The Long Road to Bulungula

My friend Tuuli had visited South Africa for the first time last year, and told me that the highlight of her trip was a visit to Bulungula in the Transkei, in the middle of South Africa's Indian Ocean coast. She said the lodge was integrated into a Xhosa village, and that it was a special setup. I thought I'd make it my next stop after leaving Ixopo.

I'd never actually been into the Transkei before, at least when I was old enough to remember. In Apartheid times, Transkei was one of the densely-populated, nominally independent homelands, kept separate from South Africa and we never thought of it as a holiday destination, although the coast line there, nicknamed the Wild Coast, is some of the most beautiful in South Africa. So for me entering the Transkei felt like I was going into a foreign country.

I called ahead from Kokstad, the last town in Natal, to get directions. The little backpacker guidbook I had said, vaguely, that Bulungula lay 'South of Coffee Bay', so I'd gotten directions from there, which sounded romantic: 'from Coffee Bay go to Hole in the Wall and then follow the signs to the Mission Hospital'. I filled up with fuel and withdrew money and then drove over the 'border', at which the landscape transformed from undulating green hills to undulating green hills with lots of small huts and chaotic towns. Capital of all the chaotic towns was Mtata, which took me about an hour to drive through because of roadworks and Saturday afternoon traffic.

So it was mid-afternoon already, on the otherside of Mtata, that I turned off the national highway onto a badly pot-holed road which took me to my first contact with the ocean at Coffee Bay ... and a scraggly backpacker scene with a lot of begging children. I wasn't sure what exactly I was expecting but this wasn't it. I bid farewell to tarmac and headed downt the dirt road to Hole in the Wall. Transkei doesn't have much in the way of roadsigns, and the directions I had pettered out just beyond there, with the sun was starting to sink in the sky.

Two calls on my cell phone later, and a careful look at the detailed map I was lucky enough to have showed that I was way away from Bulungula and should never have been through Coffee Bay at all. Suddenly I found myself in a race against the last remaining light of day, going through a crazy maze of rutted dirt roads where the only point of orientation was the name of the odd store. Get to the Bulungula Store were the directions over the phone. And we'll send the 4x4 there. Long before I reached the store, it felt like I needed a 4x4 - the road tilted from one side to the other, and the car scraped against ridges of dirt.

I got to the Bulungula Store in the evening, and waited about an hour before a 4x4 lurched up the road from the opposite direction and took me with, alone in the back, into the gathering gloom and a storm which had burst over the darkened landscape. I knew from the map that there was only a short distance - maybe 5km - to go, but the trip in the 4x4 took almost an hour as its lurched through a series of ravines. The blurred white shapes of huts were vaguely distinguishabe through the rain-besmattered windows, but otherwise the experience was one of jolt/jolt/jolt in the pitchy blackness. Then finally it stopped, the door opened and I jumped out ... splosh ... into a giant puddle. Welcome to Bulungula!

The lodge was crowded with a confusing mixture of backpackers and locals, with many children running around. At that stage I was too tired to take it all in, so I set up a tent in the darkness, and fell into a deep sleep. When I woke up the next morning, I was right on the beach, and this is what I saw:









Sometimes, arriving at night and waking up to the surprise is the best way to do it.