We started this phase of our trip with a long drive from Capetown to Sedgefield, along the ever-gorgeous coast, through farmland on rolling hills, mountains in the background. We arrived at Willow point, cottage of Steven Carver that he shares with an Outward Bound school. Perfect view up a lake to green hills, a bit Canadian, but minutes from the Indian Ocean where there seem to be endless perfect beaches, rugged headlands and lush vegetation.
It's dry but green, and the coast is hilly, so many houses have a stunning view, really some of the finest scenes you can imagine, stretching on and on. Dinner with Neal and Karen, J and V's friends, perched high on a cliff reminiscent of Kingsburg in Nova Scotia, but even prettier, greener and warmer. If they figure out their socioeconomic problems this would have to be one of the best places in the world to live. The temp is near perfect for most of the year, and there are very few bugs, surprisingly in my preconception of Africa.
The view from our dinner table - warm, the whole wall open to the elements:
Daughters of a Zimbabwean working near Willow Point
Steve started TSiBA Eden, a school in the small town of Karatara, formerly a declining place of poor whites and "coloureds". They select the brightest young black prospects from different townships around the country and brought them in for year long courses in business and entrepreneurism. They turned initial local hostility into acceptance by involving and employing them. Steve moved on, but it's still thriving.
We got to meet a few of the students like these girls (one hoped to start a recording studio), and Azoka and Innocent, cool friendly guys with great attitude and dreams, especially considering that they came from schools and homes with few resources just a few months ago.
Jen loves the tall boys!
The Karatara environs...
Sunday, the spectacular view down from the Knysna head, lunch with Veda's sister Sandra and Michael, swim in Plettenberg Bay, dinner of local fish and curry in a restaurant right on the beach. Everything is so open to the elements, because it can be. Slept in the guest wing of a retirement village!
Storms River mouth - lush, hot and windy!
Khosa//??? band at a really excellent farmer's market, lots of Afrikaans delicacies. Note the banjo...
We've travelled with Marina Niven for 4 days. She's an old friend of John and Veda's, full of African stories, a formidable raconteur, and we're saturated with amazing tales. I can't begin to write them down, but here are a few fragments and characters: many Khosa and Zulu people she and her husband Patrick have employed, adopted, secretly taken to a doctor during an initiation ceremony, helped and become close friends with. Patrick's grandfather was Sir Percy Fitzpatrick, who wrote the famous "Jock of the Bushveld" and pioneered the whole citrus industry in this area - Outspan oranges are theirs! 70 workers were employed on their farm, but extended family meant 700 people lived there. Rudyard Kipling and Richard Attenborough were among the phenomenal cast of characters woven into their lives! She also skinned crocodiles and other creatures while helping a pioneering biological expedition into the Okavanga Delta in Botswana, where we'll be in a month. Almost exhausting, but a very rich few days.
We travelled via Nature's Valley, an idyllic spot where a river has carved a deep canyon, richly forested, out to a spectacular coastal lagoon. Marina is (of course) friends with many of the park rangers, and Jenny persuaded them to cut us some little disks from a Yellowood tree that had come down in a storm, so maybe you'll see those as coasters at our cottage. One of the giant yellowoods is over a thousand years old, with an enormous girth. They were a favorite furniture wood, but are now protected.
A giant Outeniqua Yellowood tree in the Tsistikamma Forest, alive for a thousand years.
A taste of things to come (so to speak...)
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