Mzanzitravel Magazine Issue 10

Local Travel
In Mossel Bay, coming out of the water after an impressive surfing display at Outer Pool
near The Point, Fernando Nogueira, who hails from Salvador on the Brazilian coast, had
a similar story. He told me: “I love this country. It reminds me of home in many ways,
but just better. There are just so many wonderful places to go. And beautiful people.
Tomorrow I am taking a bus to the Wild Coast – I have heard so many good things about
it and can’t wait to get there. I am not sure how long I am staying in South Africa, but I still
want to go to Mozambique, and maybe Madagascar, and then I am probably heading for
India. Who knows where I’ll end up going next!”
Fernando says he temporarily put his studies for a business degree on hold to first travel
the world for a few years. He occasionally receives a small allowance from home which
he tries to augment on his travels whenever he can as a bartender or waiter, or any
other temporary jobs he can find without having to go through official visa processes.
On one occasion he joined eight veteran fishermen in their small fishing vessel who
worked the banks 40km off the coast for a week at a time, but a terrible storm and severe
seasickness put a quick end to that.
Most beautiful, off the beaten track locations-Nathan Chor / iStock
Hilma, who finished school in Denmark last year, was staying with other young schoolleavers
from Europe and Scandinavia at a backpackers’ lodge on the Table View
beachfront in Cape Town when I met her. She told me when she was not busy taking in
the sights around the Peninsula or learning to kitesurf, she and her friends were engaged
in voluntary social work programmes in the nearby Dunoon township. They often took
groups of underprivileged children from the township to the beach to teach them to swim
and surf.
Surfing, or learning to surf, seems to be one of the big common denominators among
young backpacking visitors to South Africa. That is why you will find so many of them
along our coastal areas, from Langebaan on the West Coast, to Hole in the Wall on the
Eastern Cape coast or St Lucia and beyond.
Overland truck across Africa-Oleg Znamenskiy / iStock
Overland truck travelling
But many also opt for the wilderness experience, boarding overland trucks that take
them up the coast, into the mountains and national parks, crossing the Great Karoo,
visiting remote villages and settlements, before the trucks take them on to Zimbabwe
or Tanzania and other African destinations. The Mozambican coast, the beaches and
islands of Lake Malawi and the river lodges of Uganda are also favourite destinations.
Some do the full adventure, from Cape Town to the Sahara. These are organised tours
with seasoned guides in which young people rough it in converted trucks to get personal
and up close with the real Africa. Food is prepared in a tiny on-board kitchen or over
open fires, and the travellers sleep in tents in camping sites along the way. Tours can
last from a week to several months and traverse the entire continent – truly an adventure
of a lifetime.
Making new friends-Disobeyart / iStock
The global backpacking community is huge in numbers, but a small one in terms of
meeting up frequently with the same people or people from home. This is because of
their shared interests, or seeking out similar off-the-track destinations, and of course
because of the technological revolution. While on a visit to California I spent two nights
in a backpacker’s establishment on Minna Street in downtown San Francisco. To my
surprise the two Moroccan owners had for many years run a similar establishment in
Johannesburg. And that evening, getting coffee in the kitchen, I bumped into two young
travellers – one from Soweto, Johannesburg and the other from Beaufort West in the
52 |ISSUE 10|www.mzanzitravel.co.za | MZANZITRAVEL
A global village-Michel Uyttebroeck / iStock