Monday 3 May 2010

Journey to Bulungula, Coffee Bay

Monday 12th April 2010

Early on Monday morning Patrick drove us to a hostel in Durban where we were collected by the BazBus. I felt awful, seriously babalaas. We drove south west into the Eastern Cape and the Transkei area, Xhosa country:





I started to feel better and we were dropped off at a petrol station in Mthatha, Nelson Mandela's home town. We were to be picked up by a 'shuttle bus' to take us down to Coffee Bay on the Wild Coast and to our hostel, Bulungula Lodge. As we waited with our bags, we were conspicuous as tourists and approached by one man wanting to shake our hands because "we have to be friends for the World Cup." After making calls to our hostel we were relieved when our driver approached us 2 hours late. The bus was in fact an off-road van and the driver was late because he'd gone to get shopping for the lodge which after some shuffling we had to sit amongst for the 2 hour journey.

We drove down probably Africa's most potholed road and even gave two schoolboys a lift at one stage. After driving across several fields we arrived and night had fallen. We were shown around the lodge, including the toilets, which are mounted on a large void in the floor where waste drops into:





The showers rely on burning paraffin in the base of a metal tube which heats the water and sounds like a rocket taking off:





(these pictures were taken on the following morning)

We had dinner and got chatting to Josephine from Holland before sitting out watching shooting stars.

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