Merci, South Africa
Two Girls on a Road Trip and the Unexpected Magic of a Box of Chocolates
I've been fascinated by Africa as a continent since I was a kid. (I tend to say that a lot, about many things.) 2018 was the year when I finally decided to travel there for the very first time. By then I'd already spent years travelling, working abroad and eventually turning travel into part of my work. But somehow, despite the childhood fascination, I'd never actually been to Africa.
I struggled to pick which country, but then Africa Burn stole my heart so I chose South Africa as the destination, and the desert pop-up event as part of the plan. I thought I'd end up going alone, and was ready to commit, but I kept talking about it so passionately that my good friend Ladi decided to join me for the adventure. There we were – two girls, one rental car, three weeks roaming around a country with a rather notorious reputation for crime, topped off with a week at a hippy festival in the middle of the desert. Our parents and boyfriends were not thrilled. It turned out to be one of the best travel – and life – experiences I've ever had.
Like other big life stories (wink wink) it actually started with a box of chocolates.
It was an innocent gift from my students at the end of the semester as a goodbye and thank you (the box did say Merci, after all). I was definitely flattered, but didn't plan on eating the entire load of treats alone. So I decided to bring them with me, and share them with strangers along the way.
As last-minute “packing” decisions go, this one was going to prove unusually useful.
The fun started before we'd even boarded the plane, on the train from Prague to Vienna, en route for our flight to Ethiopia and eventually Cape Town.
The conductor who checked our tickets was our first “target”. “Oh, you made my day, I'll take a short break and enjoy this. I was feeling pretty tired, it's been a long day today,” she said, beaming.
Next up were two Austrian girls sitting in front of us. I squeezed my hand with the box through the seats and they took one each, happily chatting away. The guy behind us hesitated, and just when I thought “okay, not everyone is going to participate” he quietly made up his mind and picked a wrapped chocolate. We were ecstatic with joy.
We flew Ethiopian Airlines and our first “African” stop was the picturesque airport of Addis Abeba. I'll confess that we both kept our EA blankets as a practical travel item - we were going to the desert after all. Looking back, that same blanket became my ultimate travel companion because I used it for years as a maxi scarf, dress, towel, or a curtain. And, of course, a blanket. Looking around the airport, we saw we weren't the only ones who made the same call, and turned the blanket into a fashion statement.
A round of chocolates went to a few US guys we discussed hockey with (it's always priceless to talk Nagano with Americans or Canadians), and a mom with a shy little girl. By the time we reached Cape Town, the chocolates were gone.
Finally, Cape Town!
We spent the first few days walking Cape Town – the Waterfront, Bo-Kaap, Table Mountain appearing and disappearing beneath its tablecloth of cloud. But increasingly, the things I remembered weren't the sights.
One day we ventured into an artisanal street market. And that's where our chocolate-fuelled connection-seeking confidence emerged again. Something I wouldn't normally do, being naturally shy – yet here I was, striking up a conversation with a seller. She had a stand full of beautiful hand-made things, beaded dolls (we wondered if the beads came from Czech Republic, as they often do, true story). We talked to her about where she was from (Botswana) and why she'd come to Cape Town, where there were better work opportunities than back home.
We took a few trips by car, couldn't have skipped on Cape Point and Cape of Good Hope. On on of our drives we stopped for a scenic coastal view and saw there were lots of wire sculptures and signs for sale. Of course we started taking pictures, there was no one in sight. Suddenly a figure in a big rainbow Jamaican hat crawled out of a literal bush – he was obviously taking a nap, and climbed out when customers arrived. The guy would fit right in at a weed shop. This would normally be the moment I'd say hi and slowly disappear into a bush myself, Homer-style. But not on this trip. We started talking, and he turned out to be a really nice guy. We offered him a beer but he said he didn't drink (but smoked a lot of weed), and showed us how he made the wire signs and sculptures. It was a time consuming and elaborate technique. He collected empty soda cans, and meticulously cut all of them into long thin colourful coils. He would then shape words and objects from regular wire, and wrap each of them in the different colour aluminium strips. The results were truly amazing, and we ended up buying a souvenir each.
