On The Buses
[Remembering back to the last Blog, I believe I left it after much screaming of Buffalo and wandering round surrounded by more tin-foil than a garlic bread convention, as the Space Party at the Coffee Shack hostel wound down to a close. Looking back through my diary (one of the only things I haven't managed to lose...), that was the night of Tuesday 9th August. This was actually written on Monday 28th November. So that's something like 15 or 16 weeks behind. Ah well.]
The morning of Wednesday 10th dawned, but I wasn't around to see it. That Wednesday was a very lazy day - I slept in, and then mooched around the hostel, writing up a fair bit of this very Blog, copying some music from Mark's MP3 player and generally doing nothing much. In the evening, a bunch of us climbed up the hill behind the hostel to sit on the cliffs and watch the sunset. Except it was quite overcast, so we didn't really see much fun. It was still probably good for me to get the exercise, though I somewhat spoiled the effect by following it up with a couple of beers. Had a few more beers back at the hostel, but was somewhat more subdued (though there was still a fair bit of BUFFALO going on) - main thing I remember is talking with this South African lad who was actually an ex-driver for Acacia (having just recently quit), and watching him try to chat up a Quebecoise lass who was there with her boyfriend. Unsurprisingly, he got absolutely nowhere.
The next day it was time to leave Coffee Bay but, since it was a rather nicer, sunnier affair, I went for a wander along the beach, which is really beautiful For me, though, there wasn't enough to really keep me amused in Coffee Bay, so I wasn't particularly sad to be moving on. So, we piled back into the minibus, Mark, Grant, Hannah, Beth, Warren and me, and took the long drive back up to Umtata (thankfully this time without the driving rain which haunted us on the way down, so we could enjoy the view).
The others were all rejoining the Baz, headed in one direction or the other, but I was continuing my stubborn attempts to travel independently, and was booked on SA Roadlink, a new company on the main scene since my previous time in SA, for the trip through to Durban. And I can generally recommend them, as the coach was comfy enough and was much cheaper than most of the other options (I think it was about 100 Rand, which is about 9 quid). They had a video system onboard but, as this was used to display a BeeGees concert, then The Pacifier (Vin Diesel doing a comedy with kids, somewhat a la Kindergarten Cop), then a Simon & Garfunkel concert, you could argue that it might not have been to everyone's taste. See below, though, for why I don't give them a totally ringing endorsement:
You see, the really memorable thing about that trip was that we ended up making somewhat of a detour due to accidentally leaving a passenger behind at one point...
This may have been partly due to me, as the hostel hadn't actually booked me on the bus (as they'd claimed) so I bought a walk-up ticket and hence wasn't on the manifest. So, when the hostess counted people back onto the bus after one 10-minute rest stop, she thought we were all on but one guy demonstrably wasn't. However, we only found this out at least half an hour down the road, when the driver got rung up by the office to say he had to go back and fetch this guy!! Unsurprisingly, he was not at all impressed, and was quite loud about this for an extended period of time. He was apparently going to try and sue them, and one of the staff actually asked me if I would be willing to be a witness that they didn't just drive off after a couple of minutes leaving him there - I was quite glad to be able to say that I was only in the country for another week or so, and thus couldn't...
Anyways, that somewhat unintentionally livened up the trip, but did mean we were somewhat later into Durban, aka Durbs, than we were meant to be. With all the kerfuffle, I decided costs be buggered, I was going to get a cab from the bus station up to the hostel, and hence it must have been about 10:30 at night by the time I staggered in the door of Tekweni Backpackers. Amusingly, though, despite all this I was still in Durbs before the Baz Bussers - because they divert to a few places away from the highway, it actually takes them longer than the coaches (even if said coaches have an unplanned detour). Eventually, though, Mark and Grant turned up, along with Warren, the Aussie lad we'd been hanging around with at Coffee Shack. Our original plan had been to try and go for a curry when we met up (Durban is home to the largest Indian population in South Africa, and is justifiably famous for its curries), but, in a surprising inversion from back home, it was a bit too late for a curry place to be open, so we ended up going for Italian at a place called Spiga D'Oro.
After food, Grant was feeling knackered and headed back to the hostel, but Mark and Warren were both up for a couple of beers, as this was their only night in town before heading onwards, so we went up the road to the Zeta Bar, which was your fairly typical slightly trendy South African bar - and hence, a bit of a shock to the system after a couple of weeks on the Wild Coast and Garden Route. Lots of the "beautiful people" sitting around listening to R'n'B or writhing on the dance floor, paying stupid prices for drinks (at least for SA - still cheaper than a Student Union back home!) and generally looking quite pretentious. Could almost have been back home, except that the crowd would have been more ethnically mixed in Britain. After a couple of beers, none of us was really in the mood, so we headed back to the hostel, and I bid my farewells to the lads. I was quite sad to be saying goodbye to Mark, in particular, as we'd been travelling along together for over a week now, which sounds like nothing, but feels like eternity when you're backpacking! He was a good lad, even though he did support Man U (and those who know me will know that's quite a hurdle to overcome with me...).
