Sunday, May 24, 2009

Naturally...


The Mountain Club of South Africa supports a wide variety of styles when it comes to mountaineering, but as far as swimming goes there is one style in particular that its members seem to enjoy. While the club does not include the strongest swimmers around, there is a particular flair with which many MCSA members take to the water. And so, being on an MCSA sponsored trip, when i came across a beach where I could not see a single human being in any direction, I took to the water in a fashion that I believe my sponsors would approve of... Naturally...

Walking since Paternoster has been good. After covering 45 km to get to Velddrif, I was offered a bed by a family of real estate agents. As well as being a booking agent, the lady who offered me accommodation in Paternoster is also a Real Estate agent, so it would seem that the Western Cape has quite a friendly collection of realters! From there it was 30 km till I found the beach. The west coast road takes quite a turn inland after Dwarskersbos, so I was was walking along a dirt road that runs next to the railway line just behind the dunes. Every now and then a sliver of ocean would appear, brightly reflecting the sun at one point like a weld between sky and sand. I knew there had to be some secret unspoilt coast behind the dunes and I was right! I got permission from the farmer and camped about 200m off the road in the veld. It was about another 800m to the beach where I took a rest day, naturally...

From there it was another 30 km to a terribly dodgy campsite Elandsbaai (fortunately the guard let me out without paying!), and another 27 to Lambert's Bay where I used some of the money that I've saved by sleeping on the roadside to spoil myself with a bed and a shower! At R100 a night it was only R5 rand more expensive than the dodgy campsite! Accommodation is very overpriced on the West Coast, especially being a climber used to my favourite sites at R30 a night, or some places in the Transkei for R10! From Lamberts Bay I was hoping to find some cheap accommodation in Doringbaai or Strandfontein to take a set day at but haven't found anything. I have decided instead to take two easy days walking instead of one rest day, sleeping where I can find safe spots off the road. Yesterday I walked 25 km and slept under a small, disused railway bridge (still used by the train though so it was a noisy night! ), and today i intend to walk 20 km. This will bring my week's total (excluding the days lost to weather in Paternoster) to 177 km, well above my quota of 150 km. My feet are still a bit sore though and while this past week has been almost entirely dirt, from here I head on to tar which is alot harder on the feet. Hopefully the accommodation is cheaper inland and I can find a good spot to rest and do some washing soon!

This is my last day along the shore before I hit the North Coast so I'm taking in the see view from just past Doringbaai. The West Coast has been beautiful, but the accommodation is overpriced and the people here generally aren't very friendly. Fortunately I have found safe places to camp freely and met people who's quality of friendliness outweighs the quantity of the unfriendly, which has made this stretch of the coast most enjoyable! I've seen some amazing things and had such a great experience so far that all the songs I've written but couldn't find words to are suddenly finishing themselves with far greater imagery and substance than I could have written before. Very glad I've got my guitar with me! as for the photos, I haven't taken as many as expected, but I'm not too worried. It has, after all, only been two weeks! I still got over 8 months left on the road! My perception of time has taken a bit of a knock but I'm slowly getting into it and just putting one foot infront of the other. The tough days are the days I think about how far I've come and how far I'm going, but more and more I'm learning to just take it as it comes and enjoy... So with that, I'm going to go enjoy my last sunset over the Atlantic...

Sunday, May 17, 2009

Rest and Good People

I have been fortunate in life to spend alot of time around people who are very good at what they do, this didn't change during my stay with the Lees family in Jacobsbaai. Laura Lees is the aunt of a friend of mine (Marisa, a very good tattoo artist!) in Joburg and was kind enough to let me stay with her and her family for two nights while i took a rest day. She and her husband Dennis make their living off of pottery and painting respectively. It's encouraging for me as a young musician and photographer to see people who pursue their passion enough to make a living off of it. They seem to have passed that passion on to Vincent, Dennis' 18 year old son who is deadly on a drum kit! I had planned to get alot done on my first rest day but i enjoyed the company so much that between jamming sessions with Vincent, talking sense with Laura and Dennis, and talking nonsense with Jessica and Benjamin (the youngest members of the family, Jess in Grade 1 and Ben in Preschool), I got pretty much nothing done!

