St Lucia

I've got to admit I was a sceptic. I doubted the amount of good these sort of volunteer programs actually achieve. I sort of thought they were a way for people to feel good about doing something for someone in less fortunate position than themselves, then at the end of the day return to the safety of comfy accommodation with hot showers, a cook and a cleaner. I always admired NGOs like the Red Cross who go into war-zones to deliver food and medical supplies to people who desperately need it, I just wasn't sure of the benefit of teaching pre-schoolers English for a couple of weeks. I hate being given help when I don't want it, and I know a lot of people like that, I would be incredibly embarrassed to be forcing lifestyle changes and charity on someone who didn't want it. And how could you ever know if what you're doing is the right thing? I always wondered if programs like this were treading on traditional culture and spreading western ideals and ways of life.

This was before we arrived at our placement in St Lucia, on the Northeast KwaZulu-Natal coast. We were supposed to be volunteering in Mozambique, but had to change our plans because visa rules changed and we suddenly needed work visas, which we weren't going to get quickly. I always thought of South Africa as a pretty modern country which didn't really need the help of international volunteers, before we left Australia I would never have chosen to work here. Things change, though, and after a few months in South Africa I was happy to accept the change in placement. Monique loves helping people; she sponsors children, raises money for charities, and volunteers to help the needy quite regularly. She doesn't have the same piss-weak reservations and excuses that I do. Doing volunteer work while we were in Africa was a no-brainer for her. For me; I don't think it's quite right to spend this long on such a troubled continent without giving something back.

Upon arrival I thought all my worst fears were becoming a reality. The vibe was akin to something you might find at a Rock Eisteddfod, or Australian Idol or something. Everyone was over-the-top positive, North American accents were common and every second word seemed to be 'like'. Commercial pop flowed from the stereo. We were in the nicest accommodation we'd come across in Africa, we had hot showers, a cook, a cleaner and we were based in a touristy town outside the communities where we'd work.

It only took a few days to realise that my first impression was way off. The NGO we were working with, African Impact, has been in St Lucia for around seven years. They have a number of long-running volunteer projects based in two Zulu communities just out of the St Lucia Township. Some volunteers work with medical programs in the communities, we helped out with various community projects such as teaching in crèches, gardening, building, making play equipment, teaching adult literacy and rubbish collection, among a lot of other stuff. Our stint was quite short, only two weeks, but we could see that what we were doing was a part of something long-term and worthwhile.

The Zulu language, isiZulu, is pretty complex. We learnt a few basic things like 'Unjani' (how are you?), 'Ngiaphila' (I'm fine) and Ngiyajabula Ukukuazi (nice to meet you). These words look fairly complex written down on paper, but the thing that a basic English alphabet cannot illustrate is the various clicks, pops and rolled letters that are part of isiZulu. The Lonely Planet phrase book gives descriptions like 'k, but spat out', 'strong b with air sucked in', 'popping p' and 'spitting t'. There's no way you could learn to make these sounds without hearing them, and even then it's out of my league. The sounds are pronounced as a part of words; they don't stand alone in a sentence. It's really hard to get a sentence flowing because you tend to stop mid-word after each pop and click. Needless to say, our isiZulu is pretty poor, just like our isiXhosa, Afrikaans and Swahili. Maybe we'll be better at Portuguese, Malagasy and French.

The HIV rate in the communities we worked in is estimated to be between 70% and 90%. HIV education is a big part of the St Lucia project. This is one of those things I was a bit unsure about; whether the meddling of HIV-negative white people would be appreciated. But after hearing a bit about it I was convinced the project was doing the right thing. There is so much misinformation getting around about HIV and AIDS that the education programs run by African Impact are pretty essential if the infection rate is to drop in future generations. HIV is obviously a huge problem, it's not helped by the tendency of the locals to have multiple wives and/or girlfriends, or cheat on their partners, or both, and of course the misinformation is pretty damaging too. There is one story that suggests that HIV doesn't actually exist, it was made up by white people during apartheid to stop the black population having lots of sex and babies. Mon spent a week teaching HIV education to young teens, I really hope it makes a difference.

A typical day for us was a morning in one of the community crèches teaching ABCs, 123s, shapes, colours, animals etc. in English. We would also did teeth brushing and fire education; things like that. The crèches were great fun, really tiring, often smelly, very loud and great fun. Each day we'd run through a bunch of different stuff and try and test them to see if they were absorbing any of the information. Usually they were really good, but the rest of the time they just liked yelling the alphabet as loud as they could but had no idea what the difference between a K and a P was. It was all good fun though. Playtime was always exhausting, each and every kid wanted to climb all over me; snotty noses, high-pitched squeals and the occasional shit were all in a day's work for the volunteer human climbing frame. I didn't get bitten or punched in the face though, which was commonplace. In the afternoon we'd help out in one of the various community projects, whether it was weeding a veggie garden, reading with primary schoolers, building wheelchair ramps or one of many other activities.

