Everything and the kitchen sink – Caravaning through the Eastern Cape

At the wheel of a Maui camper van Justin Fox chose an Eastern
Cape circuit that would take him to some of the region’s
finest nooks to set up home for the night.

I thought we’d joined the intrepid German seniors brigade. Heading east from Cape Town along the Garden Route on a week day out of holiday season, every second vehicle was a camper van. Most of them from Maui. Like ships passing at sea, the grey-haired captains offered a friendly wave and nod, their petite wives a smile as they glanced up from the map book. Not one or two. Dozens. This was a subculture I had never been aware of before. Perhaps there was a secret handshake? Would a 30-something whippersnapper like me and my travelling companion measure up?

The road wending down through dense, temperate forest hardly prepares you for it. Our camper van broke into the sunlight and below us lay the enchanting coastal hamlet of Storms River Mouth, a light fog fingering the shore.

I reversed the van to the edge of a shoreline that fell away to ledges where the sea thundered. Our view was 180 degrees of heaving blue. An instant cottage by the sea. Storms River Mouth is a place of mystery. Ancient forest, alive with the sound and smell of ocean, reaches its branches down to the water. A boardwalk snakes through moss-green, fern-heavy Tsitsikamma to the famous hang bridge across the river mouth. Knysna louries offer flashes of iridescent green, olive woodpeckers tap their Morse high in the branches of milkwood, stinkwood and yellowwood.

At the end of the day you sit with drink in hand watching rocky spines cleave into waves like submerging dragons. Smoke from braai fires curls skyward and voices hang hollow in the air. Cormorants stud the rocks like the teeth of a zip. A new moon follows the sun into the drink and the sky promises Lotto stars.Periscope up for air
We drove east out of Tsitsikamma’s forests, through pine and eucalyptus travesties to the grim, industrial sprawl of Port Elizabeth’s fringe; then north to Addo Elephant National Park.

After finding a shady site in the camp we sat spellbound at Woodlands Dam. A herd of about 50 elephants had come to drink, grey giants encircling the dam.

Then I noticed a problem. A young elephant had fallen in and was standing on tiptoes, head above water, trying to scramble back onto the bank. His mother was beside herself, trumpeting and flapping her ears. She tried to lift the baby with her trunk, to no avail. Then she climbed out, went down on front knees and tried to drag him out.

Tourists had gathered and had become engrossed by the spectacle. The baby was visibly tiring. The bank on the near side of the dam was not as steep, and the mother tried to encourage the young elephant to move around the edge. But this involved a short swim through deeper water and the baby was clearly not prepared for its first bathing lesson.

After three nail-biting hours the mother finally gave up. She stood with the baby between her legs, trunk lolling on the bank, exhausted.

A game ranger who’d watched some of the earlier drama now arrived on the back of a truck with six workers. He carried a rifle. As they approached, the mother swung round with a splash, trunk raised, ears thrashing. She wanted to charge, but couldn’t leave her child.

Clapping and shouting the men approached her along the bank, trying to force the pair to retreat round the edge to the shallow side. The ranger fired two rounds into the air, their crack splitting the afternoon stillness. It worked. The mother turned, making for the far bank. Her baby followed. Then his head went under. We held our breaths.

A periscopic trunk broke the surface, then a head. Now he was swimming, in a haphazard way. And he was keeping his trunk aloft. When they reached the far bank, the exhausted baby couldn’t lift himself out. He stood in the shallows, feet sinking into the mud.

After 10 agonising minutes he had the strength to stagger out. A cheer went up and echoed across the water, the reeds and over to the distant ridge where another herd was waiting to come and drink.Into musket-and-assegai country
From lovely leafy Grahamstown the route swung north into settler country. Sleepy Fort Beaufort followed by sleepier Alice; then high into aloe-strewn backlands. This has been contested terrain: cattle-and-blood chaparral where Brit and Xhosa died for these green hills.

Hogsback hamlet was reached up a snaking pass. The place has no real
centre, just houses lost at the ends of forested lanes. The Edge complex offers a range of accommodation alternatives, but we’d brought our own house, so we parked beneath pine trees near the cliff’s proverbial edge which offered
eagle views down the valley.

Hogsback is fairy-tale land. Here the Hobbit is revered, New Agers set up home and you get the feeling you might be introduced to an amiable garden gnome. The forest mushrooms, I’m told, are potent. The village has a labyrinth, an eco-shrine as well as waterwheels, bubbling brooks and waterfalls reached on boardwalks through the dripping forest. It’s a place you can soon forget the outside world.

We skirted East London, heading for the wilder, ‘border country’ coast beyond. Our camper van bounced and jounced on rough roads down to Morgan Bay. The hills were dotted with rondavels and Xhosa women in traditional dress bore firewood or buckets of water on their heads.

Beyond Morgan Bay the road dwindled to a track over green pastures to Double Mouth, a crescent camp site overlooking a cove. Set among casuarinas, it’s one to the prettiest spots you could wish to anchor your van. A lovely walk westward along shelves of diced and bored rock brings you to a stream. It’s a short swim to a long white beach which can be yours alone for a day, that is if you don’t mind sharing with the odd oystercatcher.

The trail eastwards is even more spectacular. The line of cliffs that separate Double Mouth from Morgan Bay are some of the most dramatic on this coast. You follow grassy tracks over boulder beaches piled with woody seawrack and along the edge of black rocks, the surf thundering far below. Vervets and small antelope watch your progress. This is the Xhosa home land, soul land. But shell middens and stone implements on the beaches speak of much older inhabitants who also lived off the sea’s bounty, but lost out to later comers. Back through settler country
Westward now to close the circuit, past Gonubie and Kidd’s Beach into a howling gale. Port Alfred lay under a blanket of cloud, but the cold front had brought waves and a pod of surfers was riding giants off the harbour mouth. Medolino Resort lay tucked away in a park of established trees with hedges separating each site. There was a lovely pool and over the dunes lay the beach, but red wine by the windows of a harbourside restaurant proved more appealing.

That night rain drilled the roof of our villa and at dawn we woke under a spitting sky with the homeward road beckoning. For us, it was a long tack back to Cape Town in the building westerly. For the stream of campervanners passing us straight off the plane from Berlin, their Garden Route dreams were just becoming reality.