Morgan’s Bay Trip – 26th February to 10th March – PART 1

Sunday 25^th Packed the caravan, got all the camping gear together and tidied up my stuff from last week’s fishing trip, then packed the car so that we could leave early. Steph’s cousin, Shaun, is looking after the house and the dogs for us, so that’s a weight off our minds. It also gives him some freedom from his usual environment (works from home, his parents place, on computer graphics for websites).

Monday 26^th

Up before the sparrow fart, at 05h00. On the road at 06h15 missing the Monday morning traffic into the office (waves and laughter as we pass the lemmings). The 650km drive to Gariep Dam for our overnight stop went off uneventfully, having arrived about 13h30, due to a tailwind the entire way. We set up camp, chilled out for a while with a drink, then went for a sundowner drive around the area. The dam wall is an amazing sight form the bottom, as all dam walls are. On the way back to the camp I heard a rattle under the car and, upon investigation, found a stripped sump cover bolt but couldn’t fix cos I didn’t have a spare. The rest of the evening was nice and quiet with only the sound of the frogs in the dam making any significant noise. Tuesday 27^th

Up “early” and out of camp by 09h00. Most of the other overnighters left before we even got up, poor buggers probably couldn’t sleep. Travelling via Venterstad, we stopped off for breakfast at a little place called Steynsburg. A strange little place, as the cemetery appears to be as big as the entire town. Stopped off in Queenstown for the sump cover bolt but was disappointed by the Ford agent (don’t keep stock of those…go figure). Back on the road, it took almost as long to do the rest of the nearly 500km from Gariep to Morgan’s Bay as it did to do the first leg due to the layout of the terrain, with hills and mountains to be contended with. We arrived in Morgan’s Bay at around 16h00, took one look at the “idyllic” image portrayed by the photo, saw how crowded it was with a school trip that was “arranged annually, but we never know when they’re actually going to be here” and decided fuck that. I want peace and quiet and there’ll definitely be none of that in that camp. I also got pissed off that I’d been lied to about the road “being tarred all the way” due to last 10km on grooved dirt road, so we got our deposit back and headed to Double Mouth Nature Reserve, the camp site of our first trip to the area just outside Morgan’s Bay.

Believe it or not, we are the only ones in the camp. By the time we’d finished setting up camp, it was nearly dark and we sat down with a drink and had a braai. It’s so peaceful here it’s hard to imagine what the other campsite must be like with all those rugrats running amok through it. Apparently there’s also a bit of petty theft going on in that camp, but whether it’s from the locals or the campers, no-one is sure.

Our park manager, Lorraine, assures us that there are no such goings-on in her camp. I decide to trust her judgement and sleep better because of it.

Wednesday 28^th

Up early-ish, not sure of the time but with a cup of coffee in hand, stand admiring the sea view we have from the tent. Another visitor from Joburg and fisherman, John, walks past and introduces himself and tells me of some of the spots to fish. He comes down here regularly, as he and his wife are retired and they spend sometimes up to eight weeks in the farmhouse just outside the caravan park…lucky bastard. We spend some tine reading and in the early afternoon, I decide to go and wet some fishing line, but don’t have any luck catching anything. Just plenty of rocks, on which I lose a lot of tackle. By late afternoon, I give it up and head back to the comfort of my camp chair and a cold beer…ah, the life.

Thursday 1^st

Up at 04h50 to go fishing with John but he didn’t arrive by 05h30 as he said he would. At 06h00, I left for the rocks he said he was going to, waded through the river, and found him already there – said he’d left at 05h10 instead. The bastard had ignored our caravan lights that I’d put on to let him know I was up. He left the fishing spot early, I hung around a bit, got a couple of small bites but nothing promising. In the afternoon, we drove through to Kei Mouth (mouth of the Kei River) to buy some groceries (bread, fire lighters, ice) and ended up taking the friendly park warden along, Lorraine, who also wanted some stuff and draw some money from the ATM (why she needed money out here, I have no idea – there’s literally fuckall to spend it on). We came back to camp through Morgan’s Bay and stopped at the hotel for some lunch (munchies basket – wedges, samoosas, spring rolls, chicken cheese nuggets, sauces, all for R40, bargain). Back to camp to finish “Life on Planet Rock” but more about that later, and start “The Caliban Shore – The Fate of the Grosvenor Castaways”. The British East Indiaman ship, Grosvenor, went down in 1783 just above Port St John, where we stayed last time we were in the area, and the survivors had a torrid time with the locals (Caffres, as they were called at the time). Through a series of captaincy fuckups, the survivors broke into splinter groups and tried to walk to Algoa Bay, where modern day city PE is located, a distance of over 400 miles, rather than walk to Durban (then not a city, but still inhabited by Brits) a distance of just over 100 miles or to Delagoa Bay (modern day Maputo, inhabited by the Porras in those days). Ironically, some of the wreck survivors must have walked past, if not through, the very spot where we sit tonight on their way down the coast…spooky, huh?

There’s even a memorial to the survivors in Kei Mouth town centre and a cache of diamonds (believed to belong to one of the civilians on the Grosvenor, William Hosea, a dubious character who was trying to get out of India due to some disreputable dealings) was found just on the other side of the Kei river in 1927 by a hermit-type German fellow who, realising what they were, registered a claim but the SA Police came in and arrested him for supposedly planting raw stones to claim them as harvested, chiefly because there was 1,038 stones. At the court case he explained how he’d found them about a foot underground on a cattle path but they didn’t believe him and he spent 3yrs in hard labour. When he eventually got out, he died shortly after before forensic evidence could prove that the diamonds could not have originated there as they were alluvials and the closest alluvial field was in Kimberley, almost 500 miles away. Also, an historian came up with the idea that they might have come from the Grosvenor wreck survivors as they were also found in India, where Hosea had bought them and carried them onto the ship.

Anyway, it appears that three of the white ladies survived the splintering of the groups (the Captain, Coxon, actually abandoned them with their menfolk) and after a while were absorbed into the local Pondo tribes, where they were taken by princes as wives and bore children to them. Some of the locals, apparently, still have European features but I can’t say I’ve looked close enough to say “ok, your great, great granny was on the Grosvenor, did you know that?” One of the ladies was apparently so respected by the tribes that they tried to emulate her behaviour and looks.