From Knysna to Tsitsikamma

South Africa/ Day 8 (Mon.) - 29.8.2016

Gerhard's bird was back! What a joy for everyone involved.

After breakfast, we left, said goodbye to Gerhard, and drove to the city to exchange money. On the street in front of Knysna Mall, a black man in a safety vest directed us to a parking lot. This is often the case here. You then give him 5 rand to watch your car. Our parking attendant greeted us with a cheerful good morning, without us saying anything. I have no idea how he knew we were German. His name is Joseph, he's from Namibia, and he goes home once a month. He must be at least 70 years old. As soon as I got out of the car, he hugged me tightly in greeting and told us about his life. He proudly announced that he is a jazz singer and sang us two songs. A really cheerful guy!

Then we went to the bank. At the entrance, we were immediately received by an armed security guard and guided to the right counter. A black man standing behind us in line asked to see a euro note and admired it. Luckily, the line was short, and we were quickly served, but then a long procedure began. First, all our personal details were recorded, our passports were copied, we had to sign multiple papers, answer questions, etc., and only then did we get our money. When we returned to the parking lot, Joseph hugged us tightly again, we gave him a bigger tip, and we drove happily to Tsitsikamma.

Tsitsikamma National Park is the largest preserved forest in South Africa and stretches about 80 km along the Indian Ocean coast. From the road, we could see huge canyons, dense forests, mountains, and rivers, and of course, marauding baboon gangs, which are chased away by truck drivers honking their horns.

We arrived at Storms River around 11 AM, a small town with a hotel, a few B&Bs, and restaurants, located right on the edge of the national park.

Our hotel is called Tsitsikamma Village. If, like us, you have been spoiled by the friendly reception and warm service of the guesthouses along the Garden Route so far, you would consider this hotel to be an avoidable contrast. They received us unfriendly, almost ignorant, and informed us that the rooms would not be available until 2 PM, despite promising that everything would be ready for us when we returned. Well, no problem, just a bit surprising, as the hotel didn't seem to be fully booked and we had never experienced this in South Africa before. Anyway, we went on a zip-lining tour, where you float on steel ropes. In our case, we zipped over the black river located in the eastern part of the park, between rocks, trees, and waterfalls. We floated across the steel ropes from one bank to the other and had a lot of fun. We also had to climb up a mountain in between to be able to slide down again, which was quite exhausting considering the temperature of about 30 degrees Celsius and the bright sunshine.

The black river is so black because it contains some washed-out plant substances. Allegedly, its water is very healthy for this reason. We didn't try it because it looked like the water in an ashtray after heavy rain.

A part of an 8-person family from Saudi Arabia was also with us. (3 daughters, a son, a grandson, and a granddaughter, as well as the mother and father). All the women were wearing burqas and headscarves, and the mother was fully veiled. (By the way, they can expose their faces for eating by opening a flap in front of their faces, as I observed during dinner at our Botlierskop Game Reserve out of curiosity)

Anyway, it was fun to be with them, not only because a burqa with attached cutlery and a headscarf with a helmet look funny, but also because they were having fun, cheering, laughing, etc. The guides told us that more and more people from Saudi Arabia are coming to South Africa, it seems to be getting around there. This family had their own driver and traveled in a bus with a trailer for their luggage. All of them, even the little children, had iPhones, some of them golden - well, you know, they are well off.

Afterwards, we went for a walk to the Big Tree, an incredibly huge tree in the middle of the forest. The forest, very dense with its many moss-covered and decaying giant trunks, is incredibly impressive.

Fortunately, the path went over wooden bridges, as the first snakes might wake up again due to the heat on this day. Snakes sleep in winter, but in summer, there are supposedly a lot of puff adders, whose bite is deadly after 10 minutes without antivenom.

Speaking of wild animals: Yesterday at the Monkey Park, Ricardo, our guide, told us that baboons are only afraid of men, not of women. You have to be loud and swing a stick to drive them away. That's why JC searched for a baboon-defense stick on the way to the Big Tree, found one, and took it with us. It then mostly stayed in the trunk of our car for the rest of our trip.

When we returned around 2:30 PM, we were given our room, meaning we were pointed to our room, located at the end of the complex, from a distance, despite the promise that everything would be in the room when we returned. We had to carry our luggage ourselves.

The Tsitsikamma Village complex looked very nice from the outside, with its colonial-style houses surrounding a nicely landscaped square with grass and flowers, but we got a room behind it, in the far corner of the complex. The first impression already ruined our mood. It looked shabby and neglected from the outside, and it didn't get better inside.

The room had seen better days, it was sparsely furnished, without a safe, and without an electric blanket. We immediately became irritated, scolding ourselves for being so spoiled, and eventually asked for a better accommodation. After some effort and phone calls, we managed to get another room for an additional charge of €23 per night. We got a room at the main square of the complex. The upgrade was worth it, the new room had everything we missed in the first one, including a lovely terrace overlooking the complex. The many flies waiting for us there didn't bother us anymore. Thanks to the provided insecticide, we eliminated them immediately, and the day was saved.

In the evening, we had planned to eat at a nice 50s-style restaurant in town, filled with memorabilia of Elvis and Marilyn, but it was closed, like almost all restaurants here in Storms River, because it's "low season." Despite that, we thought it was good timing to be here now, as it's supposed to be extremely crowded during the peak season, while we almost experienced an individual holiday.

We ended up in a pizza place situated diagonally across from our hotel, a small wooden hut with a table, a large pizza oven, a wine rack, and a beer fridge. The ingredients were written on a board, and you could choose exactly four toppings for your pizza. A small, black woman prepared the pizzas, and a young white man named Jason served us drinks. Since there was no wine available by the glass, I had to buy a whole bottle. We could take the rest with us later. We sat outside at a wobbly wooden table. Next to it, Jason made a fire in a basket. He sat down with us right away, just like Apollo, a homeless brown dog that the woman from the pizzeria feeds with leftovers.

Jason, a 24-year-old white South African from Port Elizabeth, who lost his mother at the age of 9 and whose brother had an accident last year, told us that he had fallen out with his two other siblings and his father, which is why he moved here. He has to work twelve hours or more every day and still doesn't know how much he will earn. He talked incessantly and voluntarily. Half of it was surely made up, we didn't understand a lot of it, but the pizza was delicious, and thanks to Jason, we had a very nice evening.

See you soon...
Tatjana

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