Reports have been filtering from all over the South coast shark sightings seem an all too common occurrence. Here on the South coast shark sightings are a part of life- before all the sardines got hoovered up by the Chinese we used to see crazy stuff at all our local surf spots each Winter- now, the sharks- especially the Zambezi and Great Whites have snuck their way back up the food chain and boom! Which part dont you get? more sharks…
South coast Shark sightings photo courtesy Whitesands
I dont how many sessions we have had down here where we all saw something, but chose to keep quiet about it we were so keen to just surf and get some waves in, then come in and all say something like: ‘im pretty sure i saw something out there’ someone else would chime in with a: ‘ya, i definitely saw something!’ the third would echo our thoughts with a ‘i just wanted to get a few waves!’
Yesterday a Great white chased two of those friends from the story above out the water at a closely guarded secret spot here on the South coast so ‘beware be aware and be warey’ to quote the ol’ sea dog himself Bruce Gold and have your selves a wonderful early Winter!
Bruce-I-fire frame grabbed flying thrlough the zone at you-know-where…
And another commentary instalment from Bruce Gold aka “Bruce-I-fire” as the winter swells start rolling in. Looks like JBay squeezed the most out of this little swell – by the time it reached us here on the KZN South Coast it was full of lumps and holes, like something bullied it off the Transkei coastline or something?!
So here’s some wide perspective video coming at you from the office overlooking Supertubes…of this last swell rolling in through the Bay…
Driving down the coast from Durban on the southern freeway is a delight. It really must be one of the most beautiful drives on the planet as it skirts the coastline and weaves through indigenous thickets and over a stream of rivers and estuaries. And then it all ends. Abruptly. Just after Port Edward. The most dangerous road in my world unfolds as a snakes and ladders affair with huge potholes vying for attention with huge trucks and busses coming the other way. Pull this all together and you survive, but one mistake can cost you dearly. Add into the equation the overpopulated roads filled with kids, adults, dogs, goats, cows, sheep, horses, donkeys and mules! And then they even got the cheek to throw cops at you, with road blocks and all!
Basically, hit two or three of those potholes properly, and you lose one or two tyres. Every time!
Advice – embrace the situation, don’t overtake or get overtaken unnecessarily, give plenty space in front of you so you have a chance to see the potholes coming, and just take it easy up and through the hills of Bizana, Flagstaff and Lusikisiki, because the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, is just a few clicks away. The descent into the lush fruit bowl of the Wild Coast brings it altogether again as the now awesome stretch of road takes you down into the super cool town of Port St. Johns.
Port St. Johns is a most spectacular visit. There is just so much in and around that treasure trove that is the Umzimvubu River valley and it’s beaches. (c) Artsurfer.nl
There is so much to do in Port St. Johns you could get lost for weeks exploring its treasures. Leaving there south takes you basically along the coast but about 20kms inland. From this easily passable dirt road there are more dirt roads that lead to the many beaches, points and bays of the Wild Coast. Use a GPS and choose your spot. Keep heading south to find New Road that connects to Coffee Bay. In the old days we used to have to drive all the way up to Umtata and then back down to Coffee Bay, so this new connection really opens this stretch of coastline up. The GPS recognizes new road and navigates remarkably well out in the sticks.
But the road is torrid, the heaving rains washed away the dirt in between the rocks so it’s like driving on a pebble highway. Tyres get hammered and this road is where we started our troubles. We had decided to head up to Ngcwanguba Store for supplies and on the way back we got our first flat. Spare tyre out, and a speedy tyre change gets us back on the road. It’s dark, raining and 10kms from home, the next tyre goes?! No choice but to drive very slowly on the rim through the dirt, mud, puddles and dongas to our fleeting home at Mdumbi. Thank goodness for good people and the next day Warren from Cool Banana Spaza Shop at Mdumbi (they sell everything including fishing tackle), took it upon himself to drive the 50kms to Coffee Bay and repair our one reparable tyre. He was so considerate – made us breakfast and insisted that we spend the day walking to Umtata Mouth and back. We grabbed our rods and dogs and for a few hours, once again, got completely wrapped up and lost in the magic of the Kei. Thank you Warren and Noli!
