YOU know, I don’t think we as South Africans know just what fantastic treasures we are sitting on. And it has taken me many years and lots of comparative travel to other countries to discover exactly what our unique selling proposition is: we have a very neat little package that contains, in easily-digestible chunks, a whole range of marvels.
This has most forcibly been brought home to me through my preparation for my impending research trip. Over three weeks I will be travelling - let’s see….. 8 047 kilometres? Yikes! I think my tyres will be worn down to nubs by the time I have finished.
But anyway, I digress. I am planning to drive between 300 and 400 kms per day, mapping the highways. I will be taking note of landmarks, signposts, settlements and attractions along the road. I have a laptop, a camera, tape recorder, GPS, padkos and a jumbo-economy jar of caffeine. I have maps, guide books, tour books, picture books and crayon drawings done on the back of paper napkins. Once I crawl back home, then the real work begins because this is when I will start researching and writing down the stories behind the landmarks that I whizzed past.
I have received the most wonderful response from people in the areas that I am planning to shoot through, who have come forward with information, directions, travel tips and warnings, and offers of coffee, comfy overnights, dinners, outings and – gulp – bungee jumps and the like (which I have had to politely and cravenly decline. I tend to enjoy adventure in the abstract rather than the reality, as all of me is not as firmly attached as I would like it to be.)
I have also had to do a lot of preliminary looking-up and finding-out, and this brings me to my point: crammed within this comfortably-sized country is the widest variety of travel experience it is possible to have anywhere. A world within one country, indeed.
The USA might have the longest mountain range, the deepest canyon, the tallest tree, the hugest plain. There is snow, desert and sea. But these attractions are several days journey apart, unmanageably large and difficult to get to. In South Africa we have all of these things, and you can see several of them in one day.
Scotland has castles, Germany has beer, England has countryside, Italy has ruins, France has, well, frogs, Austria has hills, India has curry, Thailand has beaches, Greece has islands, Australia has reefs, Kenya has animals. South Africa has all of these – and usually in the same place.
And often we overlook just how beautiful these attractions are. It is only when you look at a topographical map that you realise that the southern Cape coastline is actually a series of delicate mountain ranges marching along the coast and trailing their tails in the sea. The road between Port Elizabeth and Plettenberg Bay goes over the top of a number of river gorges of deep mysterious grey rock with shy ferns at the bottom. All you ever see of them is a gap on the side of the road, a glimpse of stone, and a patch of bridge. From the bottom, however, they are so gorgeous that – if they were anywhere else on earth – they would be international beauty spots with hot dog stands, postcard kiosks and curio shops selling tins of air.
Then there is the amazing Karoo. My most enduring travel memory is driving to Grahamstown from Kimberley on an early winter misty morning. The sun was rising and as we came over a hill just after Smithfield, the huge flat plain in front of us was a sea of pale pink mist, shot through with gold, with koppies rising out like enchanted islands, stretching off into the unimaginable distance. We were all so captivated by the sight that our driver narrowly avoided leaving the road to wipe out the Karoo’s only tree.
Of course, this is just on the surface. The country underground is writhing with undiscovered fossils, which very few people know about but which get palaeontologists into an ecstatic froth. And where there are fossils, there are thick and abundant seams of precious metals, stones and other Aladdin’s-cave-type goodies.
On the fauna and flora front, we have the flowers and the fluffies. And I’m not talking about the large obvious ones, I’m talking about the ones you have to get down on your hands and knees to see. Usually you have to be nimble and quick because whatever you are getting close to is likely to slither off if you take too long.
Our natural features are just wonderful. They are not as big as the Rockies (thank goodness) and they are not as tiny as the European lakes (which always make me nervous when I cruise on them in case I inadvertently pull out the plug). The best, of course, are the lesser known ones: the unexpected little waterfall, the beautifully-decorated Ndebele hut in the middle of nowhere, the strange knuckles of rock that don’t appear to have a name. These are the ones that I am going to be finding out about over the rest of this year as I gather the information I am going to need for my book. And I really, really hope that you join me so that we can share these marvels and mysteries with each other.
