The Karroo Tour

The Karoo Tour

 

         The week before our tour into the Karoo, Margaret Free's family came for a visit to South Africa. They hired a tour guide named Peter, a 30 year old man in a 65 year old body. He was a great tour guide so Margaret decided to plan a trip with Peter as our guide through the vast semi-desert region of South Africa called the Karoo. We were picked up from Langerry promptly at 8:00am by Peter in a large 12 seater Volkswagen bus.

        We started the tour from Port Elizabeth, and he commented on just about everything we passed until our first stop at the Daniel Cheetah Breeding Project farm, where we were able to look at all kinds of rare and endangered African cats. Little did we know that we would be let into a cage with a cheetah to pet it.

      She felt like one big, soft and greasy house cat which purred so loud you could hear it from fifteen feet away. Not to mention you could feel her purring. She even rolled around on top of some of us just like a domestic cat. I couldn't believe it. It was the most intimidating animal I have ever seen that close. NOt even fifteen minutes after being in the cage with the cheetah, the woman let us into a walled enclosure with several lion cubs. We were very happy with our first stop of the tour.

          After the cheetah farm, we plugged onward to Jansenville, a small Afrikaner town that had some small art and cultural exhibits as well as a beautiful Dutch Reformed Church (or in Afrikaans: Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk). After a short stop, we pushed on to another town called Graaf-Reinet where we would spend the night. We explored the town and went to three different museums of choice, but most of us spent time in the restored Afrikaner frontier home, the gun museum, and the fossil museum. After we had our fill of the museums, we stopped at a Spar to get groceries for our braii that night (beer-butt chicken and armadillo), as well as wine to have on top the mountain that overlooked the Karoo's Valley of Desolation for the sunset:

Vano and I at the police station.

          The next day we continued on to Nieu-Bethesda, a strange little town with dirt roads (at this time it was just mud), where we stopped to look at some famous art exhibits: the most famous being The Owl House. I despised the place, and I'm pretty sure that everyone in our group was creeped out enough by the whole place that we left after one brisk walk through without any regrets. I also stopped by the local police station when I saw the young officer sitting alone bored out of his mind. He had been posted in Nieu-Bethesda for the month, and in this town...there was nothing going on for him to take care of. We had a chat and he saw me looking down at his pistol and finally he said, "Man, I see you looking at it. You wanna hold it?" I replied, "Really?" He saw the excitement in my face and he grinned and said, "Too bad." After he got his fill of his joke, he looked around and then quickly ushered me into the police station office where he removed and unloaded his South African Z88 pistol for me to hold while he told me about the AR-15 assault rifle and combat shotgun he had in the locker not three feet from me. We talked for a bit after I examined his pistol and I learned about the schooling it took to become an officer and what he does day to day as a police officer.
We continued through Nieu-Bethesda to a local brewery for lunch. We had Kudu salami, every kind of goat cheese imaginable, and every type of beer he had to offer. Many of us ended up leaving with 6 bottles of the guy's beer because we enjoyed it so much.

 

A springbok.

We continued our trek to our lodging for the night at an Afrikaner farm in the middle of the Karroo. We did a short hike to see some cave paintings that the Khoi-San had left behind on their farm. In addition we saw the old man's collection of fossils that was especially impressive. The collection had even been sought after by the university in Johannesburg. That night we were treated to fresh springbok stew (which he had gone out and shot that morning) along with several other signature South African dishes. We finished out the night drinking our beers from the brewery, playing pool, talking, and listening to some quiet music in their sheep-shearing barn late into the night.


We woke up relatively early to move on in the tour, it was our last day. We said goodbye to our hosts, their two dogs, and their pet meerkat Timon.

