Family Matters

Hello again! Time to attempt one more entry in the journal.

I left the story as I rejoined the Baz Bus from Knysna along the coast to Plettenberg Bay. These are two of the 3 towns most often referred to when people say they have travelled the Garden Route (the other being Mossel Bay, which I skipped past), and are only an hour or so's drive apart. Plett, as it is known by pretty much everyone on the ground, has long been a seaside getaway for families from up in Gauteng province (the area around Jo'burg and Pretoria which was the heart of the Transvaal), and is quite a picturesque little place, flowing down the side of a hill into the beaches of the bay for which it is named.

And this, I have to say, is probably when my South African journey got a little easier and a little bit more sustained fun, as for the first time I met up with a group of people travelling the same direction at the same kind of pace and found myself a little mobile community. In this case, the germination of new companionship came when I was one of a group of 4 backpackers who got off the bus at the same hostel, Nothando's, in Plett - amusingly, the names of the other 3 were Katherine, Patrick and Katherine. Having a giggle over the confusion of the poor desk staff trying to check us in certainly broke what was left of the ice (we'd been chatting on the bus as well), and the fact that they put the 4 of us in a room together cemented our unlikely little group. And then, the unguarded comment of the lass who checked us in that we had been put in what was normally the Family Room gave us our name: we were now The Family.

After fairly quickly agreeing that the least controversial sleeping arrangement was for Kat and Kate to get the double bed, and Patrick and I to get the bunk-bed, we immediately started accusing each other of having various roles in our family. Embarrassingly (though not surprisingly for those few of you familiar with my typecasting when acting at school), I was rapidly nominated as the father of the group - probably largely because Patrick was a maniacally grinning Dutch surf enthusiast, and there weren't any other candidates! Kat was generally agreed to be far more assertive and ready to run things as the mother of the house than Kate. All somewhat silly, but it gave us a ready supply of daft jokes and comments to make of our evening, as we wandered off in search of somewhere for dinner.

And here we really started to resemble a family, as nobody could agree intially on where to go, then, once we had all agreed to go to a pub/restaurant called The Lookout, nobody could agree on directions to start with and then, to top it off, we got kind of lost on the way! All the while, we were giggling and over-acting our various roles in the "family". Once we finally made it to the Lookout (which was right down the bottom of the bloody hill), however, we had a really nice meal, along with a few cocktails, sharing travellers' tales and having a laugh. I hadn't been for a meal out with just a fairly small group of friends since the celebrations of quiz victory for the mighty Jack back before I left Leeds several months before, so it was really, really nice.

Though we then topped it all off, in typically familial style, by being unable to agree on whether it was worth getting a cab back to the hostel (so we didn't get one), then disagreeing about the best route back up the hill, and then all insisting it had been someone else's idea when we all realised just how little fun it was climbing that bloody hill again. And yet all of it was done in good spirits, if not said as outright jokes. Having established as we walked back through the middle of town that everywhere seemed pretty dead, we headed back to the hostel where we ended up sitting around having a few drinks and chatting with Johan, the manager (who was on an "exchange" from a hostel in Cape Town, which was a bit of a bizarre idea for me), and some of the Dutch guys whom I had actually met back in Oudtshoorn. Johan has to be one of the more memorable characters I encountered on my travels, being not just gay but totally, over-the-top, camper-than-Butlins queer as a coot, and occasionally also mad as a hatter. Absolute heart of gold, though - lovely, lovely guy. Still, all of us were pretty tired, and the rest of the family all had things they wanted to do lined up for the next day, so we didn't make it a late one before retiring for the night.

In fact, I was definitely the odd one out of our group the next morning, as I had a whole lot of nothing planned for the day, whereas Kat was off to do a SCUBA dive in the Bay, and Patrick and Kate were off to throw themselves off a 216 metre high bridge. Yep, Plett is one of the most common bases for people to use to do the Bloukrans Bungy. At 216m above the ground below, it is the highest bungy (or bungi or bungee or bunjy or bunji, or whatever) in the world - though I'm not sure if it's the longest actual dive, as the mad bastards who jump off don't actually go all the way to the bottom. It's done from a platform underneath the Bloukrans River Bridge on the national highway. And no, before anybody who obviously doesn't know me well enough asks, I most certainly did not do it, nor was I even tempted to. Paying 50 quid to launch myself from a great height with an elastic band around my legs for company, risking whiplash, detached retinas etc is not really my style. But people seem to like doing it, so good luck to them!

