Friday, October 23, 2015

73. South Africa. Cape Town, Cape Peninsula, Cape Verde, Washington DC

Unfortunately, we did not quite complete our diary.  We were always a few days behind, and it appears, 32 years later, that we expected to write up the last week on the flight home, and never got around to it. In fact, since Helena had the last submission we can assume that Dan is the one that never got around to writing up the next day in Cape Town.

We do have a number of photos.  Since our days were counted we felt a little freer to take pictures. We were exclusively using slide film which was not available in most of Africa.  As I recall, we carried all of the film from the US throughout the trip, both exposed and unexposed. Finally in South Africa were able to find an additional roll.  We were not able to get the slide film developed in Africa, which meant that we took a whole year of pictures without even knowing if the camera was working properly. This is hard to imagine in the age of digital cameras where you can take pictures until your finger gets tired, or your battery runs out or until you get a picture that you like.

In any case the sequence of our final photos, and the names associated with them allow us to reconstruct those last days, mainly around the pictures themselves.

The first part of the day, the trip in from Ladismith was covered in the previous blog.  Here we resume in the city center.

Ladismith – Cape Town, South Africa, Tuesday, 26 July, 1983

Dan took advantage of our being at the downtown air terminal to change our flight out of here (to Jo’burg) from Sunday to Monday.  We then went to the tourist information office to find out where the youth hostel is.  They were extremely helpful and well-informed, I’d say second only to the man in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.  The man who talked to us somehow (?) guessed that we are traveling on a low budget and had just the right information for us.  He even told us what bus would take us to the youth hostel!

We had our leftover snackwiches out of the wind in the train station (along with a glass of guava juice) and then I stayed with the packs while Dan went to the National Youth Hostel office.  The woman there knew nothing about joining, didn’t know where the Cape Town Youth Hostel was, and couldn’t say if there would be room for us there.  Back to the tourist information office!  The man was again able to help quite a bit.

The bus stop was very close by, so we struggled onto the bus (fortunately empty) and rode out to the end of the line, Kloof Nek.  Nek is Afrikaans for the saddle between two mountains, and sure enough, the end of the line was at the saddle between Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak.  We immediately saw the sign for “Stan’s Halt Youth Hostel”, but it was positioned in such a way that it could have meant one of three auto roads, or one foot path.  Luckily, an obvious co-traveler had gotten off the bus with us and he did turn out to be going go the YH.  We took the fast path through a tree-shaded park – quite a distance – and Bruce, a well-traveled New Zealander, let us through the gate to the Hostel.

Finally, we have found a really nice hostel, in fact it’s ideal.  It is housed in the old stables of Lord Somerset (whoever he was) and is in a very secluded area which overlooks the bay.  In fact the only other house visible from there (except far away by the shore) is an exclusive round restaurant housed in Lord S’s hunting lodge.
Sunset view from the youth hostel

We had a cup of tea in the kitchen with Bruce while we had the usual travelers’ conversation.  He had a story to top (or at least compare) to each of ours since he has been on the road for four years now. Something Dan learned subsequently, upon sharing a room with Bruce, is that over four years he had really cut his “kit” to the minimum.  He had a long-sleeve shirt, a short-sleeve shirt, a pair of shorts and a pair of trousers, no underwear!!  By comparison Helena and I had our large packs including a change of clothes that we kept respectable for crossing borders and/or visiting consulates to get visas.

Edna, the older woman who serves as “housemother”, came in about 1800 and signed us in.  They are painting the hostel and things are a bit disarranged, but Edna and her husband are doing an excellent job with the upkeep.  I’ll be sharing a room with Alice, a Canadian woman who traveled down with one of the package overland trucks, and of course Dan is sharing a room with an assortment of men.  It took a while to get our membership cards and sign in because Edna is quite a talker, albeit very friendly.  She made quite a to-do about our being brother and sister and the first Bolivians to stay there.

When supper time rolled around there were about 8 of us there, so it was a crowded kitchen for a while.  Everyone else stayed to chat and drink while Dan and I went into the lounge to write and plan for the next few days.

Cape Town, South Africa, Wednesday, July 27-Thurs July 28, 1983

(DAN, 32+ years later).
That day we went up Table Mountain.  In spite of general advice we climbed up one side.  I don’t remember how long it took us, but I remember that Helena and I had a vigorous argument, I guess about where and how to climb.  It was essentially the first and last real argument we had had in nearly a year of traveling on a shoestring together!!
Helena on top of Table Mountain with a view to both bays and the "12 Apostles."


View of Cape Town from Table Mountain

View from Table Mountain to area with youth hostel

We then took the cable car down and spent some time walking in the older parts of town, including the Malay Quarters.
View from cable car

Malay Quarter, Cape Town

Malay Quarter, Cape Town

 Cape Peninsula, Friday-July 29, Saturday July 30.