Being a touristy town, there are heaps of activities to do in the St Lucia area. We had weekends off and fellow volunteers did trips to game parks, interacted with elephants, toured the croc and hippo infested estuary, went horse riding or hired cars for a bit of a self-guided tour or a trip to Durban. Mon and I hired a car and went to a place called Cape Vidal for a surf. The beach at St Lucia is supposed to be quite dangerous due to the numerous predators; Cape Vidal is apparently a little safer. To get there you need to drive through a national park which is supposed to be full of leopard and rhinos, but we didn't see any. The surf was awful, but it was nice to wash the week's snot and grime off.

 We had a great time in St Lucia; it's pretty rewarding to feel like you're helping out in the world. The project is really well set up and coordinated by a team of young ladies who do an exceptional job. While we were there all the volunteers were quite young, none over 24, some as young as 17, which was pretty cool. The last few weeks exceeded my expectations, there was a moment when we thought about pulling out because of the visa/Mozambique/flight change issues, I'm stoked that we didn't.

Pat

"What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal" - Albert Pike

J-Bay to Durban

It was hard to leave J-Bay, we'd found a very comfortable niche there. After more than two (nearly three) weeks honing our cutbacks and perfecting our barrel-stance we really needed to get on the road. Time was getting away from us and we still had a lot to do in South Africa. The daily routine of eat, surf, sleep, repeat had taken a bit of the Africa out of the experience so our first stop out of J-Bay was Addo Elephant National Park to re-acquaint ourselves with the local wildlife.

I got pretty sick as we rolled out of town, something to do with leaving one of the world's best point-breaks behind with no known return-date I think. So, while Mon chased zebras around the park in our van, I groaned and complained. Self-game-driving in a National Park is a very different experience to having a guided tour. Because you don't know the good places to spot animals you sort of just take a punt on which road to drive down and anything you come across is a surprise and an achievement. We didn't spot any lions or anything, but we found a big gaggle of mongeese, a lot of warthogs, and got unnervingly close to a rather large African elephant. A trained guide could probably have told us if we were too close or not, we had no idea so Mon kept her foot hovering over the accelerator just in case it made a move. There are signs up all through the park asking people to kindly not run over elephant poo, because that kills dung beetles.

We'd met a few people in our travels who live in Port Alfred and they all reckoned the waves there can get really good. More than one person claimed that Kelly Slater drops by for a wave when he's in the area for the J-Bay comp. I know a similar story about a town just down the road from Bells. When we arrived the surf was quite bad. There are a pair of breakwaters; one with a left-hander breaking along it and one with a right. There was definite potential, so we stayed in town for the night to see if conditions improved for the following day. The backpackers in town was being run by an old bloke who loved a chat. He had the strongest Afrikaner accent we'd come across and we couldn't understand much of what he said. We smiled and nodded and laughed at what we thought were the right places then had an early night. The surf wasn't much better in the morning so we set off toward the Wild Coast.

East London ('Slundon') was the first place where we encountered Government Grant Day. In South Africa welfare payments are distributed in one, monthly, lump sum. On Government Grant Day everyone on welfare storms the shops like they'll miss out on food if they don't buy as much as they can as fast as possible. We thought we'd found the busiest supermarket in the country until we asked someone what the go was.

The Wild Coast is a stretch that runs from about East London in the Southwest to Port Edward in the Northeast. The main highway swings inland and there aren't really any roads that run along the coast. You have to pick a specific destination and make the journey from inland. Unless you have a 4WD and a plan you're sort of restricted to your chosen stretch of beach.

The first place we stayed at was a place called Chintsa. It can also be spelled Cintsa or Cyntsa, so we had no idea how to actually pronounce the word. When we asked the staff at our accommodation they informed us that the word is from the local Xhosa language and is pronounced (Click)nsta, so we were never going to get it right on our own. The place we stayed was an epic backpackers spread out over a few acres of bushland overlooking a lagoon and the beach. Despite the lack of discernible banks (of the sand variety) it was a really nice beach with an abundance of surfing dolphins. It was a good place to spend a couple of days and chill out.

Unfortunately, while we were at Chintsa, we were engaged in war with South African Airlines, so we didn't really get to enjoy the place as much as we would have liked. We had some volunteer work lined-up in Mozambique, but the NGO we had organised it with had run into some Visa issues with the government and we were no longer able to work there. The same organisation runs a project in South Africa and we were offered a place there, which we accepted. Changing our flights was a pain and expensive and Mon did most of the work.

Driving in the Transkei, the area around and inland of the Wild Coast, is hectic. There're lots of hills and winding roads and animals everywhere and potholes and road works and landslides and no adherence to speed limits or rational thinking. There are also about 1.3 million hitch-hikers per 100km. Each is difficult to pass by with their burden of shopping and/or children and their big doe-eyes.

 Coffee Bay is the most raved-about place on the Wild Coast. We'd heard good reports from everyone, seen posters and read tourist info about it everywhere. We had it marked as a place to visit before we even left Australia. It's portrayed as an isolated patch of paradise with a nice point-break that seemed perfect for Mon and myself to score a few chicken-feeders.

