Half term round up

South coast edition

As a born and bred Capetonian, we took our holidays up the garden route as a child. Knysna, Wilderness, Plett, Sedgefield. KwaZulu-Natal was for me some far away place, where my dad grew up, and my aunt lived (but she always came to Cape Town for her holidays). It was hot and, on the coast, and that’s about all I knew.

I only have two childhood memories of KZN.

The first was when I was ten years old and my parents were taking an extended trip overseas and would be gone for about three weeks over the June/July holidays. We had good family friends, with kids my age, who lived in Westville and so I was shipped off as an unaccompanied minor to stay with them for the school holidays. They were all avid bike riders, and me, being an indoor plant, had still not managed to learn this skill at the age of ten. It was a literal crash course, but within three days I was careening down the jungle lined, hilly roads of Westville with the best of them.

The second was when my best friend and I flew up to visit my aunt when we were about twelve years old, and she took us to Uvongo for a weekend. She was that aunt I hope all children have at some point in their lives. Single, fabulous, a little mad, and intent on spoiling you rotten (I will never forget the patent white leather loafers with a see-through jelly heel she bought me, may her soul rest in peace).

Anyway, the point is, my only memory of this Uvongo trip was that I had never experienced such a full ocean. As the waves rose before me, there in the turquoise wall of water were bodies and boogie boards and surf boards. Angles of flesh and Lycra and polystyrene moving towards me like the surf zombie apocalypse. It was terrifying. If I wasn’t pulled under by the strong current, I surely would be killed by some other body torpedoing into my own.

Then I met my husband. Who as a born and bred Joburger only ever holidayed in Natal. But not the Natal of the north coast, or even its lesser cousin, the south coast. No, he holidayed at his granddad’s flat on North Beach Durban. And he loved it. As a man who is seldom effusive, his memories of North Beach are honey-coloured and sublime. Boogie boarding for hours, Milky Lane, rollerblading, the surf shop. They were the golden years.

His school pals would ask him, hearing he was going to Durban for his holidays, oh where in Durban? Umhlanga, Ballito? No, he would say, to Durban. Like, the actual centre of Durban. Even then it seemed anachronistic.

Anyway, as a good and faithful wife, I have tried on occasion to reconstruct this childhood dream for him. I love the Western Cape and all it has to offer, and I feel self-righteously magnanimous whenever I concede to a Natal holiday. Because really, what is there, except, well, the beach and its terrifying swells.

And friends, I have to say, that after this half term break in KZN, I finally get it. What is great about KZN is that there is nothing there except the beach and its swells and its jungley dunes. Generations of Vaalies were not wrong. Escaping the highveld winter, and warming your bones, and seeing green and blue when everything in Gauteng is, by now, dry brown sticks, is a balm for the soul. Also, incredibly good for the respiratory system. Within one day all our coughs and blocked noses were gone.

So, this past week we went to the unglamourous South Coast, to the small town of Pennington and stayed in the most dated and tired Airbnb we have ever stayed in, where the greatest luxury on offer was an ice-cream and some fish and chips. And the kids thought it was heaven on earth. It reminded us both of our childhood holidays in beds with soft linen, not because of thread count, but because of the over laundered sheets. A wooden cabin in the trees (with plenty of rust), no mod-cons, no style, and no view (except the trees, which the kids kept telling us, was an Incredible View. They were right). Our humble accommodation forced us onto the beach for entire days and we had a truly wonderful time.

We walked for kilometres along the coast and felt like we were in some kind of forgotten land, and perhaps, in a way, we were. The railway cables were slashed and twisted metal rusting everywhere, the banana palms and ferns and vines starting to overtake them. The beaches were quiet and unlittered, the ocean gorgeous and threatening, and the only people we came across was the odd fisherman, convening with the gods of the sea.

The main beach, where there was slightly more activity, had a steep shelf of sand, which we named the cliffs of Dover and the kids spent hours tumbling down them, while I lay on the sand reading, dozing, staring out the sea. Warwick swam (I tried once and was unceremoniously dumped by a massive wave at the feet of three what looked like twelve-year-old boys playing in the surf. Costume askew, boob probably hanging out, they asked if I was alright, and they seemed quite startled when I said, no, I actually need a hand up please) and dutifully built sandcastles.

There was nothing to want, nothing to buy, no daydreaming about what it would be like to live here. And it was so restorative.

Joburg life, which I am sure is like middleclass life in many places, is so saturated with want and with need. We want, the poor need and we all feel distressed. What a gift to be reminded that joy can be found in just being. As a class-A planner, it was luxurious to feel unburdened by my own mind.

So, KZN, we’ll be back. Your beauty is your simplicity. What a gift.