Timon and I

Our next stop that day ended up being a stop immediately off the road. During apartheid, black people suspected of crimes or underground political activity were treated ruthlessly and usually just disappeared. Families and friends would most likely never hear from them or about them again, until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of 1995. The TRC was a court-room style of confession to crimes committed during apartheid. The idea was that so many people were involved, and there were so many criminals who violated human rights, that the TRC would be a way to just provide truth and closure to everyone involved. Many of the applicants to the TRC were granted amnesty if they had applied for it. Our tour guide, Peter, knew about a crime that was committed just down the road on our way to Cradock. We pulled off the road into an old police station and what looked to me like a home. It said no tresspassing but we pulled in anyway. We got out and after a short conversation (in Afrikaans) between Peter and a man in one of the buildings, we all piled out. The man was a construction worker, one of ten or so, living in the buildings while they fixed the roads. We walked through the police station where we saw the rings in the wall that were used to tie up 'suspects.' Some of the most brutal forms of torture occurred here. The Pebco Three, (the three men tortured and killed there) were tortured by genital mutilation, severe beatings, and whipping by the white police officers. The three were killed, and their bodies were cut up, burnt, and thrown into several wells near the buildings. Eventually, after the TRC and apartheid had been eradicated, the remains of the three men were recovered and re-interred in Port Elizabeth. I would put up pictures, but no one took any because it was much too solemn of a place to even consider doing so.

We continued on to Cradock, where we saw a memorial to four of the most famous martyrs of the freedom struggle was located. The Cradock Four were four men who were murdered in cold blood for being suspected political activists. Sadly, due to poor planning and budgeting, the project was only half finished. Four immense pillars stand on a hill overlooking the townships of Cradock. All of the other empty buildings and concrete structures had been vandalized. Although it was very sad to see such a beautiful memorial half finished and vandalized, I wasn't surprised. Things like this happen all too often in South Africa. Things run on Africa time, and therefore projects (especially government ones) take forever to be completed, if they are even completed at all.

The abandoned Cradock Four memorial.

We spent some time in Cradock, looking at churches and museums, but continued onward home with a few scheduled stops for food, petrol, and restrooms. To say the least, I have never seen so much stuff in three days. It was an incredible tour, thanks to Peter and Margaret for organizing it.

Next Post: Frontier Weekend

Cheers,
Isaak

Jeffrey's Bay and Hogsback

 

 

Jeffrey's Bay

 

Our car: Danika, Meggan, Bob and I

          A month ago, a group of twelve of us planned our first weekend trip on our own. Our destination was Jeffrey's Bay: Home of the Billabong clothing factory and some of the planets best surfing. One of the most exciting parts of the trip was the fact that we had to rent cars to get there, three of them. In South Africa, automatic vehicles are almost non-existent and are expensive to rent. Only a handful of us know how to drive manual cars, so Dummer, Shannon and myself volunteered to drive. Renting the car, getting to the airport, and paying for the cars weren't the main hurdles, but driving on the left hand side of the road was. Coming back from the airport, we all made sure we had "spotters" that would keep an eye out to make sure we stayed on the left hand side. Good thing it was only an hour drive.

Dressed and ready to surf. Crystal Cove is in the background.

        The drive went relatively smooth, with the exception of me running the one and only traffic light in all of Jeffrey's Bay. We left early Friday morning and arrived at our backpacker called Crystal Cove. The place reminded me of a small California surf town. We asked the front desk attendant who we should contact about surf lessons and she asked us to give her five minutes. Within five more minutes of her phone call, we had an instructor at the backpacker with surfboards and wetsuits. As we got dressed to go, the girls on the trip planned out a horseback ride along the beach while we did our lessons. We drove about five minutes through town (it takes about six minutes to get through all of Jeffrey's Bay), to the beach we would be surfing on. It was sandy, so we wouldn't get too hurt in the surf.

On the beach: post-lesson...pre-surf.

      We began our lesson after a quick cool-down in the ocean with our wetsuits. We body surfed for a bit and returned to shore. The waves were enormous. We learned the proper technique for 'catching a wave,' followed by learning to hop up on the board. After enough trial and error, all of us had gotten up at least a couple times. The guy giving us lessons wasn't too much older than us, and ended up surfing with us for about 3 and a half hours as opposed to our two hour lesson.

The boys and the braii.

        That night, we returned to the backpacker and everyone took some long naps. We went grocery shopping and prepared for our first major braii with wood and charcoal. That night ended up being one of the best nights yet of the trip. Norby brought the guitar and harmonica and the two of us played some songs that reminded us of home, including piano man. After a few beers before and after the braii, we strolled down to the beach to look at the ocean under the full moon. The Indian Ocean was warm, and very beautiful, as we waded in the water. I'll never forget that night. We ended the night on a few cigars on the deck with some more songs from Norby.

