Coffee Anyone?

I am still battling the best way to accurately portray our drive out to Coffee Bay. It was probably one of the longest, tiring, worst drives ever to one of the best places on this part of the trip. The drive to Coffee Bay was an exhausting 604km (377.5mi), of which the last 90km were in the dark ditching cows, people, and potholes. Now, I am sure you have heard the saying that everything is bigger in Africa. The snakes are bigger, the bugs are bigger, the sharks are bigger….but the one thing no one has ever mentioned is that the potholes are bigger!!! On our drive we encountered potholes the size of VW Bugs that would be considered sink holes at home. You could quite literally get lost in one, or get lost avoiding one. The potholes are everywhere and if you swerve to miss one, you are bound to hit three more, a cow, or the oncoming car also swerving the potholes for his own sake. And they are deep, if you do unfortunately hit a pothole with one or all of your tires (even at 20km/hr) it is bound to leave your bum sore the next morning. Trust me.
The first 287.5km to Coffee Bay took us through towns and cities that very well may have had Carjacking signs at one point, or should have at least. The national freeway will take you through these towns where there is no other choice but to stop for pedestrians crossing the road, weaving in and out of cars, coming up to your car so close you have to stop, but don’t then squirm because you don’t want to hit them and you think you might. Safe or attractive would not be the words I would use to describe these areas, but the reality was that we were seeing the reality of the country – and wasn’t that the point of this whole trip anyhow??
When we finally got to Coffee Bay we had to turn on the 4-wheel drive and the super cool trail lights our SUV was fitted with. Turning off the road meant truly turning off the road all the way onto the soft sand riverbed and up the rock/dirt hill. Again we ran into signs for B&Bs that didn’t exist or weren’t open (not sure which). Up then down the windy, narrow, gravel-like road we managed to find a nice place overlooking the ocean and hunkered down for night.
Coffee Bay is a very small, peaceful, secluded beach that is tucked away miles from anywhere and surrounded by the numerous tribal villages of the indigenous people who still live there. The locals refer to the area as Transvaal, a region which during the Apartheid was not considered part of South Africa but rather considered an independent state (though not acknowledged as one). Even though this is what the people wanted at that time, 40 years of tribal government lead the area to poverty and now can best be described as a small town living on the infrastructure of a camp site. Despite the local poverty and conditions, Coffee Bay manages to maintain a very peaceful, friendly, and colorful ambience for those who manage to visit.
The first morning we were there we rose early to check the surf before breakfast at nine. In Coffee Bay, we learned the mornings and evenings typically bring strong onshore winds (bad for surfing) so we decided to head back towards our hut for some breakfast and check the surf out in the afternoon. It was nice driving around this morning since we arrived in the dark and didn’t get a chance to look at what was around us. The village starting to stir, backpackers and campers starting their fires for breakfast, it seemed to be pretty peaceful and sunny and the outlook for the day was great – then SMACK!!! OUCH!! What was that??! We hit something. We got out of the car looked around and saw our front passenger tire – flat. Well, torn and flat. We didn’t see any potholes or missing areas of road so we aren’t sure what exactly happened, but there we were, the local villagers staring us at as we scratched our heads and headed for the trunk. Now, all in all, this wasn’t a big deal, but things didn’t turn out to be as simple as we thought. We changed the tire in a matter of minutes, surveyed the damage and noted the large tear on the wall of the tire. We had a full-sized spare so we were going to be ok for the next day or so, but the roads are hairy and if you remember me mentioning, we were miles and miles from anywhere, this couldn’t happen again. Luckily, it turned out that one of the backpacker managers makes daily runs to a tire repair shop (apparently people fall victim to potholes often). We could leave our tire with them before noon and get it back around 5pm. Sounds great – so far, only this brings a whole new set of complications. When we arrived at our B&B we asked if we would be able to pay with a credit card. The lady said that she had a machine but that the phone lines had been down for a few weeks and she wasn’t sure when they would be back up. If they were working when we left, we could use a card; f not, then we had to pay in cash. We had learned the hard way to always have cash on us so it wasn’t a big deal to pay her cash, only it was going to take almost all the cash we had on us not including money for a newly flattened tire. So there we were, with the