The road up to Umtata…is slightly better than what you will have been accustomed to. You just get a few new ingredients to throw into the mix. The roads were not built with cambers in mind. No, they were just slapped down onto the hills willy nilly so cornering is best done very carefully. The goats and horses pose the next risk, the taxis not to be forgotten, potholes still vex…
Umtata to East London…is a pleasure, after what we have just been through. We got a new tyre in a small town on the way to Viedgesville, where we turned south again. Wide roads mean more time to avoid obstacles like cows and sheep, and the odd darting bush cat.
Having done our business in the Cape, heading home through Umtata, we left Spargs Superspar in Beacon Bay, at 11am. Except for the usual hazards, the trip was uneventful until…
30kms Outside Kokstad, a cop comes screaming up behind me, light and sirens blazing and blaring. I thought he was after me, so pulled over but he just sped on past, really fast. 2kms Further and there he is, stopping all traffic?!
A kilometer ahead are about 30 taxis, a huge crowd, a battalion of police officers. Turns out the taxi operators in the area wanted to put a stop to some impending competition, and as the luckless trio came round the bend ahead, the taxi operators opened fire with 9mm weapons and shot the three to death. Their car careened off the road and the crime scene allowed absolutely no traffic through. Either way.
After an hour, somebody in our queue researched and found a dirt track around the problem. That took an hour of sweat droplets each time we went over a sharp stone or through a pothole. The road was narrow and in places only one car at a time could navigate through. So into Kokstad for some much needed coffee and sustenance, back on the road, and safely home at 7:30pm. 2 Hours late?!
Eish! 2 Hours – the whole main road through the country is stopped in it’s tyre tracks! (c) Artsurfer.nl
Aside from being filled with knockout imagery and content, the web presentation of what Ouisurf.tv did whilst they were here with us, is over the top with slickness and awe inspiring execution.
This is most likely the way the internet will progress, it’s all moving away from tiny text based web sites of html days – now it’s the availability of bandwidth that is providing the net with the kick it needed to start with presentations like these chaps have done. Click the link above for the real deal, and then the gallery attached, a behind the scenes moment, in..ummm Pomene (sorry Dom).
International surf adventurer Lucy Small (Oz) can wield a keyboard as good as she can a surfboard. She also strikes a good pose! Lucy and her friend Anna MaCauly have been chasing the dream all over the world, but as you can clearly see from Lucy’s writing, Africa is calling her home. So we’ve added a new column called Surf Travel and Lucy is about to fire that up.
All this travelling and high adventure comes at high stakes though. It was on that headland behind Lucy in this shot taken of her paddling on my inside (Tofinho Point, Praia do Tofo, Inhambane, Southern Mozambique), that she was attacked and some creep in undies tried to sexually assault her. She bravely decided that this was not going to happen, and fought back vehemently, beating her attacker off and back into the bush where the savage came from! Nice Lucy, girl power!
In the meantime, her latest caper, involving none other than Tofo girls Mel Rodriguez and Ghiz Laine – an unbelievable crew, is in and around Indonesia scouring the place for waves and kicks…reads below.
Imagine bumping into that bunch over there hey?! Wowser!
And over to you Lucy (in the sky…)…
“I touched down in Bali at one in the morning. A small guy, probably called Made, flagged me down and drove me into the wet streets of Denpasar and eventually a dark complex somewhere vaguely near Dreamlands.
I was greeted in the driveway by Renet, Plettenberg bay native and stewardess of international waters and Melanie, Spanish surfer babe and longtime resident of Tofo, Mozambique.