Anyways, that gets us into Durban, and I reckon that's enough for one posting - next one will take in Grant and I heading out to the Valley of a Thousand Hills to meet some Zulus, the start of the Premier League season, and the trip back up to the Amphitheatre, in the Drakensberg mountains...
For now, that's all folks!
Pat
The morning of Wednesday 10th dawned, but I wasn't around to see it. That Wednesday was a very lazy day - I slept in, and then mooched around the hostel, writing up a fair bit of this very Blog, copying some music from Mark's MP3 player and generally doing nothing much. In the evening, a bunch of us climbed up the hill behind the hostel to sit on the cliffs and watch the sunset. Except it was quite overcast, so we didn't really see much fun. It was still probably good for me to get the exercise, though I somewhat spoiled the effect by following it up with a couple of beers. Had a few more beers back at the hostel, but was somewhat more subdued (though there was still a fair bit of BUFFALO going on) - main thing I remember is talking with this South African lad who was actually an ex-driver for Acacia (having just recently quit), and watching him try to chat up a Quebecoise lass who was there with her boyfriend. Unsurprisingly, he got absolutely nowhere.
The next day it was time to leave Coffee Bay but, since it was a rather nicer, sunnier affair, I went for a wander along the beach, which is really beautiful For me, though, there wasn't enough to really keep me amused in Coffee Bay, so I wasn't particularly sad to be moving on. So, we piled back into the minibus, Mark, Grant, Hannah, Beth, Warren and me, and took the long drive back up to Umtata (thankfully this time without the driving rain which haunted us on the way down, so we could enjoy the view).
The others were all rejoining the Baz, headed in one direction or the other, but I was continuing my stubborn attempts to travel independently, and was booked on SA Roadlink, a new company on the main scene since my previous time in SA, for the trip through to Durban. And I can generally recommend them, as the coach was comfy enough and was much cheaper than most of the other options (I think it was about 100 Rand, which is about 9 quid). They had a video system onboard but, as this was used to display a BeeGees concert, then The Pacifier (Vin Diesel doing a comedy with kids, somewhat a la Kindergarten Cop), then a Simon & Garfunkel concert, you could argue that it might not have been to everyone's taste. See below, though, for why I don't give them a totally ringing endorsement:
You see, the really memorable thing about that trip was that we ended up making somewhat of a detour due to accidentally leaving a passenger behind at one point...
This may have been partly due to me, as the hostel hadn't actually booked me on the bus (as they'd claimed) so I bought a walk-up ticket and hence wasn't on the manifest. So, when the hostess counted people back onto the bus after one 10-minute rest stop, she thought we were all on but one guy demonstrably wasn't. However, we only found this out at least half an hour down the road, when the driver got rung up by the office to say he had to go back and fetch this guy!! Unsurprisingly, he was not at all impressed, and was quite loud about this for an extended period of time. He was apparently going to try and sue them, and one of the staff actually asked me if I would be willing to be a witness that they didn't just drive off after a couple of minutes leaving him there - I was quite glad to be able to say that I was only in the country for another week or so, and thus couldn't...
Anyways, that somewhat unintentionally livened up the trip, but did mean we were somewhat later into Durban, aka Durbs, than we were meant to be. With all the kerfuffle, I decided costs be buggered, I was going to get a cab from the bus station up to the hostel, and hence it must have been about 10:30 at night by the time I staggered in the door of Tekweni Backpackers. Amusingly, though, despite all this I was still in Durbs before the Baz Bussers - because they divert to a few places away from the highway, it actually takes them longer than the coaches (even if said coaches have an unplanned detour). Eventually, though, Mark and Grant turned up, along with Warren, the Aussie lad we'd been hanging around with at Coffee Shack. Our original plan had been to try and go for a curry when we met up (Durban is home to the largest Indian population in South Africa, and is justifiably famous for its curries), but, in a surprising inversion from back home, it was a bit too late for a curry place to be open, so we ended up going for Italian at a place called Spiga D'Oro.
After food, Grant was feeling knackered and headed back to the hostel, but Mark and Warren were both up for a couple of beers, as this was their only night in town before heading onwards, so we went up the road to the Zeta Bar, which was your fairly typical slightly trendy South African bar - and hence, a bit of a shock to the system after a couple of weeks on the Wild Coast and Garden Route. Lots of the "beautiful people" sitting around listening to R'n'B or writhing on the dance floor, paying stupid prices for drinks (at least for SA - still cheaper than a Student Union back home!) and generally looking quite pretentious. Could almost have been back home, except that the crowd would have been more ethnically mixed in Britain. After a couple of beers, none of us was really in the mood, so we headed back to the hostel, and I bid my farewells to the lads. I was quite sad to be saying goodbye to Mark, in particular, as we'd been travelling along together for over a week now, which sounds like nothing, but feels like eternity when you're backpacking! He was a good lad, even though he did support Man U (and those who know me will know that's quite a hurdle to overcome with me...).
Anyways, that gets us into Durban, and I reckon that's enough for one posting - next one will take in Grant and I heading out to the Valley of a Thousand Hills to meet some Zulus, the start of the Premier League season, and the trip back up to the Amphitheatre, in the Drakensberg mountains...
For now, that's all folks!
Pat
Labels: Africa, Eastern Cape, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
posted by Pat at 10:02 pm
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