After leaving Port Elizabeth I travelled to a small town called Kenton on Sea.
I had booked into a place called Woodlands Cottages. It turned out to be a couple of kilometres out of town. The Baz Bus took me to the front gate and the driver entered the code to open the gate.
I headed down to long driveway soon to be greeted by three dogs – one very large and two small fluffy things. The large dog was very placid. The little dogs yapped like crazy. I was later find that they were “part Jack Russell”. Those terriers are so annoying.
Woodlands turned out to be an old farm house. The cottages were accommodation for the farm workers when it was a working farm.
The bedrooms of the main house had been converted into dormitories. I was the only quest for this type of accommodation.
Walk into town
I was hungry and walked into town looking for food. There were only two place to eat. One was a bar of the beach that only served pizzas. The other place was a rather up market café in the ‘CDB’ (there was sign telling to the direction to the CBD). The food in the café was really good.
West Indies win the T20 World Cup
That evening I watched the T20 World Cup final between the West Indies and England. I suspect everyone reading this knows what happened. What an amazing finish!!!!!! Great for West Windies cricket and the T20 game.
Hire a bike
The next day I hired a bike and went for a ride into the town. It was good to be back on a bike again. I am really looking forward to being reunited with my Cannondale in June.
To Hogsback
My next destination was Hogsback, which is quiet away inland from the coast.
The Baz Bus dropped me off at the Shady Shack Hostel in East London. It seemed to a very appropriately named establishment. It looked very dodgy. I was to be picked up there by a shuttle that would take me to Hogsback.
As I waited I when for a short walk along the path next to the beach opposite the hostel. There was glass and litter all over the place.
Within an hour, the shuttle arrived. There were two other people, a Spanish girl and a Norwegian bloke booked on the shuttle. The driver told us that we would be stopping at a shopping centre “to collect some supplies” before continuing on to Hogback.
The shopping centre was very big, not dissimilar to anything you would see in an Australian suburb or regional city. The vast majority of the shoppers were white.
The supplies turned out to flour and other cooking ingredients for the hostel.
Large Township
As we headed out of the city we passed a very large ‘Township’. The driver told us that it was the second largest ‘Township’ after Soweto which is outside of Johannesburg. The Norwegian bloke asked “what is a Township? I was very surprised at the question.
Into the Xhosa Homelands
One of the features of the Apartheid system was the establishment of ‘Homelands’. These were areas where the native tribes like the Xhosa and Zulu people could live. A black person had the ‘right’ to live in a particular ‘Homeland’ based on their ethnicity.
The ‘Homelands’ effectively operated as ‘countries’ within the larger South Africa. Movement between the Homelands and the big cities in South Africa was controlled. The vast majority of jobs for the Blacks in the Homelands were in the big cities like East London. The Blacks were allowed to come into the cities to work, but were not allowed to live there.
The area inland from East London including the Township are part of the former Xhosa Homelands of Ciskei and Transkei.
Since that fall of the Apartheid, that Homelands system and the related controls of the movement of the black people has been abolished. This may well the case, however the physical remnants of the system remain.
East London and Hogsback are in Eastern Cape. It is the poorest of the RSA provinces. The contrast with Western Cape which includes Cape Town is extreme. The countryside of the Western Cape looks very much like Australia. There are large farms that appear to be highly automated. There are a lot of Black people, but they appear to living mainly in the Townships near the big cities or in the major towns.
The area we were passing through west of East London is very different. As well as the ‘Townships’, the local Black people live in small houses that are dotted all over the landscape.
The driver explained that these “groups of houses are villages”. Each village has a Chief. The Chief decides who can live where on the land and how many houses and other buildings they can build. Most of the families own some animals, typically cattle, goats, sheep and chickens and have a small plot on which they grow corn and other vegetables. It is common for the males of the family to move to other areas of the RSA to work in factories or the mines. Others commute to East London for work.
Up to Hogsback
Hogsback is in the Amatola Mountains. It is perched above the Tyume valley. It is the classic ‘mountain retreat’.
I was booked into the ‘Away with Fairies’ Hostel. I heard a lot of favourable reports about the place from other travellers.
Apparently the writer JRR Tolkien used to visit Hogback and it is thought that surrounding scenery inspired him when he was writing the Lord of the Rings books. There are a lot of references to the books and the characters in the town e.g. Bilbo’s Cottage.
MTB Ride
The main activity to do in Hogsback is hiking.
Another activity is Mountain Bike (MTB) riding. There is company that offers MTB tours that include some abseiling down a cliff. I booked myself a tour. Unfortunately, I was the only PAX and the tour was cancelled.
My only option was to hire a MTB go for a ride by myself. The bike shop provided me with a map detailing a route through the forest on 4WD roads and single MTB tracks. It turned out to be a good little ride. I took it very carefully on the ‘technical’ parts of the single tracks. I didn’t want to have a heavy fall, when it was likely that no one else would be around.
On parts of the ride, I came across quite a few cattle, mostly cows. At one point I came across group that included a bull. As I approached he bellowed and started pawing the ground.
I skipped that part of the trail.
More Good Food
Hogsback has some really good restaurants. I found one place in particular that was really good. They also sold a very nice craft beer.
Being Cool
Because it is high in the mountains, Hogsback gets snow in winter. As it is only early autumn it isn’t too cold at the moment, but it is still pity cool. The hostel and the restaurants all had open fires.
One quirky facility at the hostel was a wood fired bath on cliff overlooking the valley below.
Flickr – Kenton on Sea
Flickr – Hogsback
billrider2013 
Nice post Bill – June is not too far away now to be reunited with the trusty Cannonade MTB. Geoff