As I left George and headed up the Garden Route towards Plettenberg Bay, I was wondering what kind of traveller I was going to be. I was driving past cool restaurants and markets and farmstalls and so many adventure activities and starting to feel pressure to stop and do and eat and look, not everything but at least something. But I was just driving and feeling the futility of it. Driving to a destination. It didn’t feel much like drifting. So I asked for some guidance and decided that when it was apparent I would just know. And it became apparent just outside of Plettenberg Bay when I drove past the Wolf Sanctuary, then immediately turned my car around and drove back to the Wolf Sanctuary. That’s when I knew that I would stop and do and eat and look when it was meaningful to me specifically, not as a generic tourist, and I would know in the moment. That felt much more like drifting.
I didn’t visit the Sanctuary that day because I wanted to dedicate a whole day to the experience, but I began to get a sneaky peak at why I’d been drawn to that region. Maybe not the beach and surfing after all. And when I got to Keurbooms Lagoon I was very sure it wasn’t the beach. Because to get to the beach one has to swim across the lagoon, which is tricky. I was so disappointed! And worse than that, the campsite was full of people, mostly retired people with campervans. It felt like a very crowded outdoor retirement home. And even worse than that, at sunset like clockwork, everyone would start braaing, so there’d be this synchronised smell of scorched meat hanging in the air, which completely freaked this vegetarian out. A friend flat out called me a control freak the other day, and I think it’s true! I do like to control my environment. So this park was a challenge.
But over the coming days I began to see it all as high entertainment. People are fascinating. Everyone creates their own version of comfort when camping. Not that this was really camping. One couple had a setup on the side of their caravan for a big screen TV, and they sat outside watching their shows without a single care about how annoying this may be to other campers. I pitched my tent at the far end of the park on a campsite without a number, it was just called “the bush”, so I could walk past the three-ring circus of oldies and giggle to myself without feeling annoyed. I’m calling them oldies while I can, because I’m months away from being one myself. I can’t wait for those camping discounts to kick in. I ended up staying a week because I wanted to get the blogsite up and running before moving off, and I’m glad I did, because it was fun in the end.
I’d go and sit on the edge of the lagoon and just see what show was on. I saw a dog named Duke riding with his owner on a kayak, wearing his red life jacket, not because he couldn’t swim, apparently just because he was too lazy to swim. Another day I saw a group of about 10 small children swimming at the far end of the lagoon, each with one of those colourful noodle floats. I thought that was cute. Until they swam their way to where I was sitting and got out of the water one by one. That’s when I realised that firstly I’m quite blind without my glasses, and secondly that they were all actually rather large-sized round-shaped adults. I felt like I’d been dropped into a Beryl Cook painting! Then there was the time I thought a fish was having an epileptic fit. A fish fit. I was so worried and upset, not knowing what to do. It turned out that a small breeze had picked up and was causing slight ripples on the water surface. I didn’t have my glasses on that day either. Oh and I saw a rock face. A little one. A rock with face-like markings on. I was careful not to sit on that one.
And, across the road from Keurbooms is a market type complex called Old Nick’s Village, which has this soap shop. It sells other things I think but I only had eyes, or nose really, for the soaps. I love soaps. All fragrant anythings actually. I’m a “stop and smell the roses” type of person, literally and sometimes annoyingly, if there are other people in my car. I can’t buy gifts yet though because there’s no room in my sardine can car, but I would have bought half the shop. Amazing soaps! I think if I ever get dropped into a fairytale I’d like to live in a house made of soap… with a chocolate gazebo maybe.
So, although I may have hurt my ankle walking too long on unstable lagoon sand, this spot turned out to be quite healing. I was floating in the lagoon on my back one afternoon, staring at the sky and the seagulls and the distant mountains and I had this moment where I went “This is so perfect. And I manifested this reality for myself. I must be doing something right after all.”