Roadtrip Day 3: Grahamstown to Shelly Beach

Total distance: 673km

This took us 9,5 hours! We had expected to fly through the old Transkei in about 6 hours (this was also the day I called myself the Maggie Thatcher of Road Trips). One mistake was to do the maths using 120km/h as average speed. Mistake number 2 (one is never enough) was leaving at 10.45am. My note to self for next time: Leave early and don’t expect to drive faster than 100km (often you will be going way slower than that).

The road is decent throughout and the scenery is beautiful and interesting, but it is a long way and the pace is quite slow. There is also a lot to see; next time it might be better to plan to stop for a while once or twice to explore a battle site or even Qunu, which features so large in Nelson Mandela's biography.

Dozens of black schoolchildren walking along the side of the road and buying ice creams at roadside service stations made me reflect about the past and the future. The sun was absolutely blazing down, yet it seemed that every child was wearing a sweater and a blazer fully buttoned up over the uniform. The message I got was, “I feel so proud of this uniform and what it says about me.”

I imagined how it pleased their parents. I also thought about how different this generation’s experience of education is from that of their parents. I got a lump in my throat thinking the words, Bantu Education and Schools Boycott.

We left the N2 at King William’s Town (mileage: 1074km from Cape Town) and took the R63 to Bisho. Not a bad road at all, nothing like the old roads I used to drive along frequently when I found myself running away from my new life and first job in East London to the comfort of my friends and the bars that I knew in Durban.

King William’s Town seems to be sedate and there are hints of a kind of faded grace. One can almost imagine that it was once deserving of its royal moniker. Not a white face in sight (if you care about that) and a lot of litter.

I felt a kind of curiosity about the people and their lives as we drove through the suburbs of King. I soon forgot that when we were back to the rhythm of rolling over hills and through valleys covered in trees and shrubs of a deep, ancient green, and fat, lazy cows with no idea about their good fortune. Icy pink and blue houses dot the hillsides … colours from another reality.

Then suddenly, miles of trees that were thick with yellow-orange blossom. They made me think of all the tress we have planted that we will not see blossom. A price of being continuously in motion.

Back on the N2 to Butterworth.

Tanja felt quite nervous as we passed through Butterworth. (Admittedly she is quite easily scared.) It was all a bit crowded and chaotic for her. There were cops and cows everywhere. A turnoff to a settlement called Cuba made me smile.

At 1225km we passed the settlement of Dutywa. Here we saw ladies enthusiastically picking up litter and sweeping streets that reminded me of wilder parts of Africa. It seemed like pretty thankless and futile work, but I guess that is not for me to say. We thought there were lots of photo opportunities, but getting out of the car would have taken us a little too far out of our comfort zone.

When we got to Mtatha (1302km from Cape Town) it was already 3.35pm. We were far from where we had hoped to be by now. Then suddenly we were wading through the sticky toffee of rush hour and road works.
It took ages and a bit of Nairobi driving to get through the capital of the old Transkei.

Finally the border of KwaZulu-Natal at 1477km from Cape Town.

The last couple of hundred kilometres would have been so much better in daylight, quite lovely even. We imagined beautiful rolling hills of timber plantations as we struggled to keep out of the way of timber trucks.

On the last stretch via Kokstad and on to Port Shepstone we were really glad we had GPS, even if it was about to run out of power and I couldn’t find my car charger. Don’t travel without GPS, I say. Be better organized (I also say).

We were also glad that we were certain there was champagne chilling at our destination, Shelly Beach, which was 1623km from our starting point in Cape Town.

Other things to see next time we travel through the Eastern Cape:

• German graves at Frankfurt.
• Battle sites: Drooibox and Gwadana.
• Qunu, where Nelson Mandela grew up.

And more photos