Pigeonholing South Africans and Other Pastimes

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December 25, 2006 – Drakensberg Escarpement: Dullstroom to Pilgrim’s Rest to Hazyview

Before jumping on the main highway East from Jo’burg, we stopped at a gas station for provisions. We naturally locked up the car tight, and – as in Amsterdam – we left the empty glove box open. The snack shop in this particular gas station was a bit of a disappointment: I wanted a few bottles of water, and they did have water, but only flavored water. Flavored with everything imaginable: black currant, elderberries, raspberry, and every other nasty fruit you can think of. But no plain old mineral water. I had to settle for a bottle of lemon-lime flavored water (a.k.a., Sprite), and a South African-style beef jerky called biltong, which I grew to love very quickly.

The drive was great. The road was wide. The radio was weird. We listened to an Afrikaans station out of Pretoria that Christmas morning, with families of people with names like “Wiekey”, “Toppy”, and “Beppy”, sending out Christmas “boedschappies” (little messages) to friends and family. Too weird. By the way, Afrikaans pop music sounds like its Dutch cousin: cheesy and awful.

During the drive, we had one of our first exhilarating Dude-We’re-In-Africa moments – one of many – but as we left the main road and headed for the town of Dullstroom, the skies got grey, the temperature dropped, and it started raining. Dude-We’re-In-Africa became “dude, we’re in the English Lake District”: rolling green hills gilded with loose rock walls; large farms with white manor homes; idyllic ponds gilded with sturdy shade trees behind them; and sheep and cows grazing in the distance. While it was nice, it wasn’t exactly the Africa I had in my head. Only the occasional black South African we’d passing walking on the shoulder of the road reminded me that we were indeed in Africa.

Out first stop was a one-horse town called Dullstroom. Apparently, people do a lot of trout fishing in the area, and use Dullstroom as their base of operations. Ooookay. I don’t fish, so who cares. Dullstroom lived up to its name. Of course we went there on the recommendation of the Dutch woman from the tour operator. Dullstroom was one road with a series of stand alone hotels and B&Bs, bait and tackle shops, and a small strip mall. (Not an ugly strip mall, mind, but a well manicured one), with a courtyard and accented with ivy and trellises.

Only one day on the road, and we had already forgotten it was Christmas, and we were scratching our heads why all the restaurants and stores were closed. Apart from the our first encounter with a parking guard (young kid in a neon green rain jacket, whom I tipped five Rand thankyouverymuch), it was also interesting to get our first look at “real, live” South Africans – in this case White South Africans, and Afrikaners to boot (as opposed to white South Africans of English descent).

Afrikaners are the descendents of the original Dutch settlers who populated the Cape Colony. They are characterized by their independence, tenacity, and adherence to the reformed Church. The Dutch normally include the Afrikaners in Dutch history, no doubt doing their best to underline the importance of the Dutch in global affairs (once upon a time). The Afirkaners, on the other hand, ditched the Dutch a long time ago. Probably the minute they got off the boat and began trying to eke out a life out in Africa, since, in the 17^th century, the Netherlands might as well have been a million miles away.

Unlike, oh I don’t know, the Quebecois, the Afrikaners don’t annoy everyone by hanging on to some sort of false Euro-identity. There is no mistaking a robust, sun-baked, truck owning, New Testament-adhering Afrikaner, for some pale, skinny, DJ Tïesto loving Dutch boy with a gallon of gel in his hair and a Vespa.

As far as I can tell, rural white South Africans come in four varieties:

• Fat type
• Skinny-Blue-Eyed-Cruel-Hawk-Nose-Probably-Committed-Apartheid-Crimes type
• “Extreme Dude”: long-haired beardo, easily mistaken for the Aussie Beach Bum
• The Grant.

The first two are probably self-explanatory. The “Extreme” one we’ve all seen. It’s the dude that looks like he’s either going kite sailing or snowboarding, or looks like he just got back from the X-Games.

The Grant is an interesting one. Grant is a buddy of mine, who happens to be South African. He’s one of the many gentle souls I’ve met that left South Africa and never looked back. Grant could almost fit into the “Extreme” category, but he’s far too original for that. He’s got the goatee, and the mussed up (but short) hair, but the similarities end there. He’s and IT guru with no fashion sense at all, simply preferring sleeveless t-shirts, and he doesn’t give a toss what anyone thinks. And unlike most IT gurus, he also has the sexual confidence of Brad Pitt and George Clooney combined. He can talk to anyone. I’ve seen this clever bastard go right up to women while the boyfriend/husband is standing there. In my more envious moments, I’ve called him a garbage dick, but now I see he loves women – all women. We must have seen Grant 30-odd times all across South Africa. If all these guys have the same libido as Grant, then I expect the Afrikaners will never die out.