We had already been considering the possibility of renting a car in our last few days of hitchhiking.  Furthermore, we wanted to get as far as possible down the Cape of Good Hope, I guess to be more precise in our assertion of having crossed the continent from north to south and from east to west at its broadest. Finally, it had been raining for most of the last 10 days.  After all, the winter is the rainy season in “Mediterranean climates”.

So we rented a car over the weekend and perhaps used up most of the rest of our money that way.  I guess that we must have put on our best set of consulate-visiting clothes for a car rental company to entrust a vehicle to us.  The main thing that I remember about the car was that it was a right-hand drive, as it should be in South Africa and quite new.  I had driven the landrover quite a bit in Zaire, but due to the fuel shortage we might meet one vehicle each day.  Here I had to turn on the motor and the drive out into four lanes of traffic, driving on the “wrong side”.  We survived.

With the vehicle we were able to take advantage of a couple of the many lovely camp grounds that they had in the country.
Our route (red) over the weekend, first down the Cape Peninsula, then north of the City, to Paarl and Stellenbosch.


 
Helena, the beginning of the Cape Peninsual, and for some reason the slide says "the European car".


Cape Peninsula view
Ostrich ranching on the Cape Peninsula

Cape Peninsula view, possibly to the very tip of the Cape of Good Hope





The sign says "Bordjiesrif  Nje Blankes" this was a beach for non whites only.

Paarl and Stellenbosch, Sunday July 31.

Wheat hills north of Cape Town

Countryside nearing Stellenbosch
 
Stellenbosch campground
Stellenbosch – Cape Town – Johannesburg, Monday Aug. 1st.
We spent the night in Johannesburg, staying with our friends Martin and Cecily.  We have no pictures of that day so we must have spent our time getting ready for our long trip back to the US.  It should be pointed out that this was long before electronic reservations.  We had bought the ticket from Washington DC to Madrid, Spain and Jo’burg Washington DC almost a year later, and had to carry the physical long printed ticket in our neck bags for the whole year.  My neck bag was longer, therefore the tickets were against my sweaty skin, and the bag was only partly water-proof.  As I recall, those tickets were mighty deteriorated by the time we used them.

Dan at the Table Mountain view beach

Johannesburn – Cape Verde Islands – Washington DC, Tuesday, August 2.
The only thing we remember from that long flight from Jo’burg to Washington DC, is that we stopped to refuel in Cape Verde.  At the time it was stridently Anti-apartheid, but like Angola and People’s Republic of Congo, managed to quietly do plenty of business with the Regime. We refueled around midnight, so the only thing we know about Cape Verde is what we read in Wikipedia.


Conclusion
When we set out on trip we were not sure what countries we would be able to visit.  In all we visited 20 countries depending on whether or not you counted the “independent homelands”.  Our manuscript diary was on page 565 when it petered out.  This translated into 272 typed, legal-sized pages.  Adding in the pictures and editing out as much as possible, this turned into 73 blog posts.  We hope that you have enjoyed it.  As this is being posted we have had over 9000 visits, with a surprising number of these hits coming from Russia, Ukraine and Poland. Less than 1% of the hits have come from the African countries themselves.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

72. South Africa: Grahamstown - Ladismith to Capetown



This our penultimate post.  At the time we were getting pretty tired of traveling, 11 months and 20 countries, depending on what you consider a country.  This was winter and a Mediterranean climate is defined by winter rainfall, but this was not particularly comforting to a couple of hitchhikers. We had a financial reserve and we were a week from leaving so we were tempted to rent a vehicle and travel the last days more comfortably.  However we stuck it out and had some of our more memorable rides of the trip.  Due to the rain and clouds we traversed the famous “Garden Route” barely stopping.
Our route marked in yellow

Grahamstown – Port Elizabeth, South Africa, Sunday, 24 July, 1983

It was still overcast and raining when we got up, so you can imagine how enthusiastically we set off for a day of hitching.  We were kind of toying with the idea of getting to Port Elizabeth, or more likely George, and renting a car for going along the famous Garden Route or maybe “doing” the Cape.  We waited a good hour before someone finally took pity on the two bedraggled hitchhikers, but it was well worth the wait.

Fred Castleman was a tall, young, very distinguished man of, so he said, 26 years of age (we decided he had to be older to get in all of his experience) who is the Transvaal regional sales manager for Duracell Batteries.  Normally he works out of Johannesburg, but the last couple of weeks he’s been in Port Elizabeth hiring someone to work in the Eastern Cape region.  He was in Grahamstown because he’d been visiting an old friend who had recently taken up farming.  He was a very successful businessman, but his ambition had always been to farm in the Grahamstown area.  So he and his wife had invested everything they had in buying land and getting started in the sheep business.  Unfortunately the present drought started about then, and the farm has been going downhill ever since.  The friend has been forced to take a job in town.