I had a quiet day, lounging around reading the paper and spending time on the internet. Chatted with Kat after she got back from her dive, and before she unfortunately departed that evening headed for Port Elizabeth - she was going to work in a school (I think, or it could have been an orphanage - again, the loss of my original notebook hampers me, but I remember it involved kids) in the area north of there. Only together for a day, and already we were a single-parent family, with nothing any marriage counsellors or anyone could do to save us. (I promise, I'll stop with the terrible family-related jokes and comments now) Patrick and Kate then also returned, the former practically smacking his head on the ceiling as he bounced around with enthusiasm, the latter looking in a state of shock. The difference was even more pronounced on their jump videos: when interviewed on the camera just after being brought back to the platform, Patrick described it as "Awesome, man, you just gotta do it!"; Kate described it as"Horrible". As she said afterwards, she was glad she'd done it, but never wanted to do anything like that ever again. I felt that kind of vindicated my position vis-a-vis bungys. Patrick, though, was still grinning ear-to-ear days later at the thought of it.

That night, after Kat's departure, the remaining 3 of us went out and had another nice dinner, this time at a little Italian joint, together with Barbara, one of the increasing band of somewhat older than average backpackers. After that, Barbara headed for home while the remaining 3 of us popped along to a bar called Flashbacks. According to Johan, this was the most happening place in town at the moment, which is slightly worrying as the place was a bit of a dive, verging on a lot of a dive! Patrick pleaded off relatively early, so Kate and I had a couple of beers before Johan turned up with his boyfriend, and proceeded to be even funnier (and more outrageous) than the previous night.

The next day I had largely planned on carrying on doing an awful lot of nothing, but Kate talked me into going along on a little trip she was planning to take to the Monkeyland primate sanctuary and an elephant reserve. And, to be honest, I'm bloody glad she did - it was really quite a fun day. Monkeyland, despite the less-than-promising (and slightly confusing) name, is a really awesome place. They've got an amazing community of both monkeys and apes there, and they seem to really know their stuff - we did a guided walk with a Ranger, who explained about the various backgrounds, habits, etc of the animals as we encountered them. Amongst those we encountered were Spectacled Langers, Madagascan Lemurs (absolutely adorable), the common South African Vervet Monkeys, Squirrel Monkeys, a Gibbon (a real beauty, albeit quite a noisy one), several Spider Monkeys and an incredibly rare Howler Monkey (that's him in the piccie for this journal entry). Unfortunately, in a sign of how South Africa is a long way from being a land of milk and honey, the Howler was one of a pair of the incredibly rare species acquired through the Sultan of Brunei - the reason they only have one is that the other one apparently just "disappeared" in Johannesburg International Airport. Tragic. They're still expanding, though, building a set-up for an amazing new aviary in a valley next to the one where they have the primate centre.

Still, after all this monkey business (sorry...), it was time to move onto the elephant sanctuary just down the road. Again, I have the enthusiasm of Kate (and of 2 Irish lasses who were also on the trip) to thank for the fact that I did the "walking with elephants" experience there, rather than just sit around waiting for them. I had, by this point, started to try and be a little bit more serious about my budgeting, which had frequently just been blown to shreds on my Acacia trip, and wasn't so keen on spending the money, but it was actually quite a fascinating experience. Led around by our enthusiastic German guide, Ricki, we got to meet and feed 3 of their elephants (all rescued ex-captives, rather than wild creatures) and then go for a walk through the woods with them, hand in trunk. Which was something pretty different, although I have to say that my elephant drooled out of her trunk somewhat, and that elephant drool is really quite icky!

Then, soon enough, it was time to head back into Plett, finish getting all my stuff packed away, back-up my camera on their computer and await the arrival of the Baz Bus. For it was time to move on again, to the last real stop of the Garden Route, in the tiny village of Storms River, set amidst the magnificent Tsitsikamma National Park. But that will have to be a story for another day, as I have a brewery to go to...

Until I write again, take care and have fun!

Pat