Welsh boys rip it up in South Africa
By by Nathan Eades
January 12, 2004
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Paddling out Photo by Duncan Eades Click on pic for more photos |
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The town of Jeffrey's bay was a shopper's dream!! Billabong and Quicksilver t-shirts for just £8- Dr Dares and Rich couldn't stop shopping the whole
time we were there!
Less than a 20 minute drive from Jeffrey's Bay, we found a quaint little town by the name of Cape St Francis with a wicked point break called Seals,
which to our discomfort was named after the amount of seals that get taken by sharks there! Seals is a great little right hand break which kicks
up off a reef then feeds into a tight section that breaks onto sand so if you don't make it through, you'll live to see another day! We loved it
here and settled straight in with the friendly local atmosphere, and we liked it so much that we ended up staying for five days!
While at Cape St Francis we heard a lot of talk about the highest bungee jump in the world so as it was on the way, we thought we should check it
out! When we got there, we were pretty overwhelmed by the shear size of this thing. The bridge you jump off is stuck between a gorge at 216 meters
from the ground. With the gauntlet set, Duncan, Berry and myself took up the challenge and I can tell you, when you look over the edge at 216 meters,
you do start to get just a little nervous!!
About a three hour's drive down the road from the bungee jump we found a cool little break called Victoria Bay and landed ourselves a six person
chalet on the beach-front for eight quid each a night! Result: we had a top day here with another awesome break to ourselves-this was a little
scary but totally safe! The take-off zone was in front of a load of massive, boat and head destroying boulders and it was steep! But once we took
a few drops we realized that after the initial take off, the wave slowed down and became really playable as long as you were brutal and didn't
slip out on the take off it was cool!
So, next stop Cape Town but we decided that we couldn't come to South Africa without reaching the southern most point of Africa, so after a two hour
detour and feeling like proper tourists, we arrived in Cape town at the "Parr Residence" to stay with Brandon and Claudine (brother and sister)-two
very good friends we met in Uganda.
Cape Town has got to be one of the most beautiful cities in the world, the whole city is overlooked by "Table Top" mountain- a mainly rock mountain
with an almost perfectly flat top to it. The city itself looks very new and clean, on the one side of the city is "Table Top" and the other is golden
beaches and blue seas! But more to the point, there are loads of top surf breaks within very short driving distances and with Brandon being a local
surfer of the area, we managed to cover almost all of the top breaks in an hour's radius of Cape Town!
The best breaks Brandon took us to were "Scarborough" and "Outer Cwms". Scarborough was stupid big, and after turning up to a solid 9 foot we watched
as most of the waves were closing out with little chance of making it along the faces. After weighing up the pros and cons (the cons won!), me and
Daz decided that we should get on for the cameras and on the off chance that we might even make it along one, so we took to the water while Dares
and Rich took photos and footage, but mainly laughed!
A few days after Scarborough, when the pain had ended, Brandon took us to Outer Cwms. This was another BIG break which accommodated us with bigger
waves than Scarborough but was much friendlier and had much more make-able sections. There were a few more boardies at Outer Cwms which made
things a little more interesting as you had to get stuck in and go deep, only there was a thin line between being in deep and being too deep-it
hurt if you found yourself taking off in the latter!
Another thing about Cape Town is there are loads of shops so of course Duncan and Richard couldn't help themselves and bought even more stuff for
their wardrobes!!
So all sunned, shopped, and surfed out we had one last thing to do before heading for home; over the four weeks, the roof of our hire car had
acquired a few dents, so to avoid loosing our £100 deposit, we dived into a panel beater on the way to the airport. It cost us ten quid for a bit
of a botch attempt, which although shoddy, got us our deposit back with the hire company none the wiser! And with deposit in hand we all hopped
onto the plane for the long haul home.
We all had a totally awesome time in South Africa and advise anyone who's looking for a cheap month of madness to get out there. The whole trip,
including one month's car hire, flight, accommodation and food will set you back £1100! Thanks to Chris@ Nomad Paddleworks, Bill @ Nookie, Gath,
and a massive thanks to Melcome Pearcey at Mega for the awesome kayaks and for those of you that haven't tried out his toys yetÉ all I can say
is get one!! Special thanks to the Parr family for putting us up while we were in Cape Town!
Editor's Note: Check out Nathan's www.goatboater.com
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