Fred was coming away from his weekend at their home.  Not only had his friend taken to drinking, but Fred had had to do without the daily hot bath that he considers essential.  “I have to have my hot bath and hot cup of tea.” When he found out our intentions, he offered to take us to Port Elizabeth, have a cup of tea, and after he had checked out of the Holiday Inn, take us on to George.  All he had to do was be checked out by noon and see if the man he’d just hired could travel with him, then we’d be on our way.

As things turned out, Fred stopped by Peter’s (the new employee) apartment, they decided to stay put today and go to Oudtshoorn tomorrow, and Fred invited us to stay in his Holiday Inn room if we didn’t mind sleeping on the floor.  Ordinarily we would have refused his generous offer, but since it was still pouring rain, we couldn’t quite make ourselves hit the hitchhiking road again.  With little thought for the consequences, we followed him past the desk (we just stopped a second to pick up information pamphlets on rental cars) and up the elevator to his room.  After a good cup of tea (brought by room service) with Mrs. Horne’s rusks, Fred bathed and left to have dinner at Peter’s apartment.  We felt honored that he would trust us with the room, telephone, and his things after knowing us so short a time.  He is someone else who decided to stop for us because we were obviously foreigners and a couple.

While he was out all afternoon (playing Monopoly, as we later learned) we bathed, wrote and watched some rather trashy television programs.  It was a bit awkward when he returned, so Dan and I decided to go downstairs in search of some supper.  We were both in jeans, so we weren’t allowed in the a la carte restaurant.  We couldn’t bring ourselves to pay the 9 Rand at the other place, so we stooped very low and bought potato chips and a chocolate bar apiece.

After a decent interval, and feeling as though everybody watched us knowing we weren’t legal, we returned to the room.  His room has a good view of the sea, so we had a stormy panorama, complete with gray waves, all afternoon.

Fred had spent the last two nights helping with the animals at his friends’ farm, so we went to bed early.  He felt guilty about our sleeping on the floor, but frankly it was one of our nicest, coziest sleeps in a long time.  The last thing he did before going to sleep was to call the desk to arrange for a wakeup call at 530 with a cuppa.

Port Elizabeth – Ladysmith, South Africa 25th July, 1983

(DAN) Fred was really mad when he awoke at 615… and no tea.  This was the third time that this had happened to him at this Holiday Inn.  He bathed and went to chew out the manager while we got ready.  It was still rainy and very windy (we later learned that Port Elizabeth got 5” the 24 hours we were there) when we set out.  We felt kind of guilty and worried that we’d be “found out”, but the man at the counter did not even look our way as we waddled through the lobby with our packs and bags.

As we understood it, Fred and Peter were going to first run down “the Garden Route” talking with store owners and teaching Peter the art of representing Duracell Batteries.  They were eventually going as far as Oudtshoorn but would be stopping periodically.  First they were going to stop at Jeffries Bay and we were to find another ride.  After a while they decided instead to go as far as Oudtshoorn, and work their way back up the coast in the morning.  We had wanted to spend longer than a day on the Garden Route, but it continued to rain and the famous coastal mountains were mostly hidden by clouds.  We went right through with them (700 km) To Oudtshoorn.

Even with the low clouds the scenery was beautiful, sometimes with the ocean on one side and the Tsitsikamma  Mountains on the right.  We drove though the reserves which are about all that is left of SA natural (Mediterranean climate?) forests.  There is a lot of commercial lumbering going on, but it is mainly plain pine forests.  What has been left “natural” is a true rainforest not unlike the upper Yungas areas.

We stopped to get a cuppa just across the Storm River Gorge so had a chance to walk around and look.  It is impressive with a suspension bridge 139 m high crossing it and falls with successive water fall faces that have been left standing while the water has cut a narrow gorge down.  In the restaurant was a busload of Spanish speaking tourists – Argentine.

Storm River Gorge

 
Storm River Gorge
The ocean side was not that fantastic as every time a nice beach occurs, so do a number of obstructive, nice beach houses.  Historically (White history, that is) the area is not that old, as the interior was settled by eastward movement overland.  George is the oldest in this area, started in 1812 (while Graaff Reinet, 1000 km north, and inland, was begun in 1786). 

We turned inland at George, right up into the Ontenigua Mountains.  Again the summits were hidden by clouds, but we got an idea.  They are some form of folded mountains and the rock faces had wonderfully warped and curved patterns.  Once across the pass (700m?) the climate gradually got drier and soon we were in “Little Karoo” vegetation.  Normally the Little Karoo only gets around 10” of rain and Natal 40-80, but the drought has not been nearly so severe here so the vegetation seemed more abundant in the “Little Karoo” than in Natal.  Evergreen scrub is how I’d characterize the vegetation.
 
Scene at the beginning of the Little Karoo


Once in the Little Karoo we began to pass the famous ostrich farms with herds of ostrich grazing in irrigated alfalfa (Lucerne) or on the scrubby uplands.  I never had this confirmed, but it appeared that the grey females grazed together in large herds while the prettier “bulls” grazed singly off in the distance.

