On my way out of J Bay, I stopped at
Storms River Mouth Park for the day. Once again, I got the SADC price no
problem. I found lots of little baby rock rabbits on my way to do a beautiful
Oceanside hike to a suspension bridge and to a waterfall.
Yet another selfie because, you know, solo travel
Lounging rock rabbits
Suspension bridges
I spy a deer
Orange on the trees...
...and on the rocks
Scrambling over the rocks
Then
I quickly passed through Plettenberg Bay. I didn’t really stop there, but I
heard it’s also a really nice place to visit. I ended up in Knysna. Island Vibe
also has a location in Knysna (“nyz-na”), but they were all booked up when I
tried to reserve, so instead I ended up at Knysna Backpackers (R170/night for a
dorm), which is a cute old house not too far from the town center. Knysna is
basically a big bay with cliffs at the opening to the ocean called the heads. I
drove to the eastern head to several really picturesque lookouts. Then I drove
around an island in the bay called Leisure Island, then walked along the
waterfront where I ran into some people I’d met in J Bay.
Views on and around the heads, and from Leisure Island
The
next day, I killed a bunch of time wandering around and watching people fishing
before I got a mid-day cruise around the bay. It was on this big boat that
basically took you to the heads and back. There were other cruises and
speedboat rides that you could take even through the heads, but those were
either all booked up or super expensive. The other people on board were pretty
loud and obnoxious, but the views of the cliffs were really cool. Later, I
drove to the nearby beach at Buffalo Bay and swam in the glorious ocean and
tried to even out my awful shorts tan while trying (and failing) to concentrate
on some philosophical book by Albert Camus that I had found in a previous
hostel. It was too heavy for a casual beach day.
Shops at the waterfront
Boats at the docks
Long day for fishers
From the tour boat
Then
it was back to the hostel where who should be in my dorm but my ever-present
vacation friend George. Since this was the third hostel we saw each other at,
he said I must be following him (even though I got there first…). Then all of a
sudden everyone in the hostel, including two South African guys, a German girl,
George the Brit, and even a hermit-type French guy ended up in the kitchen
drinking all the stuff that the Afrikaners said that they needed to get rid of
before they go back to work in the next few days. Man if there’s one thing South
Africans can do, it’s drink. So what would have normally been a quiet hostel
night turned into a lively party in the kitchen. Then somehow someone got the
French guy in an argument about cheese, which was hilarious because, being
French, he was just so passionate about his opinion on different cheeses. After
a while, the kitchen could not contain us, so we decided to go out into Knysna,
following some people who actually lived there, and they took us to some pretty
cool spots, so that was a nice ending to a fun night.
At one point I
pulled one of the South African guys aside and asked him some linguistic
questions. He was black, of Khoisan heritage, but he was speaking Afrikaans. I
was quite confused, so I asked him about it. I had the impression that only
white South Africans spoke Afrikaans. He said that the Khoisan language has all
but died out, so being in a region where Afrikaans is a dominant language,
they’ve adopted that as a first language. It’s also a first language for many
coloured (technical term for mixed race or European/African/Asian heritage)
people as well. Well, who’d have thunk it? The linguistic situation in South
Africa is super complicated, but very interesting.
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