On the Road to St Lucia - East Coast of SA

The plan was to borrow Margie’s car and drive to St Lucia, about 600km East of Springs on the East coast of SA. I wanted to go to St Lucia because I’d never been there before and it made Gareth so jealous I couldn’t resist.

It’s that much easier to wake up early in SA, and so we managed to get on the road fairly early and planned to do the trip in one day. A lot of the way is along main road (N17 and N2) that pass through industrial towns. The only thing that made me a little sad was seeing how ugly the landscape was. It is flat as flat can be on the Highveld but sadly this serene landscape is scared by power lines, factories spewing out pollution and waste. It seemed a shame that these less trendy, non-tourist areas of SA seem to be looking pretty bad. I thought of Gaudi who believed that no matter how poor people were, they still appreciated beauty. That was why he used such creative ideas, the landscape and recycled items in his work. I felt a bit sad that the poverty and industry are about were, dare I say, ugly, when they needn’t be. Where so many of the big cities in SA are all clean and new and exciting, these towns were being left behind. At times it felt like stepping back into the old SA. Even to the point of I got served before a queue of Black customers in a shop, it made me feel awkward. And yet I should not complain, these towns have good biltong, and I appreciated the nostalgia.

I diverge… We arrived in St Lucia after dark. The trip there was interesting but not pretty and so I think we both had fairly low expectations. It did seem a bit greener and there were clearly tourist offices all about so we asked about and finally found the campsite “Sugarloaf”. Paul was surprised that the cost was about the same as the UK R120/£12. I reminded Paul that UK campsites were muddy fields with little damp ablutions blocks. We had our own little area surrounded by trees, a brick braai area, a bin and water tap nearby. The ablution block was nearby as clean and inviting as an ablution block could be. We pitched Steve’s very old tent, blew up Gareth’s super-huge inflatable mattress and had our first SA camp experience. Life was very good indeed.