We learned later that Oudtshoorn gets some of the most sun per year of any place, but, with our recent luck, it was raining when the Duracell men dropped us off on the street corner.  Oudtshoorn is about 25,000 strong (Whites) and a year ago we would have shrunk down back alleys finding the least conspicuous way out of town.  Now we just shouldered the packs and walked down Main Street looking for a place to eat.  Not a person failed to notice, but so what.  The only place evident was our friendly Wimpey’s so we set our pack in a corner and had lunch.

As we were finding seats we recognized Fred and Pete motioning us to their table.  Maybe Oudtshoorn is not so big after all.  They continued to act gracefully with us, apparently not caring that they were in their three piece suits while we were wet and khaki clad.  One thing that cropped up was that a year ago Fred spent his vacation at the Club Med resort in Mauritius.  This year he and his girlfriend went to the Orient for three weeks and their vacation cost half again as much as our entire year across Africa.

We left to buy food for a long hitchhiking stretch and managed to see them again twice on the street as they made their rounds.

We did not have luck right away getting a ride at the edge of town.  There is a big army base nearby and a lot of the traffic was generated by it.  It was interesting to see that they appear to segregate the army (not surprising) yet, rather than have all the drivers white and the workers in the back of the truck Coloured, Coloured trucks went by where everybody, including drivers was Coloured.  Others went by where everybody was White.

Finally a 1960 Mercedes Benz pulled over and offered us a lift as far as Calitzdorp. His friend, who was following behind in case of a breakdown was actually going to Ladysmith.  They decided that we should ride with the first man until Calitzdorp, but put our packs in the pickup that would then take us to Ladysmith.  I was not at all thrilled with the idea, but took the chance.  It was the first time on the trip that our packs were ever on a separate vehicle.  Both Helena and I thought to take down the license plate.

The ride was enjoyable.  We mainly passed through ostrich farming area and we discussed the fine points of raising these birds.  You stock them at a lower rate than you do cattle on the same ground.  They are grazers but only eat grass and the most tender shoots on the shrubs.  The effect is that land in ostriches is in beautiful shape compared to that which is being grazed by sheep.  The sheep will eat anything to the ground.  According to him, ostrich raising is the most prosperous agricultural venture around  The males feathers are hundreds of dollars per kilo, the meat as jerky sells at 18$ kg.  The egg shells, whole, sell for 6$.  But, the most profitable thing is the skin which is made into an unusual and highly sought after leather.  We later priced a small ostrich leather coin purse – 40$.

According to our ride this is the only place in the world where they are raised commercially.  All the growers belong to a cooperative and in fine South African tradition have a world monopoly.  Ostriches are not even grown in other parts of SA, just in the Little Karoo.

When we got to Calitzdorp our driver pulled up to a bar and informed us that he had promised the driver of the pickup a drink if he would follow him, so did we mind waiting?  We were hardly thrilled when our next ride disappeared into a bar for 20 minutes, but we did not have a choice.  Calitzdorp is a neat town at that, 200 years old with a lot of old, small houses.  It is the center of a wine area and the capital of the dried fruit industry.  What a nice climate it must have!  The Groot Swartberg Mountains (Great Black Mountains) were covered in clouds but you could imagine that on a clear day this placid setting would have huge mountains rising behind.

We continued our ride a bit apprehensively, but the driving did not seem to be affected, so we relaxed and enjoyed the ride.  Our benefactor was Johannes Eybers, a very portly man about 65 years old.  He is a retired plumbing and electrical contractor but has since retirement restored old houses for reselling.  His English was very labored, but we got along fine, and pretty soon he invited us to stay with him and the wife.  We asked what his wife would say.  He shrugged his shoulders and said, “We are Boers” (literally farmers). “My wife she don speak English good.”

We drove quite a way through extremely twisted and folded mountains.  We drove past farmsteads with Cape Dutch housing, from the big house down to the many small houses for Coloured.  Many of the latter were roofless and in decay as many Coloured people have left the farm to find work in the cities; there are not “townships” in this part of the country.

When we got to Ladismith, he first took us by the house he is currently working on.  One son works “with” and they have four Coloured workers.  Mr. Eybers talked kindly with them and later said, “Did you see me beat them or yell at them? We treat the Coloureds well here.”

We had a most educational evening.  Mrs. Eybers came in and welcomed us most graciously.  For supper we had what they said was typical Boer food:  boiled kudu meat, a kind of hominy, cauliflower chutney, pickles and squash.  Very good.   Apparently they do not have domestic help, at least not full time, and eating in the kitchen the atmosphere was very similar to a modern US farm kitchen. 
The Eybers, a most hospitable Afrikaaner couple
 
We had a discussion (heated on his side) all through the evening about the policies and future of SA.  He distrusts English speaking South Africans and resents that they still have strong ties to modern England.  He claims that they are not concerned about the future of South Africa because they can always “run back to England” or immigrate to Australia.  The Boers have no other home and are caught with all the blame for trying to preserve their lifestyle while the English enjoy the effects.

