South Africa

Cape Town to Plettenberg Bay

After my last trip to South Africa, I said that I would one day return and continue along the coast and the famous Garden Route. Seeing as I had to fly back to Perth from Johannesburg anyway I decided to extend my trip (after a surprise 2 weeks in the UK) and booked a Nomad Africa adventure tour travelling from Cape Town to Johannesburg over 20 days.

Table Mountain, Cape Town

I flew from London to Cape Town arriving on Thursday 19^th May, ready to start the tour the next day. Unfortunately I didn't have much time in Cape Town, which is a shame because I had forgotten what a fantastic city it is. I find everyone to be very friendly there and it has a great atmosphere, and my Air BnB host for the night, Johann, was very welcoming.

Bo Kaap, Cape Town

Day 1 of the tour started with a township tour to the District 6 museum and out to the township of Langa. It's something I chose not to do last time as I felt uncomfortable taking a tour to see what life was like in an impoverished township, however I'm very glad I did it- it was incredibly eye-opening and emotional at times. The apartheid in South Africa is something I was always aware of but knew few details of, and to see it described and displayed in the District 6 museum was very difficult. There were pictures of the towns and communities around Cape Town- not slums as I had imagined but normal, working class families and homes- which were destroyed as part of the apartheid. Huge numbers of people were displaced into these townships to live in appalling conditions, most of the time being evicted with less than 24 hours' notice and leaving with very few personal belongings, all so that these could be made into whites only areas. District 6 itself was not even put to a useful purpose, the buildings were almost all torn down and to this day the area remains open and unused.

A typical family home in
Langa township

From the museum we were taken to the township of Langa and were shown around and into the homes of some of the residents living there. There were a variety of types of housing, the oldest being a hostel with several bedrooms leading off from one communal kitchen and living area. In each bedroom, barely big enough to fit three single beds, would live up to three families and as many as 15 people. Work is underway to improve this, and new housing is being built where one family lives in one home, but these are still very small and rudimentary. The townships are constantly growing, with people coming to Cape Town from neighbouring countries in the hopes of finding work. The growing areas are no more than shacks built from wood and corrugated metal, with dangerous makeshift electrics and high levels of disease and flooding from the local waterway.

The amount of rent that one family has to pay per year in one of the newer homes would have paid for two nights of my accommodation the previous night, which really puts things into perspective. However the township tours and the tourists do bring a valuable source of income to the residents, as the tour guides are from the townships and the locals are able to make and sell souvenirs.

The view from the winery

Beautiful scenery en route to Oudtshoorn

Following the rather sobering morning in Cape Town we headed out to the beautiful university town and wine growing region of Stellenbosch where we had wine and cheese tasting (as it turned out at a winery I visited last time I was here!). That evening we stayed in Somerset West and had our first meal as a tour group. There were 10 of us in total from all over- Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa.

Day two of the tour and we were driven through some spectacular scenery as we drove along Route 62 and through some beautiful mountain passes. We stopped in at Ronnie's Sex Shop, so named because one of Ronnie's friend's vandalised his newly painted shop sign and the name stuck. It's little more than a pretty odd country pub in the middle of nowhere, but they do alcoholic milkshakes and I can recommend the rum and banana!

The unique Ronnie's Sex Shop

In the afternoon on our way to Oudtshoorn we stopped in at an ostrich farm and were given a tour of how they breed and rear ostriches and the types of feather they harvest and sell. Painted and carved ostrich eggs are very popular souvenirs and the egg itself is the equivalent of 24 normal hens' eggs- it's very rich as we had some for breakfast the next morning. That night was the first night camping for the four of us who had chosen the camping option- everyone else had paid to stay in accommodation for the tour. The tents are very easy to put up, and quite comfortable when you have a couple of mattresses to yourself!

Ostrich at Oudtshoorn

Ostrich racing

Day three and we visited the 'famous' limestone Cango Caves in the morning (which were pretty much the same as any other caves I've ever been in). In a change to the planned schedule the group voted that in the afternoon we would drive to the Bloukrans Bridge bungee jump... where I would be doing a bungee jump! The bridge is the highest commercial bridge bungee jump in the world, and is 216m high. I have bungee jumped before but that was a mere 30m in New Zealand. I had several hours to mentally prepare myself, however as we drove over the bridge itself, nothing could prepare me for just how high 216m actually is when you're jumping off it!