The best backpackers in town couldn't accommodate our van, but the one across the road could. We happily claimed a campsite tucked away in a secluded corner of the garden with a view of the river. Lonely Planet says that this backpackers has a 'definite hippy vibe', that's exactly how I'd describe it too. There's a veggie patch and goats roaming about, fire twirling lessons, free yoga sessions and nightly drumming circles and you can't walk far without passing through a cloud of marijuana smoke. But there was also a definite off-season vibe; the hot water wasn't working and wasn't being fixed, the yoga and fire twirling guy was away for a while, there was a bit of half-hearted construction going on and the place just seemed a bit neglected.

Coffee Bay itself wasn't quite up to our expectations. For an isolated place it felt kind of cramped with four or so backpackers and other accommodation, shops and people jammed into a little cove. They all sort of bled into one another and the dirty hippy vibe was present throughout the town. I guess most of the owners were too busy overcharging tourists and fellow hippies to worry about the environmental impact of such an overcrowded, overdeveloped, poorly-built settlement perched on the high-tide mark of a remote beach.

The beach itself was great, despite the point-break being a hoax. There were a few rip-able peaks around and we both got our share of waves. On more than one occasion a pod of twenty or so dolphins shared the line-up with us and showed us up. They were jumping out of wave-faces and frothing about in a dolphin-like manner. There was a genuine risk that a flying dolphin might spear-tackle us, but there's nothing like sharing a wave with these magnificent creatures.

 A day trip to a place called Hole in the Wall is a must-do for visitors of Coffee Bay. We drove, but they run guided hikes every few days. We have plenty of fantastic rock formations at home, but this one is pretty spectacular. Once you've heard the name you kind of know what you're going to see; it's a big rock-wall with a hole in it.

Pondo Fever is epidemic on the Wild Coast. The condition is named after the Xhosa kingdom which used to be in the area. Symptoms include laziness, lack of motivation and a tendency to stay in a certain place for weeks or months rather than the planned few days. Cause of the fever is often blamed on the locally grown, plentiful, dagga. Dagga is the Afrikaans word for Marijuana. We came across several people on the Wild Coast who were showing symptoms. A lot of them seemed to have come as travellers and ended up working at a backpackers or coffee shop while they stayed for a few months just chilling out. One guy we met, who worked at our backpackers in Coffee Bay and seemed to spend all his time getting ready to build a bed, finished Super Mario in 35 minutes the other night.

After Coffee Bay we planned to head up into the Drakensberg (Dragon Mountains), it's a pretty solid drive so we decided to break up the journey with a night in Port St Johns. We arrived there at the same time as a pretty heavy rain shower, which steadily got worse and, later that evening, turned into the worst storm the town had seen in over a decade. After a hectic night of thunder and lightning we awoke to the news that the whole region, and much of the rest of the country, had been smashed by this storm. People had been stranded by floods, houses had collapsed and there had been heavy snowfalls. The main road between Johannesburg and Durban was closed because of the snow and so were many of the roads through the Drakensberg.

We were kind of confused about having our Africa plans ruined by snow, the last problem we expected to have on this continent, so we decided it was best to head for a warm climate. As we were moving toward Durban anyway, we figured we'd just spend a few days in the sunshine on the beaches around the city. There is a stretch of quite-nice beaches that runs from Durban down to the edge of the Wild Coast which was just what we were looking for. Coming over the hills from the Transkei and getting a look at the ocean, it was clear where all the rain from the storm was going; into the rivers then out to sea. A very well defined line separated the blue sea water from the brown river water, and it looked to be several kilometres out to sea. We spent four days cruising up and down the South KZN coast (that's what they call it) hanging out with monkeys surfing the frothy, chocolaty waves at places with names like uMtentweni and uMzumbe. We made a trip up north to Ballito where the water was blue but the sea was flat. Back down south the surf wasn't great, and we weren't too keen on the grainy, brown sea, so as soon as the roads up north were cleared we set off for the Drakensberg.

Lesotho is known as 'The Kingdom in the Sky'; it sits atop the Drakensberg and surrounding mountains. It's a sovereign nation surrounded on all sides by South Africa. 75% of the country is made up of mountains which aren't much good for anything except grazing goats, sheep and the occasional donkey, so most of the population are farmers living off their livestock and a few crops. The only route into Lesotho from KwaZulu-Natal (KZN, the South African province we were in) is through a high mountain pass through the Drakensberg. The road is called the Sani Pass and is a 4WD-only track at the best of times. While covered in snow it's more like a challenging hiking trail. When you look at the road map it's easy to see how we thought we'd just cruise up in our van, luckily we had the good sense to read a bit more into it before we had a crack.

