If scenery is really what the Chinese say it is–the combination of mountains and water–then what I saw today was scenery. My guide and I went up the coast toward Port Elizabeth to Tsitsikama National Park, which fronts on the Indian Ocean.
It’s a natural forest, albeit restored (logging was closed down about 50 years ago, and the land returned to forest) that is one of the destinations, we discovered, for tour buses as one of the Garden Route National Parks, and a pretty cool place in and of itself. The highlight of the park is a coastal trail that uses a suspension bridge to cross an inlet, about 3/4 of a mile from the trailhead. It gave pretty spectacular views of the ocean, and the mountains that come down to the sea. it was a brisk day, with scattered rain and high waves, which made for pretty spectacular pictures. As I said, it’s almost the equivalent of November here, but the verdant hills indicate there’s a lot of evergreens that don’t look like fir or pine trees–such as the Cape Chestnut, which as my guide pointed out, “doesn’t have chestnuts that you roast over an open fire.”
When we got to the bridge, I heard something that for all the world sounded like thunder; it was the waves playing on a beach loaded with rocks. I thought it was the crashing against the rocks, which I thought rolled, but it was probably echoes of the waves crashing.
We learned later that the area had been a prisoner of war camp–I believe in World War I–and that the whole area had been denuded of trees as one of the main sources of wood in South Africa.
We found a museum in Kynysa that had a history of the area, in which logging was really important. A Norwegian named Thesen was the main businessman, with shipping and timber interests; at one time, his factories made all the posts and handles in South Africa. His sawmill was on the island I’m staying at, which was renamed for him.
The other item of interest in the Kynysa museum was the material on the Boer War. though most of the fighting was near Joburg (also called Josi), there was a raid near here that provoked the building of a fort. The museum had information on 6 of the Boer generals, and the information made it sound like the war was rather like the Philippines for the US–with a long-lasting insurrection that followed the formal end of the war.
One consequence of the building of the coastal road–and one of the reasons it was delayed–is that it crosses some major gorges creating some major bridge building projects. We stopped at one because it had a Khoisan tribute (to the original African settlers of the area, people we call bushmen) and the 216 meter bungee jump. Until the creation of the Macau tower (a bungee off a building), it was the highest bungee drop in the world. Today it has to bill itself as the biggest jump off a bridge. It’s fairly reasonable–about 60$, but happily I resisted the temptation to drop for probably no more than 20 seconds and contented myself with snapping photos of others, from a distance.
Doug said, “It sounds like you’re having fun,” but I want to assure you, I’m on the clock learning about South Africa so that I can teach about it. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it..