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