He says that the British and not the Afrikaans, are responsible for the division between the two White tribes.  He recalled the concentration camps and several other grievances that were discussed in the Covenant.  He spoke bitterly of the days of British domination, etc.

When we asked what he thought should be done about the problems that face SA, he simply insisted that all foreign countries let SA solve its own problems.  It was not the right moment to point out that SA is actively trying to solve Angola’s problems herself.

Though always hospitable he resented that we should come to SA for only one month and expect to know the situation.  “Not even a year is enough.” Later we showed him our money collection[1] and he in turn gave us some oldish SA coins, back in the days when they used pounds that had the Queen on them.  Then he brought out two big strips of kudu biltong (jerky).  He had shot the kudu himself and made the jerky in a room that is for that purpose only.  Biltong is the national food here.

It has been a long day, so we retired to our comfortable beds.


Ladismith – Capetown (KaapStad), South Africa, Tuesday, 26 July, 1983

(HELENA) We were a little late getting up, so Mr. Eybers was already out working on his house by the time we ventured out of our room.  Mrs. Eybers had coffee with us while we had the snackwiches (grilled cheese on kudu meat sandwiches) she had made for us.  We remembered to get our hosts’ picture (he came back to say goodbye.), although Mrs. was rather embarrassed and felt she should change out of her house coat.  She insisted on driving us to the edge of Ladismith even though it wasn’t all that far.  It was still overcast and drizzling, so she felt terrible about leaving us out on the road.  Both of them had pressed us to stay at least another night, but we’re in a bit of a hurry to get down to Cape Town.  She felt a little better after she’d asked the gas station to ask customers about giving us a ride and she left with a warm farewell (complete with a kiss on the hand for me).

We set our packs on the side of the road near the petrol station (after all, Mrs. Eybers had been kind enough to talk to the attendant), but before long we moved across to the left side of the road.  We prefer to hitch without help from other persons.  We were there about an hour (mostly local traffic, judging from the license plates) before a shiny new cream-coloured Mercedes Benz pulled over to the side of the road with no hesitation.

Jannie Maree (of French Huguenot descent, and thus of the Afrikaaner “side”, although his English was excellent) is a very well-to-do ostrich farmer who was on his way to a Cape Province agricultural convention in Cape Town.  I don’t know if he chose today to do a little propaganda for his business or not, but he was wearing a very elegant pair of ostrich leather shoes and was using a chic briefcase and key ring out of the same bumpy material.  No, he wasn’t wearing any ostrich feathers.  We admired all of that, but it wasn’t until we looked around in the Cape Town curio shops that we realized what a luxury ostrich leather is: $us 40.00 for a tiny change purse.

We started out the day expecting to head towards Swellendam, even though we’d been told that there isn’t much traffic on that highway, but it took us seconds to change our plans when Mr. Maree said that he was going to Cape Town.  It seemed a particularly wise decision especially because of the gloomy day.  So… we settled down to enjoy the three-hour long trip.  According to what people tell us, we missed seeing some spectacular mountains what with the cloud cover.  But it was still beautiful.  A lot of it (after we got out of the Little Karoo) was vineyards and fruit orchards, though being winter time, all was bare of leaves.  Even the towns were special with their white-washed, in some cases thatched, Cape Dutch architecture.
 
Cape vineyards

We really sped around those curves in the Merceditay, and Mr. Maree really resented it when we’d get behind a slow moving truck.  He was obviously looking forward to the time when they’ll have completed a long tunnel through the worst pass, maybe in 5 years.  “It will only be a two-lane tunnel, but it will be for the fast traffic; the trucks will have to take the old road.”

His was one of the few rides offered that didn’t touch the race question at all.  He was a very pleasant and informative companion, and invited us to stop for a cuppa, even though he was in a hurry to get to Cape Town for his 1400 meeting.  His father before him was also an ostrich farmer and he naturally hopes that his son will continue the business.  His wife’s family has a vineyard in Paarl, and he told us that Paarl is one of the most beautiful towns in the world.  We passed through Paarl´s outskirts and so didn’t get a close look, but as we came over the last pass before Cape Town, we could see Paarl at the foot of the mountains and could well believe him.  Again, in spite of his hurry, he stopped several times so we could get pictures of that spectacular approach to Cape Town.

More Cape vineyards


As we passed by Paarl, he point out the monument to the event when Afrikaans was recognized as a true language and the farm belonging to his brother-in-law.  It was as we went over that final pass that the weather cleared up, so we arrived in Cape Town under sunny skies.  A bit windy, but nice and sunny.  Mr. Maree dropped us at the downtown air terminal and was all apologetic about dropping us in the middle of nowhere. After a year hitching across Africa his concept of “middle of nowhere” is a bit different from ours. 