Setting out on day 6 my feet were still sore and the wind was howling, but had i stayed any longer in I don't think i would ever have left! So i said my goodbyes and left for Paternoster. After a long day of uphills, headwinds and narrow roads, i arrived in the small fishing village. I got in touch with a booking agent named Marina (www.stayinpaternoster.co.za) who has let me stay in one of the houses she rents virtually free of charge(I'm just covering the cost of the maid to clean up after i leave)! The timing couldn't have been better as I had just received a phone call from my uncle in Cape Town that there was a massive storm on its way that emergency services were on standby for.

This is now the third day in the house waiting for the storms to pass. There have been some bad ones but not as bad as I expected. I think they unleashed alot of their power in Cape Town where there has been alot of flooding my dad tells me. The rest is welcome as i covered more ground than expected in the first few days so i'm still on schedule. Also my feet and legs are doing well for the rest. The gait required to pull Olive along is quite different to carrying a backpack, so despite being very fit my legs are taking strain getting used to it. Besides resting I've been making some jewelry to sell and working on some new songs. I've also been putting some thought to how i want to theme my exhibition. I took my first photos just before i entered Jacobsbaai of some landscapes behind fences. I've been trying to think of how my walk affects the way i see things and one of the thing i've noticed is that because of pulling the cart and essentially becoming quadrupedal, fences have become far greater obstacles. Where as normally one could just hop over a fence to get away from the road and find somewhere safe to sleep, I've had to find open gates or areas that aren't fenced to sleep in on the first three nights. I started to become quite animalistic in the way i viewed things but now that I've been in houses the past few nights, I can feel the onset of the neuroses of modern living. I think too much thinking though, might just prevent me from intuitively discovering what I should be photographing. I like how Lukas Zpira likens the constant justification of our actions to a dog fighting to defend piece of meat, and so I hope that when I find what I should be photographing, the images will be strong enough in concept and aesthetics to stand without the need for explanation.

Tomorrow I'll start walking to (and hopefully past) Stompneus Bay over 20km of dirt road. These few days have and will involve a more convoluted path than expected but it is a very pretty part of the coast. My quota for each week is 150km which i covered last week and shouldn't have any problem covering this week... Weather permitting...

Friday, May 15, 2009

Olive's Adolescence and Some Atomic Walking



Olive's adolescence? Well, after the cart's wobbly wheels on day one, I have named her Olive (after Popeye's wobbly legged girlfriend). I think she's through her awkward stage though as she's proving to be a good strong work-horse! The only problems i've had have been with parts that were bought, everything that Greg designed and Charl built has been working perfectly! The wheels are settling in though, and despite one more bad buckle yesterday (which also sprung back instantly, this time when i just pulled the cart forwards), it's only been minor balancing that's been necessary. The permatubes that my friend Andrew and I fitted are working well to nullify the need to carry a pump and repair tubes after thorny ground, but are not coping as well as i had hoped with the weight of the cart. One tube in particular seems to be a lower density as it compresses quite severely under a centered load that the other tube copes just fine with. Jeremy left at the end of day 2 to tend to his research and I sent some stuff back to Cape Town with him. This allowed me to weight the cart further forward and transfer the eye-bolts that attach my back-pack to the cart (via a rope passed through the slot for the hip-strap) to the front of the handles, which ultimately put me in hands-free mode! This is how we intended the cart to work but it relies on the cart being slightly front-heavy. With my hands free from keeping Olive on a straight line, they can now be a part of the locomotive process by using trekking poles to alleviate some of the driving force from my feet. All in all Olive is looking pretty good!

Atomic walking? On day one we past Koeberg Nature Reserve, the only nature reserve i know with a nuclear power station on it! (Hence the atom above the hikers in the photo above)

Although the trip has started off alot tougher than i expected, it has started off pretty well! The first three nights i spent on the side of the road which wasn't as bad as i thought it would be. I was hoping for a camp-site on day 2 and thought i had one secured as Jeremy and his parents drove out of the parking lot of the padstal where i sat waiting for the lady who booked the camping to arrive. After some time re-packing the cart i turned to the small petrol station, where I had been told by one of the attendants that there was camping, and saw that it was closed. I tried to walk towards the campsite, set off the station's alarm, and then got ambushed by the booking lady screaming at me that I had to book in advance to camp. After politely informing them that their service and business sense was terrible, I found some water and carried on walking a further 4km in the dark to where there was supposed to be another campsite. There was nobody at the gate though so i slept in the unattended gate-house. That brought my distance of 25km on day 2 up to 29, day one was about 24, day 3 was 35km (after using trekking poles!) and day 4 was about 32km which brought me to Jacobsbaai...