The braii.

       The next day, we rented surf gear on our own while the girls took their turn getting surf lessons. They did very well from what we could see. We surfed right next to them. Towards the end as we got tired we just swam in our wet suits out to the biggest waves. The waves would toss you around like a rag doll, especially if you got caught in the all too common 'tube waves.' It was hilarious to see everyone get rocked and tossed around by the waves. Following surfing we went to the Billabong factory outlet, had lunch, and returned to Port Elizabeth.

Our Crystal Cove living room.

 

 

 

Hogsback

 

 

The weekend following Jeffrey's Bay, eight of us (Norby, Bobby, Melissa, Michelle, Molly, Erin, Kelcey and myself) rented cars and headed inland to Hogsback, an isolated town nestled in between the Hogsback Mountains. The spectacular hiking, isolated atmosphere, and temperate jungle draws plenty of hippies.

Bobby, Melissa, Michelle and I

This was our second trip out on our own, and this time the drive would be close to four hours as opposed to just one. It was pretty fun to map out our drive and utilize the South African highway and freeway system. A couple hours in we arrived in Grahamstown, a name familiar to us from Long Walk To Freedom and several other of our readings. Putting a picture to the name always helps to understand how real events of the recent past were. We ate lunch at a Hungry Lion, thinking we would be avoiding the KFC just across the street. The Hungry Lion to our disappointment was hardly any more South African than the KFC, all they had was fried chicken. Norby and I stopped in at the grocery store to get some food for lunch and for the braii that night, and for the first time in my life I realized that I was the only white person in the entire store. We walked outside talking about it and realized that we had only seen one other white person in all of Grahmstown save the nine of us walking around. It was a strange feeling. I had already thought I was experiencing the life of a minority in Port Elizabeth, but Grahamstown was the first time I realized that South Africa is not a homogenous mixture in every town. The wealthy, and (mainly) white, populations are located on the touristy coastal cities such as Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, Durban and other big cities like Johannesburg and Pretoria. 

Just outside of Grahmstown we had to make a turn north off of the N2 towards Alice (which I'll talk about later). Norby and I took a turn that we thought was correct, but it started leading us back into Grahmstown. We turned around, and following Norby's lead we went the other way. We ended up taking a turn that brought us all the way back to the coast, which we didn't realize until we hit Port Alfred, a coastal town in the Eastern Cape. We were supposed to be going north, and inland. Norby and I felt bad about it all, but everyone else laughed it off and we kept going. We turned around and stopped at a landmark that was in a series of documentaries by Johnny Clegg. All it was was a giant pineapple. I'm not really sure of the significance of the whole thing, but you could buy pineapples there and all kinds of pineapple souvenirs. 

The four hour turned seven hour road trip ended up taking us through some of the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen... on some of the most scary and winding roads through the hills. Eventually though, we arrived in Hogsback. The roads were all dirt and in very rough condition. We made our way down into the jungle down another side road off the "main drag" (which consisted of about five buildings) down to our backpackers called Away With The Fairies. We were told by last years group that this was a good spot, so we checked it out.

It was a very humid day in the mountains and we spent our time, what little we had because of our detour, doing a quick one-hour hike in the jungle just outside our backpacker. We saw some several types of monkeys including the all too common and mostly irritating vervet monkeys. As it started to get dark, we turned around and picked up pace to start our braii. We cooked a ton of chicken with some toasted bread and grilled potatoes. All of this was accompanied by plenty of Black Label beer and cheap wine.

Left to right: Me, Norby, Bobby

We all woke up to breakfast being cooked by a few of the girls which was to last us for the majority of our four hour hike to a few waterfalls and a swimming hole and, all looping back to our backpacker.










 Here are a few pictures of the hike:

Our trip back took just over four hours, as it was supposed to, despite some very heavy rain on the drive back. We all agreed that even though we had plenty of setbacks on the trip, it turned out to be one of the best weekends we had had yet.

Next post: The Karoo and Frontier Weekend


Cheers,
Isaak