept in, and drunk lots of coffee and beer.

Saturday my Mum and I took Cliff (the 16 year old son of my cousin Karen who we are staying with) to Rottenest Island for the day. The ferry left from Hillary’s, just out of Perth. About 3 minutes before departure I decided I needed to use the bathroom. The toilet paper dispensers were the type where the stack of cheap one ply toilet rolls weighed so heavily on the others that every tug resulting in one pathetic thin piece spitting back at you. I had just finished washing my hands when one of the stressed out old lady’s I had lined up with called out “Well how am I meant to get the toilet paper out!”
“I’ll get some for you,” I yelled out. Next minute similar requests came from just about every toilet compartment. My mother and Cliff are waiting at the jetty, worried about why I haven’t returned to catch the ferry, and I’m running around delivering toilet paper to the old and arthritic.

I managed to make the ferry. We had planned to hire bikes and ride around the island, except once we got there, but Mum and I were a little worried about leaving Cliff behind in a cloud of dust once we really got going – not to mention certain rumors about the state of one buttocks after such a ride. So instead we walked around the island, visited the museum and enjoyed the beautiful beaches.

This evening we had dinner with our friends Fi and Paul, in a fantastic, but empty Greek Restaurant. Fi and Paul have traveled extensively, and I believe have been to Greece, so I found it funny to hear Fiona say she hadn’t had Greek food this good since she was in Melbourne.

Next stop is Cape Town.