Returning after over 2 years to the first place we stopped, loved, lived and worked in, but this time on my own was really quite an indescribable experience, but I shall try anyway. I was met at East London airport (yes there is an East London in South Africa!) by the lovely owners of the backpackers in Coffee Bay after an epic journey by boat from Koh Phi Phi to Phuket in Thailand, a flight from Phuket to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, hanging around for a few hours as you do, another flight from Kuala Lumpur to Johannesburg in South Africa…more swinging my pants in Jo’burg and then my final flight to East London followed by a four hour drive to Coffee Bay. Exactly, bang on, precisely 36 hours. I felt lovely. Yeh right. But I arrived on a Friday night which is community night at the backpackers with lots of tribal drumming, dancing and general merriment and despite bowing out due to exhaustion at 10pm the sheer energy propped me up for a few hours with the sound of the drums bouncing off the surrounding hillscapes and both familiar and new faces greeting me with enormous smiles.
After a very well-slept night spent in a tent (an ex-army tent where I could actually stand up – bonus!) I awoke to the sound of the waves pounding nearby and the birds in their morning swan-song, unzipped my front door (so to speak!) and looked out onto a beautiful, fresh view of tropical garden and the Bomvu River. This is where it gets indescribable! It just felt right. I have maintained throughout my travels that the Wild Coast (where Coffee Bay is located) had captured my soul and was my second home; the energy of the last night and freshness of the following morning just re-confirmed to me that coming back, despite reservations was actually my best idea to date! There is always that fear that your memory serves you incorrectly, or rose tinted glasses are worn too much when considering past times and places and that the new reality will somehow be a let down. Especially since when I first arrived with my travel buddy extraordinaire we were quite fresh in our travels, relatively wide-eyed about a lot of experiences and a good couple of years younger in age! Happily for me my concerns were absolutely non existent in the new reality. Of course it was different, the tourists were obviously not the same bunch and quite a few of the staff had moved on, but it didn’t escape from the fact that I felt right at home straight from the start. Oh glorious days!
Inbetween “volunteering” in the office and bar (along with breaking up a fight courtesy of some unfortunate, drunk, chauvinistic, racist pig typical of certain sections of the wider South African population) I went horseriding on the local beaches and surrounding village, swam a lot in the sea (great for curing hangovers ‘cos the waves just bash it out of you!), took spiritual yoga classes in serene surroundings, met up with old friends and made some great new ones as well, picked up a South African accent (according to my English friends, but not according to my South African friends!), continued drinking vodka as my tipple of choice, learnt some new djembe drum beats, organised a festival, fire danced lots, taught other people to fire dance, got back to nature and fed my soul lots of yummy goodness!
[Photo: Coffee Bay, river and dog ©]
