For a trip that started with my mobile phone being stolen the day I landed in Cape Town, the one week that I spent with South Africa was more than sublime. It was therapy, a full-body massage for a very weary soul. 
Long hours spent on the road, watching the country blur beside you, soaking in the newness and the sun, the tangible dust, the noisy wind and endless roar of the engine. Just sitting, seeing, and watching quietly as the knots and stress and knuckles and chewed fingernails all seep away.
A visit to any part of Africa is deemed incomplete without having been on a safari, regardless of whether the African nation or region you happen to be visiting is at all known for bountiful wildlife. Still (thankfully), I seriously doubt anyone looks for ostriches in Egypt. Anyway, South Africa is in fact unabashedly rich in the wildlife department, thanks to its phenomenal, world-renowned Kruger National Park. But, as things came to pass, it turned out that the six usable days I had in South Africa would not allow for a trip up far north to visit Kruger AND do it justice AND do a certain other activity I’d set my sights on in the southeastern part of the country.Next best? A half-day safari in a private game reserve a few hours drive from Cape Town. While nowhere comparable to what I can only imagine the splendour of Kruger to be, this safari was charming its own way, with its grumpy buffalo, aloof zebras, lugubrious giraffe, feisty springbok, sassy elephants, and our excellent guide, who, on one occasion cheerfully handed us all a large ball of rhino dung, asking us to sniff it, and extolling its awesome aroma, before actually telling us what we were cradling so lovingly in our arms.
A mid-morning pit stop during the safari for a ‘drinks break’, which consisted, oddly enough, of juice and/or wine/champagne/beer in the afternoon had me immensely puzzled, until a visit to the reserve website a few days later revealed that what we had signed up for that day was in fact a half-day tour at the “Aquila Luxury Private Reserve”. Suddenly, the made-up faces of our safari-companions and the slight wrinkling of their noses at our disheveled presence seemed to make a lot more sense. In spite of (and probably because of!) all of this, the day was incredibly, surprisingly fun. Next time, maybe we’ll even see not just one, but a whole herd of gnus.
Cape Town’s most popular claim to fame is the towering Table Mountain that dominates most of its landscape. Technically, Table Mountain isn’t exactly “towering”; it’s more of a mountain stopped short in its tracks… into a plateau. This table-top is easily accessible by cable car today, although several trekking routes snake all around as well. Table Mountain adds to Cape Town that exotic air that Rio de Janeiro is said to exude; to say that the views from above are stunning is a terrible understatement.
And yet, there are those other bits and bobs about South Africa that everyone knows and shies away from mentioning. As the Lonely Planet admits, it’s very easy while in South Africa to have an exclusively “white” experience of the whole country. The hotel the company had me staying at in Cape Town was distinctly, unapologetically “white”, or non-black for the most part, its clientele comprised mostly of young, rich, yuppie white South Africans, hip and terribly cool. As a little brown girl in the midst of this strange divide, neither here nor there, I was as confused and ill-at-ease as I daresay many of the immigrant and first- and second-generation Indians in South Africa are. In the end, for my part, I was happiest in the Baz Bus backpacker bus, on my way to Stormsriver, to stand on the Bloukrans bridge and contemplate jumping off it. When the world ceases to make sense, take a little walk and get lost a little bit. Or take a little swim, and drown a bit. Or a little jump, and fall a fair bit.
I was fortunate enough, however, to have met a Cape Town local while at work on the boat, the Marine Mammal Observer, Victor, who, when he heard that I would be spending a few days in his city, promised to devote an entire day to showing me parts of Cape Town that I wouldn’t normally see as a tourist.
What followed was a completely mad and enlightening day, where, among a multitude of lightning visits and drives, I saw Cape Town’s local casino with its own ice skating rink, desolate at 10 AM on a Friday morning, where Victor and I promptly proceeded to skate away shakily at first but with steady improvement, to some seriously horrible music, for the rest of the morning.
Celebrating our achievements with a very suspect brunch at Wimpy’s, we headed back to the city via a combination of the local train and rikki, a sort of shared-taxi-which-is-actually-a-minivan. A note about Cape Town’s train system. The Lonely Planet will have you believe that it is a dodgy and substandard mode of transport, but it is by far of much better quality that local intra-city train systems in India. And yet, the Lonely Planet calls India’s local trains a vivid and thrilling not-to-be-missed experience. I guess India is allowed its charming third-worldliness, as long as it doesn’t aspire to move up the global food chain. But for South Africa, which insists that it is as First World as any other, thankewverriemuch, why, the train system is truly “appalling”!
