Hang a left to L' Agulhas

Published May 20, 2014

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It’s amazing how one decision can make or break a trip. You come to a metaphorical fork in the road where right takes you on the most beautiful trip you’ve ever seen and left takes you on a path of hilarity and frustration.

In our case, the fork was literal. Let’s back up. I’m an American intern working for the Cape Times for three months. I live with three other Americans and we use our weekends to see the country.

During the Easter weekend, we decided to take advantage of the extra time, and do a three-day whirlwind tour of the Garden Route.

First I have to explain that if you’re from here, you already know more about the Garden Route than I do now. Unless you’ve been a tourist in South Africa, most Americans don’t even really know what the Garden Route is.

“What are you doing?” my friends from home would ask. “Garden Route,” I’d say. “What’s that?”

“A road where things are pretty and there’s lots of stuff to do.”

Wikipedia defines the Garden Route as a stretch of coast from Mossel Bay to Storms River in the Eastern Cape. The route gets its name from the diversity of plant and animal life as well as dual views of the Indian Ocean and the Tsitsikamma Mountains. I like to think my own definition wasn’t too far off.

I can tell you a lot of things about the Garden Route. I can tell you what we did (whale viewing, sandboarding, swimming in the sea, drinks on the beach, bungee jumping at Bloukrans) but that doesn’t even begin to cover the activities available.

Instead, I’m going to tell you about a crucial fork in the road that both made and broke our Garden Route experience. We had stopped in Hermanus to try to watch whales (Fun fact: Whale season is in summer). It was there that we decided to take a detour and go to the southernmost tip of Africa at L’Agulhas.

Those of you who live here are already laughing, but let me defend my team. In the US, most coasts, particularly high-tourist areas, have a coastal route easily accessible from the highway. It may take a while, and not be as nicely paved, but you’re still looking at main road all the way.

We had started out from a point of ignorance. When we got into the car that morning, we didn’t even have a map. We hardly had an itinerary.

Our plan was to drive to Plett the first day, and then casually make our way back west over the next two days. None of us had acquired a map or could use our phones. We hardly knew how to find the N2. We only found our way after acquiring a zoomed-out map and asking for directions to the highway.

At Hermanus, our navigator saw that there were roads leading to L’Agulhas. What she didn’t see was that the roads on the map were brown and that the fine print said “untarred roads”.

When the paved road ended, we came to a decision. We could turn left and take a dirt road or turn around, go back and really take a detour. We voted three to one to take the dirt road. In our ugly mustard-green rented Ford Fiesta with tyres more suited to a bike, we braved a gravel road from (we think) Stanford to Bredasdorp only to take the highway back around and down to the southernmost tip. We’re still not sure what roads we took. At one point it seemed there was a kilometre stretch of paved road surrounded by dirt. We’ve pored over the map and we’re simply not sure how we made it. I guess the world is round; how could you get lost?

We knew we probably wouldn’t make it to Plett, but we figured we’d go as far as we could and then find a place to stay for the night.

We rolled into Mossel Bay around 9pm, delirious with lack of sleep and road exhaustion. We sat at a café, whose manager happened to own a hostel, and planned for the next day. After a day of sandboarding, we grabbed a quick lunch and headed to Sedgefield to finally relax.

We had remarked earlier how lucky it was that we had come off the gravel roads with no major damage. Sitting at the only tavern open on Easter Sunday, I saw our car across the street. “Is our tyre flat?” I asked.

Our faces fell. My friends went to investigate and call the rental company. We were so thankful to have had tyre insurance, but were terrified the company would find out we had been off-roading.

Everyone in Mossel Bay had an opinion about how to change the tyres on this car. At least one of us knew how to do it, but I guess watching four young Americans change a tyre and clean it in the middle of the road is, if nothing else, a form of entertainment.

On the spare, we made our way to George airport, where Hertz got us a new tyre right away. We found the situation quite funny, and joked about it all the way to Sedgefield.

Now, it seems impossible for such a small decision to take an unadvised detour to cause so many problems. One flat tyre? Fine. Missing our first hostel reservation? Fine. Missing out on walking with lions? Fine. Driving through Plett and Wilderness on the way back it was pouring with rain and the roads were winding. Driving on the other side of the road along a cliff in the rain is scary enough. What’s scarier is driving those roads with another flat tyre. We pulled into a petrol station in George and the attendants began whispering and pointing at the car.

“Did you know your tyre is flat?” they said. “Please tell me you’re kidding.” “No. We just filled it and you’re losing pressure.” In an awful moment of déjà vu, we changed another tyre, drove back to George airport and waited for a new tyre.

“Weren’t you just here?” the attendant asked. “It’s been a rough trip,” we said.

Please don’t misunderstand. This trip was the most fun I’d had in months. I laughed so much, and ate great food. I got to see some of the most beautiful coast I think I will ever see. I got to pretend to learn how to speak Afrikaans by reading the street signs as we zoomed past.

Even though we couldn’t follow the most rudimentary plan, got two flat tyres and did a modified Garden Route, I wouldn’t have changed the trip for anything. When we got home, we saw the headline in all the papers: Easter road death toll 103. We laughed at our luck and our misfortune. Our trip had been broken, but it had also been made by a decision to turn left instead of going back.

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