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Welsh Boys Rip It Up In South Africa.
I am a very keen kayaker but have to say my main love is in the sea, surfing
the oceam waves in surf specific kayaks. However, every time I go away
on a kayaking trip it always seems to be kayaking on rivers dropping into
big holes on the Nile and the Zam. Which don't get me wrong is great fun,
but I was due a trip abroad and felt it was about time I went to find
some waves! Having been out to Africa a fair bit I got to hear that South
Africa is home to some of the best surf there is!
So after a long flight, we finally touched down in "Joburg"
and went to retrieve our toys from baggage collection all with tightly
crossed fingers that they were still in one piece! Then it was to the
car hire shop to try and convince the kind chappy behind the counter that
he should lend us a set of wheels for 4 weeks! "No sir we wont be
putting anything on the roof" and we didn't (not till we went round
the corner anyway!)
The mixture of kayakers was gonna prove to make an interesting trip. There
was "Duncan Dares" and "Daz James" two top river kayakers
with more guts than sense! "Richard Berry" a top surf kayaker
from Swansea who's been at the top of the sport for far too long, and
then myself, the youngster of the group; I enjoy rivers but love nothing
more than screaming down huge ocean faces!
We went to South Africa fully equipped with UFOs- the latest toys that
Mega has to offer. They are set up with tri-fins and the hulls have developed
a long way since the original surf shoes of the 70's. The UFO "Marauder"
would give a surf ski a run for its money on sheer speed and the UFO "Prowler"
is almost on a par with the manoeuvrability of a surf board.
So armed with the right tools for the job, we jumped into our 2.4 litre
Toyota corolla (ugly, ugly car- but big) and headed for Durban which would
be our first stop on the coast and proved to be quite a culture shock
for Rich who has spent most of his life in Swansea and was experiencing
his first trip to Africa. Durban itself is quite a humid city, which faces
the Indian Ocean so the painstaking humid temperatures were rewarded with
bath-warm water to surf in! I would say though that out of all the places
we stopped, Durban is at the bottom of the list! The surf was pretty good,
but the city was pretty full-on and very in your face! The waves were
cool though and we stuck around for a couple of days to show the locals
what a kayak is capable of.
One thing I should probably say about the atmosphere on breaks in South
Africa between kayakers and Surfers is that it's pretty non-existent.
This is mainly due to there being very few kayakers in South Africa and
even fewer that take them onto the swell. The idea of a surf kayak is
totally unheard of and most Boardies were pretty fascinated by our toys
and we often got a crowd of intrigued ocean dwellers gathering.
So back into the Ugly car and onto St Michaels where we spent three days
surfing a fast, fast right hander with a solid six foot, which had us
all scared-Darren more so when he decided that he would take up breast
stroke instead of Surfing and broke Rich's boat in the process-nothing
too serious and with a few dabs of resin he was back in business. We landed
on our feet in St Michaels, somehow out of all the guest houses we chose
from, we managed to pick the one owned by the only wave skier in St Michaels
who was totally blown away by our Kayaks and showed us all the best spots
in the area-top bloke!!
20 miles out of St Michaels saw the end of civilisation as we called it
and this meant no more tarmacked roads or 'Nando's burger bars' for 250
miles. So we filled our 2.4 litre up for a bank breaking fourteen quid,
locked the doors and set off into the wilderness for a long day before
eventually and to our great relief we reached Port St Johns. This place
was rad; it was full of hippies and looked like total paradise-unspoilt
beaches with white, white sand and blue ocean, and the best part of all;
absolutely no surfers and awesome waves charging in at a solid seven to
eight foot! Here we stayed in a cool place called the "Island Vibe"
backpackers, which was owned by this doolally hippy woman who to our delight
did the best home cooking and always kept the fridge well stocked with
Lager. (Which until now I forgot to mention, only costs 30 pence a pint!!)
We all decided that with great surf with only ourselves to ride it, we
should stick around for a couple of days before we would stop in another
dodgy city by the name of East London.
East London is a very smoggy city, which, like Durban is also pretty humid
as it is still on the East coast facing the Indian Ocean. Most of the
city breaks are fickle and crowded but we headed out of town for about
15 minutes and found a wicked left hander which kicked up off quite a
shallow and hollow reef (depending on how deep into the section you wanted
to go) and then eases off slightly as it reaches the river mouth-it was
a pretty fast one which hurt if you got it wrong, but when you got it
right it felt sooooo good!!!
By now we were into week 2 and although we had covered a lot of ground,
we decided we should do some hefty mileage and press on to Port Elizabeth.
Here we would meet a somewhat odd character by name of Bruce who runs
Port Elizabeth backpackers and has done everything, and been everywhere-and
according to him, he can communicate to animals!!?? If you fancy a laugh,
I definitely recommend you pop in and have a chat to him, only, don't
believe too much of what he says-he's a bit of a nut job!!