Only myself and two of the others in the group were to do the bungee jump, and after being unceremoniously weighed and categorised (clearly I've been snacking a bit too much...) we were rigged up with harnesses and made the long journey out to the jump site. This involved walking along a cage-like walkway suspended beneath the bridge over the valley, so we could see all the way down to the valley floor as we walked out. I actually think this was far more terrifying than the jump itself! There was a pretty large collection of people jumping, and they alternate jumpers between lightest and heaviest and they accurately record the total weight of people jumping so that the bungee cords can be changed regularly for safety purposes.

I was supposed to fit somewhere in the middle of the group of people jumping, however I got bumped up as I was part of the tour group. What I didn't know at the time was that they were waiting to change the rope so I would be the first person to jump on the new rope. I think I would have been much more nervous if I'd known that before I jumped! I saw the other two members of my tour group do the jump, as well as a fair few other people and all the while I'm dancing around to the music and chatting to people, trying to distract myself from the inevitable doom awaiting me.

Cango caves world heritage site

Finally it was my turn, so I sit down and one guy is attaching a safety cord to my harness (so that if for any reason the cord around my feet fails or my feet slip out- it never has happened here before) then the harness will catch me. Then another guy comes along and attaches the bungee cord to my feet. And then they shuffle-hop me out to the platform which I'll be jumping from, and I'm still laughing and joking and psyching myself up to jump off this bridge. 

And 3... 2... 1... bungeeaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

is a fairly good approximation of what came out of my mouth (perhaps accompanied by a choice swear word or two). Increase that by several decibels and extend for as long as you can scream until you run out of air and you have Sarah bungee jumping. I think I was aiming for an excited 'wahoo' but it came out more as a blood curdling scream. Apparently I was the loudest screamer of the afternoon!

Preparing to bjump

The last time I bungee jumped I don't remember what happened immediately after I jumped. I now realise that was my brain's way of preserving itself from re-living the sheer terror you go through as you jump and expect to be landing on solid ground any second, only to find that you won't be landing on solid ground at all and that you are in fact in freefall, hurtling towards the bottom of a valley several hundred meters below you. 

And then you're at the bottom of the cord and it feels as though your feet are slipping, even though they're not, so you force out your feet as far as possible and you tense your thighs (as if that is going to help anything). But then it feels like everything is OK again, only it's not because next thing you know you're being pinged straight back up into the air again and although this part isn't too unpleasant, all you can think is 'the higher I go up, the longer I have to fall back down again.... please stop please stop please stop' and then you're free-falling back down again and you go through this several times. Apparently the first time you rebound you then fall as far again as the bungee jump over the Zambezi river, so you've basically done two bungee jumps in one.

The look of pure terror

Being hoisted back to solid earth

And EVENTUALLY you stop free-falling and you're bobbing upside-down at the bottom of the cord, looking down at the valley bottom and you start having a conversation with the ground about how you're thankful it's down there and you're up here (and you're still tensing those thighs and penguin-footing your feet just in case). And this little guy abseils down and hooks your harness to his seat and swings you back upright and starts to hoist you back up to the bridge. He asks me how I am and I start speaking French (clearly a bit discombobulated by the entire experience) so he starts speaking French back. So now I have to admit to him that I've pretty much expended all the useful French I know, only now my English isn't working too well either so the entire journey back up to the bridge he's trying to understand what on earth I'm saying (and I'm not too sure what I'm trying to say myself). 

Then I'm being hauled over and back onto the bridge like an over-sized fish (the video is not pretty), and I grab onto that bridge for dear life as they untie my feet and release me to my fellow survivors. They bring me in for a massive group hug and we're all grinning like madpeople, and all swearing that we will never do that again (although if another higher one happens to crop up on my travels then I might think about it...).

After the terrifying hanging-cage walk to get back off the bridge, we met the rest of the tour group who all congratulate us and tell us we're crazy and that they were watching the entire thing on a live video feed. They thought my dancing around on the bridge was me chickening out of doing the jump (as if!). Our accommodation for the night was the incredibly fancy Dunes beachside resort in Plettenberg Bay- no camping for us tonight!

Journey from Cape Town to Bloukrans Bridge

Detailed  map of the trip so far