October 2024

We decided that our next weekend away should be somewhere along the Wild Coast – unspoiled and off the beaten track.

Before we show you what our final destination looks like, there’s a story to tell. A near disaster that led us to believe again in the goodness of humanity.

In this post there are almost no photos – for very good reasons … you will understand later.

There were two routes to our final destination:

  • Travel mainly on the N2 highway to Butterworth (now known as Gcuwa) and then take a dirt road to the sea which is in a very bad condition or,
  • Take the road less travelled to Kei Mouth – across the Kei River by ferry on a scenic route. This route is also shorter and the dirt road is (apparently) not that bad.

We decided to take the second option, because we like to travel on the back roads more.

One of the disadvantages of this route is that there are many animals roaming along the road and that one should preferably not drive this road in the dark. We worked out that we would be at our final destination just after 5:00pm (it was getting dark by 6:00pm), so we were safe as far as time was concerned when we left our house in East London.

We crossed the Kei River by ferry, which is always an exciting experience.

On the ferry over the Kei River

When we reached the dirt road, Berto looked up at the sky and said: “Besides not wanting to drive these unknown roads in the dark, I also wouldn’t want to do it in wet conditions.”

When we reached the last village, namely Centane, we turned on the GPS to take us the last 40km/25 miles to our final destination as there were now many roads turning left and right.

The road less travelled

The GPS lady was very confident with her instructions: “Take a left here, continue straight for 1km, then take a right, continue straight …”. I’m sure most of you have been in these situations and understand why we drove exactly as she told us.

That was until we came to a road, which could hardly be called a road. Berto immediately said: “There are no fresh tracks here, which is clear that no one has driven this road recently.” We could see the road was going to be a challenge and Berto switched the bakkie into 4×4 to get better traction.

We are now on proper 4×4 roads

We had to drive up a long and steep hill but could not drive ON the road because there were deep ditches caused by earlier heavy rain. So, we had to drive on the side and when we went around a bend, the bakkie’s front wheel caught the edge of a ditch.

Disaster:

Fortunately, Berto stopped immediately, because if the rear wheel had gone into the ditch, the bakkie would have landed on its diff (or worse, roll onto its side) and then there was no way we were going to get out of there.

We got out of the bakkie and couldn’t believe our eyes! Between the front and rear wheel on the driver’s side was a ditch about a meter deep!

I looked at Berto with wide eyes and asked, “What now?”

And his nonchalant answer to me: “Well, I think we’re going to have to build a wall with rocks between the two wheels so I can reverse”.

I thought I was going to faint! “And how many rocks do you think it would take to do that?”

“A hell of a lot, so let’s get started, because in an hour and a half it will be dark” was his reply.

When we threw the first few rocks into the ditch, I suddenly realised just how many rocks we were going to need to get out of this predicament. We looked at each other and probably had the same thought: We’re going to have to carry rocks for hours to fill that ditch.

Kidnappings and assaults on tourists:

However, before I continue, I just want to mention that the Eastern Cape Province (and close to where we were now stranded) received a lot of negative publicity lately. Kidnappings and assaults on tourists have been in the news almost every week for the past month. It was thoughts like this that left us a little anxious, especially after we saw that we were basically surrounded by small villages and some of the locals were watching us from a distance.

As I walked up the road in search of large rocks, a young man walked slowly towards me. He asked me what we were doing and I tried to explain our situation. I could see he didn’t quite understand and he walked to Berto who was at the bakkie to see what was going on.

I heard him ask Berto in disbelief: “Do you want to cover this whole ditch with rocks?” Berto nodded his head and the young man walked away and began to gather rocks and carry them to the bakkie.

Berto and I looked at each other and I had to wipe a quick tear from my eye because of this young man who is willing to help us without us even asking him.

A clever young man, a wheelbarrow and his sister:

Although it was going faster now, I realised that we were probably going to have to carry rocks to fill that ditch until long after dark. However, the young man was smarter than we thought because he walked to one of the houses and came back with a wheelbarrow (and a young girl who I later found out is his sister).

The young girl gathered rocks and then placed them on a pile, while the young man loaded them onto the wheelbarrow. He then pushed the wheelbarrow full of rocks to the bakkie where Berto built the wall.

A broken wheelbarrow:

With the third wheelbarrow full of rocks, the wheelbarrow’s front wheel broke – the load was probably too heavy. The young man called me and the young girl and said he would pick up the front and we each had to pick up a handle – thus we carried the wheelbarrow full of rocks down the road to the bakkie. (I actually wanted to laugh half hysterically at us carrying a wheelbarrow – imagine!)

It was also with this third wheelbarrow full of rocks that Berto said he thought we now had enough rocks and that the wall was hopefully wide and high enough for the bakkie’s front wheel to move over.

The moment of truth:

An hour after we got stuck, Berto was behind the steering wheel again, with the young man at the back of the bakkie and me in front to guide Berto. I said a quick prayer and watched with bated breath as Berto slowly drove over the pile of rocks without any problems.

The young girl jumped up in the air and clapped her hands while the young man just shook his head and said to Berto: “I didn’t think it was going to work.”

Thank you:

The young people and I walked ahead to the top of the hill and showed Berto where to drive to avoid the ditches. When Berto got to the top, he stopped. I got a few hundred rand notes from my purse and gave it to them – enough to buy a new wheelbarrow and extra. We also gave them chocolates (I smiled when I saw the young girl was almost happier about this than the money).

Apology:

While we shook the hands of our two helpers, an old man approached us and said: “Sorry, sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry our roads look like this and you had all this trouble!” He asked where we were going. After we told him, he showed us how to get there and promised that the road from here is better.

We quickly said our goodbyes when we realised that we still had to drive for half an hour and that it would also be dark in half an hour.

Arrival and grateful:

Just before dark we reached our destination. We sat in silence for a moment as we pulled up in front of our accommodation. Today’s bad situation made us believe again in the goodness of people.

And was our destination worth the bad road conditions? Well, looking at the view from our front door, we can’t help but think it was.

View from our front door

Next week we’ll tell you more about our accommodation – with angel wings painted on the wall mind you.

Click here to read about our weekend at Mazeppa Bay.