nearest ATM about an hour away on some sketch roads, we decided to wing it and see what happened. We set money aside for the room in case we couldn’t use a card and some aside for fixing the tire. This left us thirty Rands (30R) for the rest of the night and the next morning (about $3.50) and dinner was usually 60R a person. Dilemma. Luckily Jason had befriended a fellow surfer vacationing in Coffee Bay from London. He and his girlfriend were staying in a hut down the road from ours and invited us over for some afternoon surf and dinner. We told him our money situation and he said it was no problem. He and his girlfriend had been staying almost the whole week and had become very familiar with the guy who ran the place. If we were to buy a few beers (which we could afford) then we have some of whatever was being served that evening. Sounds like a plan. Jason decided to go for an afternoon surf while I caught up on some blogging. About an hour later Jason came back and said “there is something wrong with the car.” We had been driving around on our spare all day without problems, but all of a sudden the front two wheels were turned away from each other. Not good. On top of that, the guy came back from the tire place and told us that we had to buy a new tire, that our tear could not be fixed. Sh&t! We didn’t have any money for a new tire!!! People were reassuring us that it was probably the alignment set off by hitting whatever we hit and that we could get it fixed in Mthatha. Mthatha?? That super sketch town we drove through on the way here??? Ugh, alright, it couldn’t get any worse. Focus here, the car is insured, right?? Jason….right??? No answer. Oh gosh. When the US dollar was doing really well against the Rand (when we were still in San Diego) we purchased our car rental online – BEFORE we signed up for car rental insurance. The car SHOULD be covered, but what if the policy wasn’t retroactive? The best thing to do is call American Express (who is supposedly insuring the car) and ask. Do we have enough minutes? We needed to buy some more airtime but didn’t have any money, AND Leon (from Durban) would be expecting our call in the morning to let him know if we would be staying. AHHH! So we decided to call American Express and hope that we had enough minutes. Turns out we did, and American Express was not covering the car, but since we purchased the insurance before picking up the car, it wasn’t a big deal to do so now. We asked specifically “so if we return the car with a broken axel and busted windshield, are we covered????” The guy said, “even if you total the vehicle, and we prefer that you didn’t, yes, it would be covered.” Whew, oh what a relief! Oh yeah, I guess I’d forgotten to mention that our windshield was cracked in two places from flying rocks a few days ago. So the call to American Express sucked up all of our minutes, but with this new information we decided rather than try to get the tire and alignment fixed, we would return the car at the random Hertz at the small, random, single runway airport in Mthatha and pick up a new car.
That evening, spending time with our new friends ended up being really, really fun, especially since this huge monkey had been lifted from our back (and we had enough $$ for beers). We stayed up all night eating homemade pizza, drinking some beers, and hanging out before trekking back to our place.
The next morning we headed out early. We were anxious to get the car fixed/traded and with no spare tire, the trip would be trying. The Mthatha airport would be approximately 90km away and the condition of the roads would let us go about 80km/hour and the condition of the car would only let us go about 50km/hour, so was going to be a long ride. Loooong story short, we successful braved the potholes on the 2 hour drive to the airport and dropped of the truck. The Mthatha airport (being as small as it was) didn’t have another SUV to give us but said that we could take a small car to the Hertz in at the East London airport and pick up a 4WD there. Deal. So we packed up ALL of our luggage, junk, and surfboard into a small car about the size of a jellybean! The car was so small that the surfboard divided the car in half all the way up to the front. Since the tiny car didn’t have AC we would have to roll the windows down for some air. So there we were, windows down in this jellybean, wind blowing, surfboard dividing the car so I can’t even see or hear Jason – we put-putted all the way to East London. Jason and I could only laugh at ourselves and situation at this point.
On the way to East London we did some research on the area and decided we did NOT want to stop here. We couldn’t go too far looking for a place since we wanted to watch South Africa play in the rugby semi-finals starting in an hour! After more research we spotted place about 120km from East London call Port Alfred. We wouldn’t make the whole match, but maybe make it for half-time and little did we know that once we reached Port Alfred we would be in a whole new Africa.

Days Traveled: 46
Distance: 31,543km/19,714mi
Can’t Believe: our luck.