Dan and Capetown... the end is near



[1] The entire collection was lost upon return to the US.  Dan was opening a car door and put the collection on the roof to better grip the door, and forgot to retrieve the collection.  Somebody somewhere near Houston, Texas happened on a unique money collection including truly rare ones like Mauretania.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

71. South Africa. Queenstown Ciskei to Grahamstown.



In this post we stay with the Horne family in Queenstown.  We had me their son Martin in a campground in Spain, and we had looked forward a visit with his parents for a long time. Their hospitality was exemplary and Helena stayed in touch with them for many years afterwards.

Being able to stay in the home of liberal South Africans was quit an opportunity.  Mrs. Horne was able to drive us around so that we could see the racially segregated townships up close.  In retrospect is was short, two nights and a day, but we will never forget that opportunity to see South African apartheid up close, from inside.

We also drove through the last "Bantu Homeland" - Ciskei on our trip.
Our route through the Eastern Cape Province, South Africa.  Yellow indicates hitchhiking.

Umtata – Queenstown, RSA, Thursday, 21 July, 1983

(DAN) The poultry expert dropped us at the post office in Queenstown right at noon. We did not want to descend on the Horne’s right at meal time, so we went to get a cheeseburger and a glass of guava juice at Wimpy's.  Queenstown struck us as a friendly place right away.  In the first 30 minutes three different people approached and asked us where we were from.  We sat down to eat at an outdoor table and next to us was youngish man with a large dog.  This dog sat with his nose about 3 inches from the young man’s plate of “chips”.  Every now and then he would be given one, but he never stole one or even looked impatient.  When they left the dog carried the young man’s brief case… Looked like they did it every day.

We called the Hornes and they came right in to pick us up.  Mrs. Horne especially is every bit as enthusiastic as Martin has always been.  Mr. Horne is the town surveyor and has been since 1940, and before him, his father was the surveyor ever since 1908.  He probably knows the area as well as anyone.  Mrs. Horne is active, uses the phone a lot and really knows how to make you feel welcome.  We joined them for a rhubarb cake dessert.

After dinner we had the first of many cups of tea and continued to talk.  Mr. Horne went back to work at 1400 and at 1500 Mrs. Horne drove us around the area.  First we drove over to the “Bantu” township over the border in Transkei to drop Joyce at her house.  Joyce is the Hornes’ “domestic servant” and comes in from the township every day to work.  It has something of the phenomenon of Shoshanguve, fine, large houses (3 or 4), one even with a swimming pool, on prominent corners. Then, rows and rows of two-room houses with nary a tree in sight. 

Joyce in front of her house in the Bantu township

Another side of the Bantu township near Queenstown.
A doctor's house in the Bantu township


Next we headed back to South Africa to the Coloured “group areas” on the other side of Queenstown.  There are several very densely housed areas, fenced in, surrounded by vast open rangeland.  Coloured people are allowed to own their houses (have been all along, but the authorities determine the lot size).  This, combined with a few fairly wealthy house owners has resulted in one area of large, fancy houses with almost no room in between.  Just across the street from this area, in three directions, there are miles of open space.  This area is Aloe Valley.  Most of the Coloured areas, though, are what they call sub economic housing: the 2-3 room matchbox housing.  Finally the situation was right to see these places up close, and thanks to Mrs. Horne's insight and patience this trip was well documented.

Wealthier housing in the Coloured township near Queenstown
The Coloured township seen from another angle

Next, we drove out of town into the mountains directly behind White Queenstown.  The road took us past a very dry reservoir and into even higher mountains where Martin used to hang out --from a hang glider.  Over a pass and we were into Transkei again, the border evident from the very different grazing pressures (Transkei = bare).

The view was incredible over a wide valley in the direction of Lady Frere, but the dust clouds reduced visibility.  All day as we drove through Transkei the wind was blowing hard.  As they say in Kansas “the fields were blowing, and bad”. We even saw some sand drifting.  The Hornes said that it was the windiest day in a few years and wind always means that it is raining in the Western Cape.

We had a most enjoyable supper and evening with the Hornes.  They are a most artistic family.  Granny Horne was an artist in many media. Her water color paintings were scattered around the house.  They were mostly scenes from this area, including aloes.  One of her paintings caused an international stir, sort of.  She was always entering art contests, and one time her son-in-law suggested she enter her scribble board in the “modern art” category in a national contest.  This was a piece of paper where she cleaned her paint brushes, checked colors, made calculations, etc.  Granny did not like “modern art” so for the fun of it she named the piece of paper “The Christmas Rush”, framed it, presented it and won first prize.  The judge was an art professor from East London and they wonder if he will ever live it down.  It made the major newspapers in the country (Granny would not give permission for the Pretoria Afrikaans paper to print it).  It even got into a British magazine, Time and Life.

