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Tag: south africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day four

    At Rustlers Valley Guest Lodge, we met the occupants, neighbours and anyone else who seemed to materialise from time to time (we were the only guests) at dinner that night.
    There was Dale the local naturalist and loved snakes.
    Birthday boy Carl couldn’t believe that I hadn’t heard of some permaculture guru from Australia. I didn’t like to admit that I didn’t even know what permaculture was, let alone have any idea of its personalities!
    Then there was Bill who either had a hard life or he was old enough to have been dancing to Glenn Miller let alone Janis Joplin.
    There were other refugees of the sixties as well but none as dominant as Frick.
    Hippies have always maintained that everyone’s equal and there are no leaders in their ‘gangs’.
    Well in this case Frick was without doubt the leader. He just had that look; I would call it the Charles Manson look but that sounds rather sinister. He had the long ponytail and beard and had a sort of holier than thou sort of presence.
    When he looked at me I wasn’t sure whether he was going to bless me or offer me a joint! In fact he was actually the owner of Rustlers, so I guess he had some sort of commercial seniority.
    Apparently he was a farmer going broke when he decided to build the lodge and change direction. How he became an aging hippie was not explained.
    Rustlers are famous, amongst those that care, for their music festivals. We know this because, after the initial polite conversation, the sole topic was the upcoming Easter festival, apparently a sort of South African mini Woodstock.
    By the time our beds beckoned we knew all about running festivals and have since mercifully forgotten it all.

    An Umbrella Thorn Acacia at sunset on the savannah of South Africa. It's a native to Africa.
    An Umbrella Thorn Acacia at sunset on the savannah of South Africa. It’s a native to Africa.

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day three

    The women at the tourist information place in Ficksburg told us that this place was considered weird by the locals but she herself thought it was “quite nice”. The Lonely Planet described it as a “dare to be different” sort of a place and gave it such a rap that we had to see it for ourselves
    Rustlers Valley Guest Lodge is not a place that we will ever forget in a hurry. The 15 kilometre potholed dirt track to its door is not easily forgotten, especially the bone jarring last five kilometres or so.
    Now we’re deep in the heart of Free State, formerly Orange Free State. This is Boer country, about as god fearing and conservative as you get. So to find a hippie commune smack bang in the middle is absolutely amazing!
    VW Kombi’s, teepees, suspicious looking patches of vegetation and escapees from the sixties dotted the place. But it was comfortable. The scenery was pretty good too. The Maloti range overlooked us in the west and the plains stretched out to the east with odd line of sandstone hills and grassy slopes here and there. Mostly there actually, because we made the mistake of following the “extensive network of tracks” up and around them until the tracks petered out or were so overgrown that only a machete and a chain saw would have got us further. to be continued………

    Rustlers Valley Lodge in the shadow of the malotti Hills in Free State, South Africa
    Rustlers Valley Lodge in the shadow of the malotti Hills in Free State, South Africa

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day two

    After overnighting in the Road Lodge Johannesburg Airport, we collected our wheels the next day and drove away from J’burg as quickly as we could.
    One of the two most striking things about the roads in South Africa is the number of lunatics that drive on them! These lunatics in Mercs and BMWs and in dangerously overcrowded mini vans seem determined to run any one, who’s not as mad as they are, off the road. Literally as it happens.
    The unwritten law in SA is for slower drivers to drive on the hard shoulder when being overtaken which on some roads is pretty scary as the other striking things are pedestrians that seem to want to share the hard shoulder as well! Almost every road no matter how far away from any town village or city seems to have a continuous stream of pedestrians walking along the hard shoulder and worse still some are on the road where there’s no hard shoulder.
    So driving in SA is an ongoing series of choices. Do you knock over the pedestrian coming towards you or keep on the road and get terrorised by a potentially unstable BMW driver. Once they pass you, the hazard lights politely flash if you moved over or a hand waves a one or two finger salute at you if you didn’t!
    We were actually heading for Lesotho and it’s about a day’s drive away from J’burg just to the border, so we thought we’d overnight somewhere within striking distance. Well we found somewhere all right. More about that next time.

    A Mini Van 'depot' in Johannesburg in South Africa. Mini Vans are the most popular form of public transport in the urban areas of South Africa.
    A Mini Van ‘depot’ in Johannesburg in South Africa. Mini Vans are the most popular form of public transport in the urban areas of South Africa.