After a few days in Cape Town it was time to move on.
Our plan for the next ten days was loose: follow the coast east, pick up the Garden Route and keep going for as long as we felt like it, then turn inland and slowly wind our way through the Western Cape until we reached Tankwa Town in time for AfricaBurn.
We stayed with families through Airbnb (back when it was still about sharing a spare bedroom and some life experience), or in plain old-fashioned guesthouses we found by actually driving up to places with a bed sign outside. Not that it was actually the olden days, we simply didn't bother to get a local SIM card and just winged it.
We drove mainly on sealed roads but every now and then decided to take a shortcut down a gravel road that tried to vibrate our brains out on the endless washboards. The payoffs were some of the most scenic views of our entire trip — vast and rugged landscapes, occasional dust devils crossing our path, windmill water pumps straight out of an old movie, curious sheep and fields of prickly pear.
We took one such dusty 100 km detour to see a random point of interest we'd spotted on the map – a really huge, really old, apparently significant tree – only to find absolutely nothing there. The mystery wouldn't be solved until a week later. At AfricaBurn, we walked into one of the art installations – and found an enormous table made from a single piece of wood. Imagine our surprise when we read the note: it was made from that very tree from Knysna. It had burned in a huge wildfire the previous year. Mystery solved.
Knysna was an interesting and unexpected highlight of our trip. I'd never even heard that name (pronounced “naizna”) before this trip. Which made it all the funnier when, years later, I was living on a boat in the Caribbean and one of our neighbours at the anchorage introduced himself as Knysna. I said, bewildered “Wait, like the town in South Africa?” He looked even more bewildered. Apparently he was used to explaining his unusual name, not meeting people who knew exactly where it came from. Turns out his parents had conceived him there.
Anyway, back to Knysna: The picturesque town on the famous Garden Route was spread on a steep hill, overlooking an estuary leading into the ocean. We found an Airbnb with a local family and spent a few days in their spare guest room. The house had stunning harbour views, sometimes topped by a family of monkeys cruising on the telephone wires in the garden – which, according to our hosts, made the Wi-Fi spotty. They were surprised to find out we grew up watching many South African movies, like Gods Must Be Crazy. We, in turn, had no idea that old Czechoslovak cartoons were popular there when they were kids.
I'd always wanted to go see elephants, and so we headed to Knysna Elephant Park - a sanctuary where we fed the elephants and talked to their keepers. Walking with an elephant, following it as it was bulldozing through bushes, plucking branches left and right without missing a beat and stuffing its face, was just amazing. “When the elephant walks, you follow it.” And feeding the long, smart, dexterous wet trunks with chunks of squash and zucchini was a lifetime experience for me. Ever wonder what elephant snot is like?
When we left the coast we started climbing the terrain for Oudtshoorn, a famous ostrich “capital of the world”. You could tell – the town was surrounded by ostrich herds everywhere, every shop sold huge decorated eggs, every street corner was occupied by ostrich feather dusters, and of course ostrich meat was on every restaurant menu.
We stopped by the Cango Caves – a huge complex of limestone caves where we made friends with the parking lot attendant. By then, the chocolates were long gone. Apparently that wasn't going to stop us. We offered him what we had: a slice of melon and some wet wipes. We chatted about his plans after the summer job – he was going back to school to study medicine.
After that we tackled the bumpy unsealed road through Swartberg Pass (a bit challenging for out small 2x4 sedan with low clearance), and drove on the dry plateau of Karoo where the landscape changed to a desert. And then we disappeared into Tankwa Town for a week at AfricaBurn. But that's another story.
On the plane home we were seated next to a young woman from Kenya. By then, the idea that we'd sit next to her for six hours without getting to know her seemed absurd. We ended up finding out a lot about her – she was getting married soon, and she worked in banking so she filled us in on the unexpectedly advanced Kenyan banking system. We ended up spending a genuinely fun and friendly flight together, with a few glasses of prosecco because it was also Ladi's birthday. It was just a cherry on top when Ladi then politely asked the crew to meet the captain – which, of course, we did.