There is a great backpackers at the bottom of the Sani Pass which runs day tours up the pass and into Lesotho. We were lucky and scored a pretty clear day for our trip, so the views were off the chain. Towering over the pass is an imposing mountain wall with a series of peaks. They're called The Twelve Apostles, funny name for a group of rock formations. About two kilometres before the border crossing we had to ditch the Landy and go on foot. It's a pretty steep road, but a spectacular walk with the snow and mountains and all that. The Lesotho passport control building had been snowed in, but someone had dug out a path to the door. A few words with our guide (who crosses the border every day sans passport) and the immigration official was convinced no one else would make their way up the pass in the next few hours; he gave us our entry and exit stamps and knocked off for a few beers.

The highest pub in Africa is located atop the Sani Pass. It has stunning views and stunningly overpriced beers. We took our packed lunch to the top of one of the apostles and ate while we looked down upon the road. A part of the tour was to visit a few locals and check in on what they were up to, we ate some bread, I bought a beanie, the immigration officer strolled past with a long-neck in his hand. Hiking through the snow and seeing the lifestyle that the people of Lesotho lead was not something I expected of Africa but it's been one of the highlights so far.

The Sani Pass is in the Southern Drakensberg, after a few days there we set off for the Northern Drakensberg which is where you can find an incredible chunk of rock called The Amphitheatre. The Amphitheatre is about 5km long and over a kilometre high. It's situated in the Royal Natal National Park where you can also find cave paintings made by the San people quite a few years ago. There was a lot of burning off going on around the area when we were there, but we lucked out and got a pretty clear day to do a walk to The Amphitheatre. We stayed in a place surrounded by grass paddocks with a panoramic view of the mountains, when there isn't any smoke the views are nice.

We're in Durban now, this is where we drop the Wicked van and head up to St Lucia to do our few weeks of volunteer work. There are fantastic waves around Durban, we're staying just down the beach from a place called Cave Rock which is known to throw regular drainers  along the beach. It's small and onshore though, and not likely to change in the next few days, so we're unlikely to see the Durban beaches light up. The break in activities has given us a chance to plan some of the rest of the trip. Got some exciting things to come.

Pat

The Garden Route and J Bay

The southernmost point in Africa, a place called Cape Agulhas, marks the border between the Indian and the Atlantic Oceans. I had always thought the two oceans met at the Cape Of Good Hope, but that was misinformation spread by The Endless Summer. We'd grown quite comfortable in the Cape Town area but knew we needed to start making our way east, towards Durban, where we drop our Wicked van and catch a plane onward. With around a week until the end of the Billabong Pro in Jeffreys Bay we decided to spend a while cruising on the Garden Route, then roll into J Bay just after the contest had wrapped up. But first we made way for the southernmost tip.

Highway driving in South Africa is bad enough, but I'm not a fan of driving in towns either. At most intersections they have four stop signs; one for each road entering the intersection. It makes thing very confusing as it's never quite clear just who has right of way. It usually works out alright, but I reckon they need more roundabouts. At least they drive on the left, otherwise I'd be in real trouble.

The supermarkets over here sell hot cross buns in July and, I'm hoping, August. I love hot cross buns.

The town of Struisbaai is home to the southernmost backpackers and very close to the southernmost tip of Africa. Softened by a few nights in a Cape Town backpackers we decided that the harsh wind of Cape Agulhas wasn't in our interests and went to suss out the free tea, coffee, wifi and wood heater the southernmost backpackers had to offer. A lot of backpackers in South Africa offer camp sites for less than the price of a dorm room. Some just have a patch of grass in the back yard for tent-pitching, not ideal for a Wicked van, but others have a wide open area with easy access for us to set up camp. It's nice to have proper kitchen facilities and a lounge to hang out in, especially when the weather is bad. The southernmost backpackers had a nice, big backyard for us to stay in.

The Agulhas Current travels from the Indian Ocean around Madagascar and Mozambique down to the sea off Cape Agulhas. It brings with it warm water from the Indian Ocean which makes the water east of the cape significantly warmer than the water on the west coast of Africa and around Cape Town. The Benguela Current carries icy Antarctic water up the west coast and meets the Agulhas current off South Africa. The mix of the two currents brings together some pretty diverse marine life. Creatures that thrive in cold water and enjoy the nutrients carried up from Antarctica meet the warm water dwellers. Because the currents mix and move around with the seasons this place is a unique ecosystem. And, of course, those nasty apex predators benefit too.

There's lots to see and do on the Garden Route. Between Mossel Bay and Plettenberg Bay (roughly)  you can find some really nice coastline and hills and forests and do a huge bungy jump and things like that. While we were there the swell was big and the wind was offshore. We had to ignore urges to run straight to Jeffreys Bay because you can't surf when the contest is on. Mossel Bay is a pretty cool place, nice scenery and stuff. They have a huge sand-boarding dune near there. But while conditions were right we were sort of focussed on finding waves. I surfed a pretty fun peak inside the bay and Mon surfed the beachies, neither of us were particularly frothing, and we had a few places in mind where we could get some waves further along the Garden Route.