We finally found an open restaurant in Dullstroom. It was filled primarily with the Fat type families, but there was one table of “Extreme” dudes (including one with a goatee half a foot long), and there was one family of the ice blue-eyed, hawk-nosed Probably-Committed-Apartheid-Crime types, The host at the door was the only Grant.

The P-C-A-C family was well-dressed (far better dressed than the track suit-wearing Fat types) in polo shirts and khakis, with even sun tans, sipping glasses of South African red. The only thing that wasn’t perfect about them was the wifey, who had horribly large frosted hair and wayyyyy too much eye make-up. (This was par-for-course amongst all the “mature” white women going out on the town in South Africa, it seems.) I guess I was fascinated by them because the son (probably in his mid-30s) and the father (late 50s) fulfilled every twisted, possibly incorrect pre-conception I had about wicked white Afrikaners. (Think Lethal Weapon 2.) They spoke Afrikaans to each other, even to the waiter (who was black, which actually could be construed as offensive).

The waiter was very nice, and hooked us up with some cheese and tomato sandwiches, despite the Grant at the door telling us we could only get coffee.

From Dullstroom, we continued on towards Pilgrim’s Rest (or “Pilgers Rust” in Dutch/Afrikaans). The roads got more winding and the scenery more intense. My pre-conception of Africa was dry Savannah, with tumbleweeds, and the occasional, lone Baobab tree (having seen The Gods Must be Crazy 20 times). No such luck. It was rocky hills all right, but carpeted with lush trees and low shrubs. The hills were rippled like water in some places, and undulating and swelling up in other areas, almost like overstuffed cushions. These hills became even steeper. As we drove through coal mining country, it was if God had taken a Freddy Kruger razor claw and attacked these overstuffed cushions, because the gashes bled red, emollient soil. We even encountered canyons with this dramatic blood red color.

Pilgrim’s Rest was similar to Dullstroom: one street, with lots of B&Bs and restaurants, but all similarities ended there. First off, as you entered the town, there were South African black men milling about everywhere. Not seemingly going anywhere (because as far as I could tell, there was nowhere to go), but just milling about: sitting on bridge railings. All the stuff the Dutch woman poured in my head came to the fore: doors were locked, windows were up, no eye contact made. My reflexes made me feel like I was in the South Bronx during the height of the crack epidemic.  Naturally, nothing happened.  Plenty of families were walking about. I t was a normal scene, and just one I wasn’t ready for yet, I guess.  (Thanks, evening news!)  In the end, Pilgrim’s Rest wasn’t worth stopping in, since we’d already eaten, so we moved on.

We finally ended our ride at the Gecko Lodge in Hazyview. This was a pretty cool place. It was discreetly tucked into the jungle, and the management had landscaped it in such a way that the jungle came right up to the door of your rondavel. (A rondavel is a type of dwelling: a round building made from clay, capped with a pointed, wooden-framed roof covered in thatch. In fact, the jungle didn’t stop at the door, and usually made its way into your room if you left the door open long enough. Usually, it’s just a cricket or a relatively benign ant, but it can also be a gecko if you’re not fast enough with the door.

In fact, as hard as these guys have pushed the jungle back from the property, if the landscaping help didn’t show up for a week, the place would disappear in the green. Leaves the size of catcher’s mitts provide shade. I’m on the phone that night to my parent’s to wish them a Merry Christmas – half hanging off a tree to get one bar of reception on my GSM phone, and moths the size of small birds are whacking into my chest and face. We try sitting outside, but the insects were too thick in the air, and the frogs were too loud. (I mean we couldn’t hold a conversation). The next morning, we watched the hotel cat bat around and finally devour a small lizard, carefully tearing it to pieces with it’s teeth. Later on, I chased another lizard to get a picture. It’s not much bigger than my hand, and it was sunning myself on a rock. Something beneath the rock moved. It was another lizard. A big one. I didn’t see all of it, but the tail was as thick as a baby’s head, and it irked to be disturbed by me.

The house cat is nowhere near the top of the food chain in Africa. Not even in the hotel.

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Filed under Jungle, South Africa, Travel