I didn’t really want to be in Indo. To be frank. There were a gazzilion other destinations with far greater allure that I could think of going with the limited cash in my bank account, but I was never going to let the debauchery of the paradise islands slip by without my attendance.
So there I was. Sitting on the floor of an apartment, blurry eyed and sleepless, with familiar faces and mosquitoes lurking all too close to my ear lobes. For all I knew, I could have been right back in Tofo.
We had one scooter between us. The following evening saw us missioning to Dreamlands, three chicks, three boards and one scooter wandering through the jungle. The waves were cooking, the post sunset drive home was a hazardous one. Eventually, after a few wrong turn, no phones, no money and no petrol, racing to get back in time to dance the Sunday night away, we ran into some friendly South Africans who pointed us in the right direction.
“What on earth are you ladies doing out here?” they said.
Not sure.
It was a good way to kick off the trip.
We had to bail from the party after a few days, heading west to the quiet village of Balian. The wave is an A-frame peak, set against a black sand beach and murky rivermouth. It breaks over river stones, having a distinctly sharky vibe, made even worse by the stories from the locals – probably made up to keep the wave count up and the surfer count down.
There were a few days that it cooked, our lives became early morning stumbles to the waters edge, lunch time mie goreng in a tiny warung with the same sun affected Australian and backhand hacks as best we could.
Collapsing in bed as the sun disappeared.
We drove into the jungle one afternoon. Craving the wind in our hair as we flew into the mountains on our break-free, automatic scooters. Cocks fought in the street and people waved at us like they had never seen foreigners before. Eventually, after frantically pointing us in the direction of fried rice, we sat in a tiny shop, eating some version of strange food and taste testing samples in plastic bags, which could have been pretty much anything.
Bali has the kind of views to make you wet yourself. Some might say that you want ‘drink in’ the scenery, but I’m more inclined to say I want to chop it up with my credit card and put it up my nose. It’s addictive to say the least. This impromptu drive into the mountains was no different.
Eventually we got sick of the simple life and took a boat across to Nusa Lemongan. A tiny island just of Bali, undergoing some drastic developments as more and more cashed up foreigners make themselves comfortable.
After our transport boat nearly getting dumped on a reef we were amping for the swell on its way up from Western Australia. Spending the afternoon nearly getting washed off the island in a turning tide current, the following day was a whole different story.
The island is basically set up with three main breaks next to each other -each varying in direction and difficulty. We stayed in front of Shipwrecks, a hollow right-hander where we pretty much moved only between the waves and the bar.
With the arrival of Ghizlane, our fourth counterpart – Moroccan seastress and Tofinho local, along with some serious swell, we all spent some serious time with the reef on our second day. Stumbling up the beach one after the other, our dreams of barrels for breakfast all but shattered.
By the following day though, I had it wired. Some of the bombs of my life. A half hour dream session with only girls out and water so clear I could see sharp fangs of coral through the wave face.
We returned to the mainland that afternoon, in the pouring rain. Dancing the Sunday away over the cliffs of Uluwatu.
There were no more waves to speak of, so we turned to the bottle (long-neck Bintangs specifically) until finally we our last night took us to the fish market. South African expats, Marshall living in Sumba, Lance in Bukit, Sue and Rohan, at Dreamlands, all of whom had been to Tofo, Sue and Rohan having lived there in a past life as well.
Krusty, also a part-time resident of Tofo, played his guitar as the sun sunk below the shimmering waterline. Blocking out the stench of decaying fish was the six kilogram tuna before us and the mountains of shellfish. Delicacies in numbers I would never see at home.
I could have sat at the table forever.
Krusty’s voice fading in and out of the conversations, occasionally accompanied by the others that knew his songs.
I flew out early in the morning. Teary at saying goodbye.
Wishing my flight was to Africa. Not bloody Australia.”
Hey Krusty you got a mention man! Nicey nice!
Thank you Lucy, for joining up with thesardine.co.za and sharing your awesome life and views with us.