The Garden Route runs along a really exposed stretch of coastline, I didn't realise that until we got there. We drove past a series of long beaches that were just out-of-control, chaotic close-outs without much relief. Victoria Bay is a little cove we'd been recommended and were keen to check out. It's a really cool little setup with a row of houses running out along one side and a few little cafes and stuff. There's potential for some fun waves on the point too, but it was maxed-out like the rest of the coast, we did see a massive pod of dolphins cruising along though. A quick look at the map revealed that the next place where there would be some shelter from the swell and maybe a surfable wave was Plettenberg Bay, at the other end of the Garden Route. Figuring we could just come back and do the Garden Route properly we jumped in the van and kept heading east.

The most helpful piece of information we could find in guidebooks about Plettenberg Bay is that the locals call it Plett. There is a pretty popular body-boarding wave there called the Wedge, but I wasn't too keen to break a board, or limb, just yet, and another wave that's supposed to mediocre and very close to a seal colony, so we avoided that one too. Then there's a stretch of beach called that supposedly gets very good very rarely, but after a day of watching unrideable beach-breaks we didn't even bother looking. We dedicated the afternoon to finding a backpackers and getting food etc. Around dark I ran into a couple of local surfers who'd been down at the rarely-good beach and reported it to be in best-ever form. Although crowded, they said, there were barrels big enough to drive a Wicked van through. After kicking myself, I set my alarm for a dawn session.

We found out about a week later that a few years ago a storm ripped through the dunes that separated the beach from an estuary behind, as a result a new river-mouth was formed that now runs along some rocks and forms a perfect sand bank. When I rocked up the next morning and saw perfect right-hand barrels running down the bank I was stoked, although a little perplexed as to why no one was out. Pushing thoughts of sharks from my mind I got changed as slowly as I could, hoping someone else would show up and paddle out with me. No such luck. I surfed for about an hour by myself, getting all kinds of barrelled, before I lost my nerve and went in. It's pretty eerie surfing at a river mouth in South Africa, especially when it's dark and rainy and spooky, and you're alone and full of excuses. When I hit the beach there were a couple of guys about to paddle out, so I turned around and surfed for another hour. I'd like to thank Mon for her patience over those few days when I surfed my guts out and she got bored. My feelings about sharks at this place turned out to be well founded. The day before I surfed alone someone spotted a Great White out there, just a little one; 2.5 metres. They're common visitors to the area and someone was killed a few years back. I've even heard it called the sharkiest spot in South Africa, and I've only heard five other places called that since I've been here.

A lot of the car parks at surf spots in South Africa are manned by car park attendants. They just cruise there all day and make sure no one steals stuff from your car. Or your car. Which is pretty handy seeing as there're signs and tourist info all over the place advising against leaving valuables in the car. But our car is our house, so we don't have much choice. The attendants direct you to the best available park when you arrive and make sure you don't hit anything on your way out. All for a few coins from the ashtray. I'm not sure if they're employed by the council or something, or if they just cruise in the car park all day and live off tips. They're pretty handy dudes.

From this end of the Garden Route, and with the Jeffreys Bay contest drawing to a close, it seemed kind of pointless and counterproductive to go backward and do the tourist route properly. Besides, there was a big southeast swell on the way and I had an idea of how utilise it. One of the most iconic scenes in The Endless Summer is at a place called Cape St Francis.

They walk over miles of dunes on the off-chance that they might find a wave running down the ruler-straight cape. They're greeted with perfect waves that run for ages, and they figure it must break like that all the time, but they had no way of knowing for sure. In The Endless Summer II they reveal that the wave needs specific and quite rare conditions to break, and that since they started building houses in, and planting-out, the dunes the sand has stopped blowing into the sea to make a perfect sand bank all the way down the cape. It's still a great wave, just not quite the same.

Since I've spent the last few years trying to predict Blacknose conditions I figured I was overqualified for a spot of Cape St Francis forecasting. The huge ESE wind-swell on its way must've been just what we were looking for. I didn't look at the weather report though, just the swell and wind, so we spent a night in an overpriced caravan park sheltering from a hectic storm, cooking dinner inside the van and sipping Amarula hot chocolates. The next day we cruised down to the surfing area, which has been named 'Bruce's Beauties', after Bruce Brown, the guy who made The Endless Summers. Well, it was breaking, but it was big, broken-up and blown-out. Nevertheless, I was keen to get a few waves. No one else was out, so I took a stab at where the best spot to scramble over the rocks was; this was somewhat successful. Once in the sea I was immediately hit by a set which didn't seem to let up at all. I got one wave, fell off and got washed up a boat ramp, pretty stoked I'd surfed Cape St Francis.

The Billabong Pro at Jeffreys Bay had wrapped up the day before, and although we guessed the crowd would probably hang around for the weekend, we figured we'd just wait it out in town and take advantage of others' hangovers and empty waves. We pulled into town on a Saturday and stayed in a backpackers' car park. First thing Sunday morning we went down to Supertubes, the premier wave in J Bay, to see if the sea had cleaned-up at all. There were 144 competitors in the recently finished contest, I think most of them were in the water. Plus the locals. Plus our fellow tourists. So much for hangovers. All the pros and other competitors looked pretty funny on the beach in their brightly-coloured wetsuits, with their corresponding photographers, doing their pre-surf exercises; like some kind of dance recital. The surf was pumping too, so I had to go out.

