501 Places

Cape Town's Castrol guitarist

This story might sound strange to anyone under 30, while older folk may recognise some of the sentiments I experienced in this incident. I met my first South African in 1987. I remember it well. I was 18, halfway through another Inter-rail summer, and I was in the station in Salzburg ready to catch some sleep before a 4am train to Vienna. I got talking to a young backpacker girl, slightly older than me with long blonde hair. I thought her accent might be Dutch but she soon introduced herself as a South African.

Now at that time my exposure to South Africa was 100% negative. I was born at a time when sanctions were already in place. There was no cultural or political exchange with the country. As a sports fan I knew of South Africa as the place where our greedy and immoral sportsmen, past their prime and without shame, would go and earn a fortune on black-listed tours and sell their reputations for a few pieces of dirty silver.

I had heard of Nelson Mandela, thanks largely to a song that had done well in the charts. I didn’t know much about him, except that he was in prison and that he was a focus for the anti-apartheid movement in the UK. I knew the South African police were brutal in enforcing the rules of apartheid. I knew black people weren’t allowed to get on the same bus as white folk, share the same beach or live in the same streets.

I had never seen a South African movie or heard a South African song by a white artist. I knew of de Klerk and Botha thanks to the BBC, and heard about their ruthless grip on power. As a student I was not allowed to bank with Barclays, the only bank who liked to say Yes to the apartheid regime there. I had heard of Sun City, as a place where the wicked white folk would spend the money they had made from exploitation on gambling, golf and watching international singers who would sell their souls for a fat purse.

And then there was the song. In 1986 Spitting Image, one of the most popular UK programmes of the 80s and its in prime, released this as a B side to a song that reached no. 1 in the British charts.

So there you have it. That was the view of a South African as held by a fairly average teenager growing up in eighties Britain. There was no mention in the media of white people in South Africa who opposed apartheid or who did much good work in difficult circumstances in trying to improve the situation for all South Africans. We had a homogenous view of an entire group of people (did someone mention racism?).

So there I was, talking with this young girl. We must have chatted for a couple of hours before her train was called and we went our separate ways. I learned that her father was a farmer of oranges. But more than that, I learned that she was studying hard to go to university, that she wanted to see the world and that she had some great tips on the places I was about to visit in Austria and Yugoslavia. Pretty ordinary stuff. Oh, and she was a supporter of the anti-apartheid movement.

If I ever had to give a simple answer to the question I posed a couple of weeks ago in a post about travel being a waste of time, I should probably tell this story. The international media clearly served a role in applying the constant pressure that eventually signalled the end of the apartheid regime. But they also demonised an entire race in the eyes of millions, painting them as a one-dimensional group of racist thugs and bullies. It is only through this and subsequent interactions with ordinary South Africans that I was able to see beyond that stereotype.

10 game drives in 5 days (sunrise and sunset); standard for most safari lodges, and in many cases guests opt out of the early morning ones after the first couple of days. We were determined to make each drive; after all we had paid for it, and in any case there wasn’t a great deal to do during the daytime other than putting your feet up and watching the sun drift across the sky.

We stayed at Elephant Plains lodge, which seemed to offer a good level of comfort without the prohibitive prices of other lodges nearby. They collected us from the airport at Nelspruit, and the three hour drive passed through captivating scenery. Small villages full of life, valleys green and lush and people walking busily along the roadside, it was more reminiscent of Uganda than of the South Africa we had just grown accustomed to along the western Cape.

Once in the lodge, the daily routine centred around the game drives. If you are going on a safari with the intention of seeing the big 5, this place takes some beating. We saw three or four of this famed group of large mammals on every drive. Our tracker instinctively knew the whereabouts of a pair of leopards and we would reliably observe them sleeping, climbing and on one occasion feasting. Elephants greeted us on almost every drive, and lions were plentiful too.

The rarest sighting we enjoyed, and even our driver and tracker were excited by this, was a pack of wild dogs. Roaming at pace across vast distances, they are almost impossible to locate predictably, and this was the first sighting in Sabi Sands for eight months. We observed them for ten minutes or so before they moved on. From the reaction of our experts we knew we had been very fortunate to witness these creatures.

Five days was a long time to stay, and I think we ended up outstaying every other guest who we met there. Yet we didn’t regret it, such was our fascination in the amazing sights that greeted us every day. And of course, when the animals weren’t cooperating the landscapes and the amazing skies that we could enjoy were just as memorable.

I like Cape Town. It is listed in many Top 10 cities lists, and rightly so IMHO. Great restaurants, attractive waterfront, fascinating museums, a place steeped in history, and of course a backdrop that very few places can compete with.

Yet my own memory from our visit there centres on the day we spent out of the city, driving down to the Cape of Good Hope. It’s a couple of hours leisurely drive, and there are interesting stops along the way. One was to see these guys! The colony of African penguins at Boulder Beach receive a steady flow of tourists snapping their pictures, and they do seem well versed in posing for a good snap. Tame to the point of almost walking up to us, once down on the beach we were in their habitat and they were happily wandering around with a care for their taller two-legged neighbours. I haven’t yet been to Antarctica, but from the southern countries this is the best place to view these fellows.

On to the Cape, and if you like walking in windy places, then this is the place for you. Not officially the southern tip of Africa, but still the point where ships would stop travelling south and start to turn east. As you look along the headland towards the end of the Cape, the water on your left is the Indian Ocean, and is up to 6C warmer than the Atlantic waters to your right.

Once you leave the mass of visitors around the car park and the shops, you can have the place pretty much to yourself, and there is some great little coastal hikes that make the most of the spectactular surrounds. Just make sure you bring a wind proof jacket!

It’s hard to beat the multi-coloured beauty of an African sunset. The sky seems bigger, the hue of the reds and oranges more expressive, the clouds more dreamy. And the sounds of the plains around us while watching the sun dip below the horizon leave you in no doubt where you are.

We stayed in Sabi Sands Reserve at Elephant Plains Lodge. Safaris are not cheap, and I suspect whenever tourists make the investment of going to a lodge for a few days, at the back of your mind there is always that thought that maybe you won’t see anything. We were certainly spoiled for game viewing. Countless leopards and lions, elephants and rhino on most days, a pack of wild dogs (a very rare sighting), and buffalo and giraffe on numerous occasions. By our fifth and final day we had become spoilt and almost expected the animals to be waiting for us! But our tracker told us we had been exceptionally lucky.

The safari experience is something special, and nowadays can be as basic or as luxurious as your taste, and budget, allows. Whatever animals you do see, the enduring images of African nature will ensure a memorable trip. Soon after the red sunset the stars come out, and the sky is awash with a thousand million bright specks the like of which us urban dwellers can never see at home. One way or another, Africa is bound to touch you and leave you wanting to return.

(Apr 2006)