As is the crime rate and poverty in the Cape Flats, Cape Town’s edition of Dharavi. And yet, as Patrick, Victor’s oldest friend drove me through the flats, and after a visit to both his and Victor’s homes, I was left scratching my head with puzzlement at what exactly it was that South Africa was so ashamed about. Agreed, the City Bowl and Cape Flats residential areas are worlds apart, but the city’s (and country’s) refusal to accept that the shiny-happy and the not-so-shiny-happy are all part of the whole package is bewildering and disheartening.The paranoia exists everywhere. All through my week in South Africa, with uncanny frequency, I’d see houses fenced in with tall, barbed-wire meshes, all claiming to be electrified with enough voltage to vaporise the foolish instantly, guarded by the “city’s best armed forces”, shops with loud posters declaring that they had “absolutely-no-cash-on-the-premises-so-please-don’t-rob-us”, travel books and pamphlets detailing precautions to take while travelling through the country, entreaties to white travellers to please not look too rich, thankyou. In all the hotels, in the tourist buses, the staff, drivers, servicemen are black or coloured, the clients, white. You catch the driver muttering under his breath, “#*&@&# whiteys”, you watch the doorman stare stony-faced straight ahead as he holds the door open for twittering, dolled up, white twenty-somethings. Years after the official end to apartheid, South Africa still remains a country divided. Enough has been written and said about this. But to see it for yourself, through neutral, brown eyes, is a very strange kind of tragic.
I spent the better part of three days on a bus to get to the far-flung Stormsriver on the eastern cape. Stormsriver is the closest settlement (“village” would be a generous term) to the Bloukrans Bridge, site of the world’s highest commercial bungy jump, something I educated myself about soon after I knew I’d be spending some time in South Africa. But the lesser known factoid about Stormsriver is that it is at close proximity to the Tsitsikamma National Park, a rather rambly, lost, confused, and incredibly beautiful parkland, fringed by a fantastic beach and seaside cottages.
I stumbled into Tsitsikamma in a post-bungy daze, blissfully and deliriously happy, with the majority of the day left at my disposal to ruminate shamelessly over my free-fall into the void. And Tsitsikamma provided the perfect venue for the indulgence I had in mind. A lazy lunch by the sea, followed by a wander into the woods, conversations with the birds, and inordinate photo-clicking. One of those days of unmistakable perfection.
I will always swear by backpackers, even the grimy ones. I cannot stand spending more than a night at a hotel; most hotels are depressing, solitary, and utterly soulless. The only reason I survived two months in a hotel room in Norway was because I barely spent any time in it at all.The Tube n’ Axe backpackers in Stormsriver was an incredibly lucky find. Alright, so it wasn’t so much a find as one of (a grand total of) three available backpacker lodgings in the village, and somehow, it sounded the most appealing. And it was the first backpackers I rang from my depressing-yet-oh-so-cool Cape Town hotel. And it was also one of the hostels where the Baz Bus, easily South Africa’s best backpacker bus, made a routine stop. Enough said. Convenience is a very compelling thing.
The two nights I spent at Tube n’ Axe backpackers were probably the most fun I’ve had at a backpackers in a long time. Travelling solo this time, I found myself in the company of great hosts and very easy-going and friendly co-travellers. From a solo young Brit, Nick, recently laid off from a investment banking job in the UK (and not the slightest bit broken up about it) and heading to Jo’burg to meet his dad, and who seemed to have fallen terribly in love with the Dutch hostel receptionist, to a young South African couple heading for a week-long trek, to an intriguing German couple who “made factories for people”, to the toothless African chef, to the fire-stoking bartender, Andrew, and his accidental, thrill-seeking Brazilian girlfriend, Lorena, the mix was fantastic and fortuitous. The nocturnal bonfires to stave off the chill added to the merriment, as did the pool table and the large-screen TV. My last night at the backpackers was spent guzzling a deliciously cold bottle of cider, somberly watching “I Am Legend” with a bunch of my hostel-mates and discussing the vagaries of an emotional Will Smith, before we all stumbled into our respective dorms and into a very pleasant, very content slumber.
But even now, looking back at my week in Africa nearly a month ago, I know I did everything I possible could’ve in the little time I was there, and yet left so incredibly much out. The journey back to Cape Town with the Baz Bus provided glimpses of the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The Drakensburg mountains, Jeffrey's Bay, Port Elizabeth, Plettenberg Bay, and even a place magically called “Wilderness”. And that's just the southern cape. I’m holding on with bated breath. Until next time?
Addendum:
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of leaping into nothingness, with the sky at your feet and a seemingly endless fall, the cold rushing into your face and drowning your cheeks, arms spread-eagle and free. And then, silence. Nothing but the quiet. And the bliss.