In the following days we found a really cool backpackers and settled down for twice as long as we intended. Mon surfed more than me, and I surfed a shitload. Supertubes didn't get as good as that first day when it was super-crowded, but it was good most days. I traded waves with Jordy Smith one day, Tom Curren another, got burnt by John John Florence yet another. Surfed all the waves within walking distance of our hostel with dolphins and whales. We raided the factory outlets. Cooked big communal meals with our new friends in the backpackers. And spent two or so weeks relaxing. J Bay kind of reminds me of Torquay; it's about the same size and a really surf-industry-focussed town. There're factory outlets for all the major brands and tourists come to see the surfers ride the waves, like they do at Bells. But you can hide from that. There's a big cape for the swell to wrap around and line up nicely for Supertubes. And the crowd is a pain. But it's a South African Torquay, and I like it better.

Most surfers will agree that no matter where you are in the world, if the surf at home turns on and you miss it, it cuts deep. Even if you're in a place where the surf is quite good, nothing compares to a great day of waves at home. It usually doesn't take long to snap out of it, you realise how lucky you are to be able to travel or to have a decent job or whatever it is that keeps you from the waves, and you just suck it up and get on with whatever you're doing. While I was in Jeffreys Bay I heard about some incredible waves at home, a few photos were posted on the internet, my mates reckoned it was one of the best runs of swell they'd seen on the Surf Coast, and that the waves at home were cooking. I went for a walk to try and shake my gloomy thoughts. I passed the guys who stand on the street corner all day, vying for a chance to mow a lawn for a couple of bucks, they wouldn't sympathise with my predicament. Then on down to the beach where a few nice lines were wrapping down the point at Supertubes. I watched Tom Curren tear apart a wave and figured life isn't all that bad, and jogged back up the hill to get ready for a few South African shacks.

There're heaps of private game reserves in South Africa; like big farms with African animals everywhere. They make money from, among other things, breeding and selling animals, running tours, hosting weddings, and letting people come and shoot the animals for fun (or thrill, or something, not sure). We did a tour of one such park by quad bike, which was pretty fun. We saw giraffe and zebra and stuff. They have Rhinos there too, but they have to dehorn them to deter poachers. Apparently the Rhino horn industry is so lucrative, and the poachers so high-tech, that they use near-silent helicopters and tranquilizers and can poach a Rhino horn from a small game reserve quick as a flash. Our guide reckoned the usual punishment if you catch a poacher is to shoot him on the spot, and no one would mind. Poachers are not very popular. Someone stole the mounted Rhino head from their wedding venue on the reserve not so long ago, hacked off the horn and left the rest. It was a synthetic horn on a synthetic Rhino head, not very valuable.

We went back to Cape St Francis one day when the waves at J Bay weren't really lining up too well. It was really good, which downgraded my previous surf there from significant-moment-in-my-life to a-pretty-stupid-thing-I-did-once. It's definitely not the same wave that Bruce and the boys were getting minute-long rides on in the first Endless Summer, you sort of just surf the end section these days. It's still super fun, I got some great waves, there's even a conveniently-placed boat ramp to walk up when you've finished surfing.

My Uncle Rob lived and worked in this part of the world when he was about my age. He put in automatic telephone exchanges and taught locals how to maintain them, things like that. He has some pretty hairy stories about living in South Africa during the Apartheid era. Back then, he says, the black population was oppressed and did the jobs like garbage collection and being maids and stuff. It was a pretty heated situation back then too, with bombings and strikes and shootings and stuff going down. There's none of those things, that we've seen, anymore. These days there is a bit of a cultural mix in the more desirable fields of work, but there aren't any white garbage collectors, maids, lawn mowers or parking attendants. Just around the corner from every big hotel is a slum area. We're so lucky to live in Australia.

Pat

first lot of photos from SA

http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4317347693065.182256.1268177065&type=3&l=7bea2f9ed2

Cape Town

"I am not particularly religious or spiritual; I am just an ordinary person trying to make sense of the mysteries of life" - Nelson Mandela.

I think I had expected South Africa to be like the Australia of Africa. A mix of white people descended from colonists, local native inhabitants and immigrants from all walks of life. The 'Rainbow Nation', they call it. I guess I didn't realise how recent the whole apartheid saga was, how very much attached to Africa this nation is and despite being informed of the poverty and crime rates here I guess I just didn't get it until I saw it for myself. South Africa is a part of Africa in ways Australia will never be a part of Asia or the Pacific Islands. White South Africans consider themselves African, I wonder how many white Australians consider themselves Asian. I'd never seriously thought about it.