While in "P.E" we tracked down Mackski-the pioneering wave ski
shaper of the 7o's/80's. We loaded ourselves with fins for our boats and
then mitioned on to Jeffrey's Bay, which I'm sure everybody has heard
of and for those of you that haven't: Jeffrey's is to Africa, what Pipeline
is to Hawaii! This is the most awesome reef break I've ever set eyes on!
It's got five breaks in total all breaking on a shallow reef so it hurts
if you mess it up. The breaks start from gnarly to not so gnarly and the
line up I like this, Magna Tubes(totally gnarly), Super Tubes, Tubes,
Bone yards, and The Point (a little less gnarly). We surfed "Tubes"
and the "Point", as all the rest are far too fast for a Kayak
although we still got severe beatings on Tubes!!
The town of Jeffrey's bay was a shoppers dream!! Billabong and Quicksilver
t-shirts for just £8- Dr Dares and Rich couldn't stop shopping the
whole time we were there!
Less than 20 minutes drive from Jeffrey's Bay, we found a quaint little
town by the name of Cape St Francis with a wicked point break called Seals
which to our discomfort was named after the amount of seals that get taken
by sharks there! Seals is a great little right hand break which kicks
up off a reef then feeds into a tight section that breaks onto sand so
if you don't make it through, you'll live to see another day! We loved
it here and settled strait in with the friendly local atmosphere, and
we liked it so much that we ended up staying for 5 days!
While at Cape St Francis we heard a lot of talk about the highest bunji
Jump in the world so as it was on the way, we thought we should check
it out! When we got there, we were pretty overwhelmed by the shear size
of this thing. The bridge you jump off is stuck between a gorge at 216
metres from the ground. With the gauntlet set, Duncan, Berry and myself
took up the challenged and I can tell you, when you look over the edge
at 216 metres, you do start to get just a little nervous!!
About 3 hours drive down the road from the bunji jump we found a cool
little break called Victoria bay and landed ourselves a six person chalet
on the beach-front for eight quid each a night! Result! We had a top day
here with another awesome break to ourselves-this was a little scary but
totally safe! The take-off zone was in front of a load of massive, boat
and head destroying boulders and it was steep! But once we took a few
drops we realised that after the initial take off, the wave slowed down
and became really playable as long as you were brutal and didn't slip
out on the take off it was cool!
So Next stop Cape Town but we decided that we couldn't come to South Africa
without reaching the southern most point of Africa so after a 2 hour detour
and feeling like proper tourists, we arrived in Cape town at the "Parr
Residence" to stay with Brandon and Claudine (brother and sister)-two
very good friends we met in Uganda.
Cape Town has got to be one of the most beautiful Cities in the world,
the whole city is overlooked by "Table Top" mountain- a mainly
rock mountain with an almost perfectly flat top to it. The city itself
looks very new and clean, on the one side of the city is "Table Top"
and the other is golden beaches and blue seas! But more to the point,
there are loads of top surf breaks within very short driving distances
and with Brandon being a local surfer of the area, we managed to cover
almost all of the top breaks in an hour's radius of Cape Town!
The best breaks Brandon took us to were "Scarborough" and "Outer
Cwms".
Scarborough was stupid big and after turning up to a solid 9 foot we watched
as most of the waves were closing out with little chance of making it
along the faces. After weighing up the pros and cons (the cons won!),
Me and Daz decided that we should get on for the cameras and on the off
chance that we might even make it along one, so we took to the water while
Dares and Rich took photo's and footage, but mainly laughed!
A few days after Scarborough, when the pain had ended, Brandon took us
to Outer Cwms. This was another BIG break which accommodated us with bigger
waves than Scarborough but was much friendlier and had much more make-able
sections. There was a few more boardies at Outer Cwms which made things
a little more interesting as you had to get stuck in and go deep, only
there was a thin line between being in deep and being too deep-it hurt
if you found yourself taking off in the latter!
Another thing about Cape Town is there are loads of shops so of course
Duncan and Richard couldn't help themselves and bought even more stuff
for their wardrobes!!
So all sunned, shopped, and surfed out we had one last thing to do before
heading for home; over the four weeks, the roof of our hire car had acquired
a few dents, so to avoid loosing our £100 deposit, we dived into
a panel beaters on the way to the airport. It cost us ten quid for a bit
of a botch attempt which although shoddy, got us our deposit back with
the hire company none the wiser! And with deposit in hand we all hopped
onto the plane for the long haul home.
We all had a totally awesome time in South Africa and advice anyone who's
looking for a cheap month of madness to get out there. The whole trip,
including one months car hire, flight, accommodation and food will set
you back £1100! Thanks to Chris@ Nomad Paddleworks, Bill @ Nookie,
Gath, and a massive thanks to Melcome Pearcey at Mega for the awesome
kayaks and for those of you that haven't tried out his toys yet…
all I can say is get one!! Special thanks to the Parr family for putting
us up while we were in Cape Town!
Photos Duncan (DARES) Eades
Article Nathan Eades
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