Coast to Coast: Durban, Port St. John’s, Coffee Bay and Chintsa

The most cool Tatoo of this hot (not so much actually...) African summer: I LOVE DEKARO!! :-))

Hi everyone, and best wishes for the new journey we’ve all embarked on together around that fiery ball. I’m in a place called Chintsa, another beautiful seaside spot.

Let me tell you briefly... from St. Lucia I went to Durban, the third-largest city in South Africa after Johannesburg and Cape Town. On the bus, I met a very nice English guy, Scott. He is traveling in the same direction as me, and I had already met him in Swaziland and briefly again in St. Lucia. He told me that the hostel I was planning to go to was rubbish, so I went to the one he had booked instead, and then we visited the city together.

It is set along a long beach and a large harbor, and the city center is made up of a mix of different styles, from colonial to modern. It has a very large Indian community, brought here by the British to work as slaves in the sugar cane fields. So basically the British took slaves from India and brought them here, and took indigenous slaves from here and sent them all over the world! Yes, we Europeans are like that: such “creative” people. We’ve been pissing off the rest of the world for centuries and centuries, but of course all in the name of bringing “civilization”.

On Christmas Eve we went to have dinner in a fancy restaurant together with the only other person staying in the hostel besides us: a beautiful 18-year-old Australian virgin who was telling us she didn’t know when to do it, how to do it, etc... Scott and I were very interested in the topic. Joking aside, Gemma is here doing volunteer work to help children with AIDS.

Then I ended up in Port St. John, crossing part of the Drakensberg, the Dragon Mountains, where I had thought of staying a few days and from there also visiting Lesotho, but I realized I don’t have much time and unfortunately I have to choose between various options. The thing is that by mid-January I have to be in Cape Town because two dear friends I worked with in Warsaw will be coming for a couple of weeks, and from there we will rent a car and go to Namibia (I also take it for granted that my dear friend Vito, who assured me he will be in Cape Town for New Year’s Eve —basically the day after tomorrow— will bail on me, as always ;-).

In Port St. John I was staying in a hostel that is sort of a hippie community. It was located at the foot of a mountain, in the middle of the jungle, facing a beach where a river tributary flows into the sea. Some people had been there for years, others were just passing through like me. It was the classic hippie place: people of all ages and races, lots of “peace and love”, and a ton of dogs, cats, and weed.

On Christmas Day and Boxing Day, about a thousand people came onto the beach, and the road below was packed with cars parked everywhere among barbecues, music, and alcohol. Unfortunately, the weather hasn’t been good for the past four days; only today the sun has come back.

Now I’m in Coffee Bay, a very beautiful place that I’ll tell you about next time.









Monkeys in St. Lucia.




One little shop in Durban market.





Gemma (pat me)




Port St. John




Woman in Port St. John




Coffebay




Coffebay hostel, The Coffeshake.




Walking on the cliffs of Coffebay.




All this area is full of these circular little colored houses.




One of the many beaches on the Wild Coast.




Child in Coffebay.




Chintsa, view from my room.