On our first morning in Cape Town we looked out the window of our expensive guest house and looked straight at Table Mountain. I was pretty stoked, ever since I'd seen The Endless Summer I'd wanted to lay eyes on that mountain. During that day I learned that, in Cape Town, you can't really escape a view of the mountain. We'd arrived in Cape Town after dark the night before and caught a taxi to the guest house, which we chose due to its close proximity to our hire car depot, but it ended up being a nice place to stay after three weeks of camping. Our taxi driver was pretty cool, he had heaps of tips for driving in South Africa and about 700 methods for avoiding speed cameras; but he reckons he doesn't speed.

We're in a Wicked van. If you don't know what one looks like then go for a drive in Port Campbell and you're guaranteed to see one. Ours is adorned with a landscape straight out of the cartoon South Park. There is a sign painted on the side which asks 'Who Killed Kenny?' and Kenny is impaled on said sign. The slogan on the back reads 'HIPPIES WANNA SAVE EARTH BUT ALL THEY DO IS SMOKE POT AND STINK'. Wicked vans aren't nearly as numerous in South Africa as they are in Australia, so the van gets a lot of looks, and a lot of photos taken.

The second thing we learned about Cape Town is that there isn't really anywhere to sleep in a Wicked van. So we headed off down the coast towards the Cape of Good Hope through seaside towns in search of a caravan park and a few surfboards. Although we were pretty focused on finding a destination, the journey really was quite incredible; like the Great Ocean Road but better, but only because it was new to us. They even have their own set of rock formations called the 12 Apostles. That first night we stayed in an odd little place called the Caravan Farm. There were bible verses scattered around (in the ablutions block, on the receipt etc) and geese everywhere. We'd been told that the tap water in Cape Town is ok to drink, we then read that South Africa has the third best tap water in the world. That night we drank tap water that tasted like goose poo. The next morning we found out that the Caravan Farm uses tank water and the tank doubles as a goose pond. Nice. Actual tap water in Cape Town smells like urine and tastes like chlorine, but it beats buying bottled water.

I once went six weeks without surfing. That's the longest stint I can remember since the family holiday in the Northern Territory a bit over a decade ago. The six weeks was spent knowing that the two weeks following would be spent surfing with a group of mates in Indonesia and every time I got too stressed out I'd go for a skate or a swim or pull out my surfboard and carry it around for a while. In East Africa I went five weeks without surf and without those luxuries, I think I handled the separation alright, but I was frothing for waves by the time we got to South Africa. I had figured I'd probably buy myself a couple of second-hand boards when I got to Cape Town, or if I found one really nice new board I'd just get that one and no back-up. After a bit of searching we found some surf shops in a town/suburb called Muizenburg, in the North-West of False Bay on the Cape Peninsula. It was a horrible day when we arrived. Wind and rain to rival July in Port Campbell. We pulled up at a place called Surfer's Corner and peered through the rain at the little, wind-swept waves dribbling along the sand. Not exactly inspiring. But there was a row of surf shops with a good selection of boards. And as a new board over here costs half as much as it does at home I bought two brand-newies off the rack. If I twist my own words a bit, this is what I'd planned to do from the start, that's what I'll tell Mum when she gets my credit card bill anyway. The guy in the shop reckoned there were good waves coming too. Stoked.

Surfers Corner has really good waves for long boards. As I'd just bought myself a pair of short boards, after I'd washed out the cobwebs, I was keen to sink my teeth into something a little more exciting. Mon was frothing, she bought her first surfboard ever after years of borrowing and she was surfing better than ever, and we'd found a caravan park which keeps the geese out of the drinking water, so we stuck around for a few days.

I thought sharks were an issue in Australia, I even saw one once. But in South Africa they're actually a problem. There are regular sightings and not irregular attacks. Around Cape Town they have a kind of shark patrol team which consists of spotters sitting in the mountains above the more popular beaches and a warning system with different coloured flags and sirens and stuff. If the beach hasn't got a patrol team it at least has a few signs with some handy safety tips. To attract the sharks for the cage diving trips they run just off shore they chuck a whole bunch of fish guts and other wonderful stuff in the water; 'chumming' they call it. There's a bit of an ongoing debate as to whether this practice makes sharks keener to hang around in the area and try out human hunting. I'm not sure how often someone gets taken, but a body boarder was killed not long before we arrived. The hype about sharks and the cloudy water has made me a bit edgy when surfing, but so far I've still got both legs.

Living out of our van meant we had to make a few dietary changes. We can't really keep things cold, and we only have a tiny gas burner for cooking. Our experiments with canned food and seeing how long things last unrefrigerated have been mildly successful. Let's just say that meatballs in a can are comparable to dog food and long-life milk actual does need to be refrigerated after opening. Things like pre-cut veggie mixes and two-minute noodles are pretty handy.

South Africa's road toll is atrociously high. Within a few minutes on the highway you can see why. The speed limit is 120km/h but that's sort of minimum speed for a lot of people, and the roads are mostly quite good, so you can drive really, really fast. If you get caught by a remote speed camera you get fined, but don't get penalised with demerit points or anything like that. So if you can afford the ticket, you can pretty much speed all day every day. If you're driving slower than the car behind you you're expected to pull into the emergency lane to let them pass. This leads to some incredibly sketchy high-speed overtaking manoeuvres. We put in a bit of highway time on the way up the West Coast to a place called Eland's Bay.

