Left wilderness right after breakfast because we are now on a schedule. Picked up laundry, cash, snacks and mailed Grammys postcards. We are headed to Grahamstown, a university town in the Eastern Cape and host to the country’s National Arts Festival. I had purchased tickets for three shows on Friday, at 2:00pm, 4:00pm and 6:00pm. We already knew we would miss the first show but we hoped to make it for the second.
It was a solid five hours of driving through some very scenic areas along the N2 highway the entire trip.This is essentially the Garden Route- back through Knysna, then Plettenerg bay where we stopped for a short beach walk, the Tsitsikamma National Forest, Jeffrey’s Bay. We stopped in a little town called Humansdrop for gas – haven’t figured out where that name came from but things were bustling at rest stop. They had a fast food joint inside gas stop like in US and it’s called Wimpy! Wonder if people in Africa watched Popeyes and know the character Wimpy? ” I’ll give you a dollar on Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
I hated that we didn’t have time to see or do anything along the Garden Route. I kept thinking we just have to come back. I was impressed with all the estuaries, rivers and lakes that looked like great places to Stand up paddle board. We took short detour to Natures Valley in the Tsitsikamma Forest and found a beautiful campground with canoes and nice facilities. We could see Natures Valley down by the sea. Looked lovely and remote. Plettenberg Bay area looked too developed for me. Some of the beaches we passed are famous in the worldwide surf community.
The terrain changed once we left the Garden Route and entered the Eastern Cape near Port Elizabeth, less lush, a little flatter. However as we neared Grahamstown which seems like its in the middle of nowhere we were back in some beautiful mountains again.
We managed to arrive in Grahamstown 30 minutes before our 4:00 pm show and realized we didn’t have much of a map other than a rough layout of the town from the festival guide. After driving into the black township we got turned around and did find our venue, which we’d driven right by. The performances for the festival are all over town in school buildings mostly.
The show was called The Rhythms of Eastern Cape. It was a display of traditional dance and music from the six tribes of regions in the Eastern Cape. It was a fun introduction to African music and stories. A juxtaposition to ancient cultures was a screen with a PowerPoint presentation showing pictures and speeches from modern South African heroes and even a clip from Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The performance was narrated by a women speaking both Xhosa and English telling history dating back to arrival of the first white me and ensuing history.
We left the performance a little early so we could check into our guesthouse and get to our next show at 6:30. Aia! Wow will try to describe later.
