South Africa February 1
Heretic is now in Cape Town, South Africa, a beautiful but very windy city. We made landfall in South Africa on December 13, after spending a week at Reunion Island, and two weeks making the fifteen hundred mile passage from there to Richards Bay, our first South African port.
Reunion, a part of France, was a very nice change from Port Louis in Mauritius. It was clean and efficient with a good bus system and an extensive national park in the mountains. We had our radar fixed there, and explored the island a bit, doing some overnight hiking in the calderas that surround the highest peak, Piton des Neiges which reaches over 11,000 feet. The hiking was beautiful and dramatic; the shear walls of the calderas contrasted with lilies growing on the banks of streams, and in one caldera which has no roads, the little towns take you back in time, that is, until the helicopter comes to supply them. In Reunion we said goodbye to Greg and crew aboard Alpheratz, since they reached Cape Town before us and will now be ahead of us on the rest of the voyage.
On our passage to Richards Bay we encountered mostly light winds, but occasionally had unpleasantly strong wind and waves; the strongest we had was a southwesterly that blew up about thirty miles from Richards Bay. It created steep waves since it blew contrary to the fast-moving Agulhas Current, and we were happy to reach the harbor. In Richards Bay we met up with the Alaskan boat Rose whom we had met in Mauritius, but we spent the majority of our time there touring inland in KwaZulu-Natal province. We spent three and a half weeks touring various provincial parks. We started with two smallish game reserves where we were thrilled to see zebra, giraffes, many species of antelope, baboons, monkeys, rhinos, hyaenas, and a leopard. We went next to a reserve whose specialty is birds, and there we saw the African jacana, a bird that walks on lily-pads. We had an excursion into Mozambique to do some diving, and while the life on the reef was abundant, we were disappointed to find how much our Lonely Planet had mislead us. We believed we were going to a quiet beachside dive operation, and found out it was like Cancun without the high-rises. The place was mobbed with drunk white vacationers on jet skis and ATVs, and the blatant disregard for the poverty of those living there was appalling. We quickly returned to the South African parks, this time going to the Drakensberg escarpment where we did some hiking both above and below the cliffs, and saw a San rock art site. We ended our trip at a bigger park which has lions and elephants, and there we went on guided walks for two days. Seeing rhinos, buffalo, antelope, baboons, an elephant, and a pack of African wild dogs while on foot with the knowledgeable rangers was the highlight of our trip.
The volatile weather in South Africa means that it is necessary to take shelter in ports along the coast while making one’s way south. We made as fast a voyage as we could to Cape Town, stopping first in East London, where we had to wait for favorable weather. We took a short camping trip to Addo Elephant National Park in that time. We found it interesting since its landscape was so different from the lusher areas we had visited in KwaZulu-Natal. From East London we went to Port Elizabeth, whose marina was in terrible disrepair, and then to Mossel Bay, and thence to Cape Town. On our passage to Cape Town we encountered some nasty weather as we rounded Cape Agulhas, the most southern point in Africa. A 35-40 knot southeasterly blew up and quickly built heavy seas for nearly twelve hours. As quickly as it came, however, it left, and we motored from the Cape of Good Hope all the way up to Cape Town in a dead calm. We entered the harbor in a heavy fog around midnight on the 26th, two weeks out of Richards Bay.
So far we have very much enjoyed Cape Town; Table Mountain dominates the view from the Yacht Club where we are moored; the aquarium we visited yesterday is excellent, and we have reconnected with old friends: Moony, Oddity, Bear, and Hippopotamus, a German boat we met in Mauritius. We have work to do on the boat here, including the biggest project: the engine’s oil burning problem. Fortunately, the yacht club here has a yard attached to it, where a crane can lift out the engine and parts can be ordered easily. We plan to stay three weeks working on the boat, and hopefully seeing a little of the area: Table Mountain, the penguin colony on the Cape, and possibly the winelands. From here we will go directly to St Helena, a British island in the South Atlantic.
Cheers,
Ellen and Seth