Eland's Bay is home to one of the best left-hand point breaks in South Africa, about a million empty mussel shells, heaps of kelp, rocks, an unkempt camp ground, foggy mornings, cold nights, really cold water and a train line for very long trains; I timed one that took around five minutes to pass. There was no one at the camp ground office for the first two days, so we got a really cheap campsite. The surf was really good the whole time we were there, both on the point and at the beach right out the front of the camp ground, but kind of crowded because it's within day-trip distance of Cape Town and we were there in the middle of school holidays. For those keeping track of the Endless Summer theme of our trip, we saw the restaurant with the phone number 17, but didn't know what it was so we drove right by.

On our third day in Eland's Bay a Boer family set up camp beside us and became the only other camp ground residents. Then the office opened and camping suddenly got a lot more expensive. At Eland's Bay camping is paid by site, not by the amount of people. So we paid the same amount for the two of us as the whole of the extended Boer family (there were too many to count, around 20). They invited us for dinner, and we took them up on the offer. In South Africa they don't barbeque, they braai, which is just a wood-fire barbeque. Boers are the best braai-ers around, or so they told us, and although we couldn't quite understand what was on the menu, due to their poor English and our non-existent Afrikaans, we could tell it was chicken. And it was good. This particular group of Boers like to drink a lot, eat a lot and insist their guests do the same. Then when everyone's had enough to eat and drink they like to lecture their guests on the dangers of accepting food and drink from strangers in South Africa. The head of the family; a boisterous, loud man whose name I could never quite pronounce adequately, just couldn't comprehend why we'd come to Eland's Bay. It's a non-surfer thing, I think, to not understand the need for surfers to travel ridiculous distances just to surf. So we let him give us a list of wineries, casinos, game reserves and other boring crap to keep him happy.

Another little Endless Summer dream I had was to take the cable car up Table Mountain and look down the Cape Peninsula to the Cape of Good Hope. The views are epic, and the walks and stuff are set up really well with interesting info boards and things of that nature. You can look down on Cape Town and see all along the coast and out to Robben Island. It's cold up the top too, that was annoying.

Robben Island was a prison island for many years during the apartheid era in South Africa. And a leper colony. These days it's famous for being the prison that held a lot of political prisoners for being outspoken against apartheid legislation. The most famous prisoner was Nelson Mandela. They run tours out to the island and you get a tour of the prison guided by an ex-prisoner. I didn't really know much about apartheid before that tour, it's a lot more complex that just 'apartheid'. It was a pretty complicated set of laws and legislation that discouraged and prohibited the mixing of different races in South Africa, and favoured whites over pretty much anyone else. There were some very derogatory laws which affected Bantu people and other coloured South Africans. The prison is a pretty depressing place, but at the same time the success story of the downfall of apartheid is inspiring. Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for something like 27 years by the country that he ended up president of. Top job Nels. The museum at the waterfront is well worth a look if you find yourself in Cape Town but don't do the tour.

We spent a few nights in a backpackers in Cape Town while we did these Cape Town activities. There was a guy staying there who's done a lot of travelling, some travel writing, set up backpackers around the place and is clearly quite crazy. He was the first person to hitchhike from Cape Town to Cairo. He did it in 1982, I don't think I need to tell you what an amazing experience that would have been, nor what an incredibly stupid thing it was to do. Apart from being a God-fearing gentleman with a marijuana dependency who was a bit lost in the world, he liked to be charitable to the needy. His thesis was that charity should be done in person, not through a donation to an organisation. I'm not sure how much of what he told us was utter bullshit, but he's done some pretty impressive work including paying the rent for an orphanage in Uganda and working with very sick people in the DRC. He doesn't understand how someone could just give a dollar to Oxfam without seeing what comes from it.

At present he works with an organisation, I think it's called Rainbow PUSH. They do some good work to do with breaking down race/religion/economic/education barriers. They also have big peace events in weird places. Our friend organised a peace rally in the desert in Egypt for 600 people. He reckoned it was a huge success. A few weeks later there was a car bombing in a city close to where the rally was held, he says it was a response to the event. People died. I think the money invested in this event would have been better given to Oxfam. Rather than 600 peaceful-minded people being peaceful together, then a car bomb, a reputable organisation could have done something real to help out a person or persons in need. But each to their own. I guess what I'm wondering is how do you know that doing something you feel is right is actually doing good? There are brochures in Cape Town asking tourists not to give to street beggars. By giving them a free hand out, it says, you are condemning them to a life of begging. If it proves to be a lucrative industry, why would they stop? The brochure encourages tourists to donate to a local NGO working to give beggars and homeless people a bed, a meal and a chance at earning an honest living. There are a selection of NGOs provided so that tourists can choose one that most represents how they want their money used. All good and well until you see a three-year-old homeless kid sitting on the footpath asking for money. Pretty hard to say no.

Pat