The Hornes and their house, Queenstown.

The Hornes’ nephew came over for a while.  Both he and his brother are lawyers and artists.  The older brother has left the practice to paint full time.  Their father was a well-known artist.

Queenstown, South Africa, Friday, 22 July, 1983

(HELENA). Before going to bed last night, Mrs. Horne found out how fond we are of being awakened by a good hot cuppa, so promptly at 6:30 this morning, there she was with our cup of coffee.  By the time we were dressed and ready to go, Joyce (Mrs. Horne actually calls her Joycie sometimes!) had been there a while and had the bacon and eggs ready.

Marjorie Horne is not one of these people who doesn’t know what to do with visitors.  When we told her we’d like to stay two nights and one day, she planned the day just right with a variety of interesting things.  First stop was at Jack Horne’s office, an old house that he and his partner have moved into.  Mrs. Horne had already told us about the front door that been horribly scratched by the previous owner’s dog and the strange signs (backward “J”) marked in black above each of the doors. 

We picked up Mr. Horne, and (after seeing Granny’s famous abstract painting) went to the museum with him while she went shopping.  Mr. Horne is on the board of directors, and it is housed in an old stone schoolhouse where he and their oldest children attended grade school.  He was particularly proud of an old house that they had reconstructed inside the museum.  Martin had suggested the idea. 

Mrs. Horne came to pick us up and we went home for a quick cup of coffee.  Last night I had asked her if she had a recipe for rusks, the dry dunking bread that Dan and I have become so fond of.  True to form, she immediately went next door to beg some rusks from her neighbor and this morning she not only gave me recipes, but insisted on making some so we could see how it’s done.  So while we bopped in for coffee, she got together the ingredients for the rusks.

Our next visit was to Queens College, the boys’ school where Mr. Horne, Martin and John (eldest son) went to school.  Quite an eye opener.  The campus looks more like a small university instead of kindergarten through “matriculation”.  Of the 600 high school students, just over 100 are day students.  The rest live in the school hostels.  We went into the school museum and saw all sorts of medals and pictures giving a lot of importance to sports.  I’m afraid that Dan and I consider the uniform (a black and orange striped blazer, grey pants and straw cheese cutters for head gear) a tossup between hideous and hilarious.  The top rugby players have a different blazer (with the same unfortunate colours) and little black and orange bill caps with tassels. 
Queens College and Girl's High School uniforms.

We drove around Mrs. Horne's school as well.  She had been an out of towner from East London.  Her mother died when Mrs. Horne was young and her father felt his daughters should go away to school and know how to be independent.  She had good memories of her school days there.

Before returning home for lunch we took a drive up one of the hills that overlooks Queenstown.  The scenic drive is also a game reserve, but we only saw a bit of game far way.  After yesterday’s dusty atmosphere it was “only a pleasure” to look across the town on a crisp, bright blue day.

White Queenstown at a distance
The Coloured township at a ditance
Lunch was most properly served on hot plates (on mats to protect the table),  with Mr. Horne reaching up to ring the bell (electric) for each course.  We had roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, curried cabbage, and dessert was another South African specialty – melk tart.  And of course tea in the sun room.  People here generally do not drink along with their meals.  Apparently they’ve heeded some health experts’ advice on not washing their food down.  (It is supposed to “dilute the gastric juices”.)

All day Mrs. Horne had been talking about taking us to see “the shells”.  We had no idea what that meant, and it didn’t sound terribly interesting.  It turned out to be a fantastic display of one woman’s art work.  She had two large rooms with paintings and pictures done in various mediums.  All of this was in her house and she had even painted a design on the floor of one of the huge rooms.  The small room was the most special:  several cases full of fanciful creations made out of only shells and materials found by the sea.  She had figures all the way from tiny children to whole scenes of fairy tales.  It was really beautiful.

Next stop was Dale Elliot’s newly bought studio.  This is the Hornes’ nephew who had just become a full time artist.  He and his wife bought this old house (over 199 years old) and are setting up a studio and gallery and are doing it RIGHT.  We had a cup of coffee there and went around the house which they are in the process of remodeling.  So far he’s got quite a fancy office-studio.  Mrs. Horne mentioned that tomorrow we’d be looking for a ride to Grahamstown.  Dale remembered that a bunch of Queens College teams will be going to play there, so he called several people to find out about possible rides.

While we were having our evening grape juice back home, Mr. Horne mention that he had found a ride for us with a man taking  his son to play in Grahamstown.  The time set for leaving is 7:00 so we all headed for bed early on.  Joyce had stayed on (we wondered if she spent the night here, which would have been illegal) so she served supper.  She had also washed and ironed clothes for us.

