The Wild Coast

After quite a long drive we arrived at the Jungle Monkey backpackers in Port St. Johns. The town is really just two streets, so there's not a lot to do there exactly, but that's more than made up for by the madness at the backpacker place itself. Even our guidebook reckoned that the best bar in the town was the backpacker bar - and I reckon that certainly proved to be true for the few days we were there.

Jungle Monkey, like most backpacker places we've encountered throughout South Africa and since, was actually very self-contained - it had a nice restaurant (although there was also cooking facilities), it had a nice clean swimming pool, it had the best bar in town that had live music regularly (including a mad tall, Masai Mara-looking dude with huge platform shoes and a mad outfit, who was actually really good), and of course all the staff were brilliant craic. The whole place was quite big, and had a couple of nice verandas, one of which was nicely removed from everywhere else and had a great view of the sea (and luckily our room was quite removed from the bar, and so was nice and quite - although we did manage to smash a window. It wasn't our fault though, it was just very windy and the wind blew the window back on itself - the nice owner guy just shrugged it off and told us it was always happening, and he had it fixed that evening).

As for things to do, one day myself and Sarah went horse riding. The poor horses arrived to meet us lathered in sweat, as there had been a mixup in the booking, and the guide had to race the poor horses to meet us as we got off the free river ferry. But after a short rest and a slow start they seemed fine.

It was really windy, but still a beautifully sunny day, and the trek we took followed along the beach and then up along the high cliffs, which offered stunning views overlooking the turbulent sea. We stopped for a delicious traditional lunch in a tiny local village outside the town (cooked by the guides aunt, apparently), before heading back down the hills and finally wading out to the ferry to take us back across the river and home.

Another day we hiked along the coast for 5km to a beach simply called Second Beach. This is the only safe swimming beach near Port St. Johns, and it was a lovely spot (it was actually quite busy, which has been unusual for a beach throughout this entire trip - although I didn't swim, just paddling about for a bit). This hike was unguided, and we only had the barest outline of a description of the route. But it was easy enough going in the end, taking us up and around a lovely lighthouse and over lovely rocky outcrops past some friendly locals and their shacks (and past the Millennium Bar, a strange little bar in the 'locals' part to the town that we'd visited with Jungle Monkey residents for a sundowner a few days previously).

Passing through the tiny village of Second Beach we stopped for lunch at a lovely, funky little restaurant called The Delicious Monster (really just a local couple's house, with the restaurant seating in their well maintained front garden). Although someone had recommended it, there really wasn't much choice in the area, and if we hadn't been given directions we would never have found it. We were the only customers too. It wasn't particularly cheap, but the fresh crayfresh sounded lovely. It turned out to be one of the very best meals we've had on the whole trip - amazingly fresh, and served with homemade mayonnaise, pitta bread and salad - all very simple really. But we were both bowled over by just how good it was - it just goes to show you can never judge a restaurant by it's appearance. In fact, all the outstanding meals on the trip so far have been at simple, relatively cheap little homely places - and each of these places has blown away all the five-star hotels and fancy-dancy restaurants (and we've tried very many of those at this stage!).

The night life at the Jungle Monkey is pretty notorious and it lived up to that reputation while we were there. We met lots of interesting people, including an extended family group of Afrikaners (who ended up buying a large B&B operation in the town). These guys seemed to take a wee shine to us for some reason (they kept asking us to join them for days out, they always seemed to be drawn to us in the evenings, and when they left early on their last morning they left us a lovely note and a wee present). It was really interesting to meet them though, as the Afrikaners are a very different breed than the English-white South Africans (Luke the Duke for instance didn't like them at all, and generally avoided them completely) - but from my point of view it was interesting to get their take on South Africa and it's future. In fact, it was eye-opening and educational in much the same way as meeting the two self-confessed 'Racialist Rhodesians' back in Zimbabwe. In many ways that captures what proper travelling is all about really - meeting and engaging with all the various types of 'locals', not just the obvious indigenous people.

The nature of Jungle Monkey (and the extremely friendly, engaging and entertaining staff, who we got to know quite well), seemed to engender a general atmosphere of camaraderie and everyone just seemed to mix and gel naturally and easily. So I think we ended up staying five nights at Jungle Money, and it was kinda weird to leave it, but by that stage I was fairly exhausted really!

Port St. Johns actually marks the beginning of what the tourist industry here calls the Wild Coast, which is basically just a long stretch of the coast dotted with small, but idyllically beautiful, little towns that cater mainly for the backpacker trade. I kinda knew at this stage that I wasn't going to let our original timetable dictate how long we'd spend travelling through South Africa (we could just extend our flights and the car rental easily over the phone), so we pretty much decided to try and check out all of the Wild Coast towns - and next up was Coffee Bay.