Queenstown- Grahamstown, South Africa, Saturday, July 23

(DAN) At 05:30 came a knock – Mrs. Horne with a cup of coffee!  The Hornes were going to 0730 mass (Anglican) so could not eat breakfast with us.  Joyce had been there a while already so we had toast, butter, two kinds of marmalade (homemade), eggs and bacon while the Hornes kept us company.  The “table” here is one of the most formal that I recall.  Speaking of table, theirs is a highly prized one made entirely of stinkwood, a tree that grows down in the forests of the Garden Route.  Along with “yellowwood”, they are used in all of the old “Cape Dutch” homes and are now quite scarce, thus they are highly prized. 

Our ride came by on time, and after picking up another youngster, we were on our way by 0710.  SA rugby by all accounts is quite a phenomenon.   This morning, for example, Queens College is sending 9 rugby teams (and three field hockey teams) to play St. Andrew’s at Grahamstown.  These 9 teams of 15 each only represent the Under 14 and Under 15s. The big boys are coming from St. Andrew’s to Queenstown.  A total movement of over 200 players, not to mention the parents that drive to support the team.  Grahamstown is 222 km away!  Mrs. Horne says that the SA railroads used to offer a special and the school would hire 3-4 cars and take the overnight train down one night and back the next.  White population concentrations are far apart in these parts.

Our ride was with the Ford dealer from Queenstown, and was very quiet compared to our last ride.  When you are in Queenstown you do not feel high because it is in a wide plain surrounded by high mountains.  But to go to Grahamstown you climb only a little through the mountains to the Nico Malan pass.  On the other side, however, is the escarpment with a drop of maybe 3000 feet before you level out.

On the Queenstown side the vegetation is mainly a sparse arid scrub.  Once over the pass the humidity picks up and the vegetation is quite thick scrub 6-8 feet high.

For the first hour we went in and out of Ciskei some three times. Ciskei is the newest independent homeland, only one year old.  The political problems they are suffering there have been in the news a lot lately.  The head of national security --who is also the president’s brother-- has been put in prison along with 14 other people for “plotting against the country of Ciskei”. 

Fortunately for the farmers, but unfortunately for rugby players and tourists it started to rain as we drove into Grahamstown.  The campground was not far so our ride took us there and dropped us.  We were there long enough to drop off our packs and then walked back into town.

Grahamstown figures prominently in The Covenant but is famous locally for being the home of the 1820 settlers.  1820 was when the first movement of British came out to settle and farm.  They were given land around Grahamstown and gradually spread inward.   To be descended from an 1820 settler is akin to tracing your roots back to the Mayflower --among the English speaking community I should add.

We spent the rest of the morning at the Albany Museum which is divided into a building dedicated to the 1820 settlers and another, half finished, for the Natural History of the area.  The first was well done with collections of “period furniture and dress”. The outstanding area in the Natural History part was the room of African instruments.  It was well labeled and by pressing 1 of 8 buttons you could hear a recording of a desired instrument.  In the first museum there was not one display for Black people except paintings of the fighting in this or that Kaffir war.  The “native” paraphernalia was displayed in the Natural History building along with the stuffed animals and “the origins of man”.

We had lunch on the deserted grounds of Rhodes University before setting out to see the sights of town.  The University was started with Rhodes money in 1904 (as was the University of Capetown).  The buildings were designed by Hubert Baker and had almost a Spanish Colonial appearance.  Of the 3500 students, 2000 live on campus.

Education is Grahamstown's largest industry as it has two large Anglican boarding schools (male and female) and Kingswood, which is a large coeducational boarding school (the first coeducational school in the Republic).  We walked through them watching the uniformed students with fascination.

Kingswood is supposed to be modeled after the Kingswood that John Wesley founded, “following the same ideals”.    The blurb also claims that it has “never stagnated or retrogressed”.  We were therefore disappointed to find a brand new gate monument at the entrance with a plaque saying “In honor of Rhodesian and other Kingswoodians who served their country”.  We stopped and watched some girls playing very strenuous field hockey.  Next we visited a cemetery[1] but it was new and not of much interest.  The school and cemetery are both in the Coloured part of town. The Fish River is the traditional border to where Blacks (Bantu) ever got before Europeans arrived.  Grahamstown is just south of the river and the change is very evident as most of the people on the street are Coloured now.

We looked at several old churches. There is an 1832 Anglican church. There is a Coloured Methodist Church right beside the White one and it looks equally old.  However it does not have a date, and of course is not mentioned in the tourist guide.  We walked around looking at the rest of the indicated historical buildings and then headed home.  Many of the old houses have been well preserved, yet look lived in.

It was still drizzling so instead of setting up our tent, we rented a rondavel at the campground.  We were glad because later it really stared to rain and kept on most the night.

(HELENA) Originally we were going to light a fire and roast some wieners, but the cold drizzly weather drove us to boil them on our Campingaz stove.  It felt good to be dry and warm, especially knowing that we could have been out in our cold tent.


[1] Dan had worked two summers cutting grass in the cemeteries in Winfield, Kansas, so was something of an expert.