Saturday, May 9, 2009

First day!



Quite tired as I write this so forgive me any careless wording as I briefly explain the first day.

First day was an amazing one!Started under clear skies from Bloubergstrand, with a spectacular view of Table Mountain. Have my friend Jeremy joining me for the first two days which has been great! Walking with the cart is taking some getting used to and is slower than I expected. Have also had some teething problems with the wheels as they settle in. Around midday, stepping off a sidewalk at about 45 degrees left the cart on its side (taking me with it) and the right wheel severely buckled. It had tensioned strangely and as soon as i put my hand on it to check how rigid it was, it sprang instantaneously back to it's original shape! Some balancing and severe spoke tightening was still necessary. Later on the other wheel buckled quite badly and started rubbing against the fork. This was purely due to the spokes loosening while the wheels settle in and once again the spoke wrench came in handy! Also think i have packed too much "in case" and luxury equipment so will send some stuff back to cape town with Jeremy tomorrow.

Walking was tough but at just under 25km we covered enough distance for me to stay on schedule. We set up camp behind some bushes about 100 off the road we were walking. The road is quite busy but there are no towns for quite some distance. We expect to hit the next town at the end of tomorrow.

Will probably update once a week from now on unless something really crazy happens or i get really bored after setting up camp once Jeremy is gone! Might sacrifice the ukelele in my effort to lighten the load but I'll still have my guitar and harmonicas to distract me from my blog! Might sacrifice it... Still weighing up the pros and cons...



The cart! Designed by Greg Borman and fabricated by Charl Phyfer. On my way to the start point now so next blog will hopefully be this evening after a successful first day!

Thursday, May 7, 2009

What it's all about...

My name is Kyle Meenehan and this is my account of my journey around the perimeter of South Africa on foot.

As i write this on my mobile phone I am sitting in Kommetjie, a small town not far from Cape Town. I arrived here by train, which had me seated and reclined in alternation over a 26 hour period opposite a retired train driver of declining olifactory palatability. After degenerating from an entertaining, aged Karate/Judo expert (he had mastered these Japanese arts during a 6-month course in China and now did part-time work for the police, spin-kicking drug-lords out of Hillbrow... He also claimed to be quite musical, my ukelele begs to differ.) into a babbling alcoholic chimney, i decided to spend the last few hours of the journey in one of the smaller cabins that had emptied since entering the Western Cape. Through its window i watched the light soften and the valleys sprout vineyards and crazy hobos as we moved from the Karoo towards Cape Town. If there are two things after amazing rock climbing that i enjoy about Cape Town, they are the quality of light and the insanity of the homeless. The humidity from the ocean both softens the light and gives everything a gentle sheen, the two result in a range of colours and tones very rare in my home town of Johannesburg. Secondly, aside from Plastic Bag Man in Joburg, Cape Town has some of the most eccentric hobos i've ever seen. Crazy hobos make life interesting.

I arrived on Tuesday and have spent the last few days spending time with my family and making final preparations for my walk. On Saturday the 9th of May i will begin my walk around the perimeter of the country. The route is about 5800km and never strays more than 100 km from the nearest coastline or border. On the walk i will be pulling a cart (more on that tomorrow) in which i will carry all the necessaries as well as my camera, guitar and ukelele. Along the walk i will be taking photos with which i intend to create an exhibition afterwards. The guitar and ukelele i will use to earn some extra money along the way, gigging wherever anyone will hear the songs i write on the road. I say extra because this year I was fortunate enough to win the Supertramp Award, an annual cash prize awarded by the Mountain Club of South Africa to young people planning expeditions or trips of interest. The sponsorship has made the walk possible, covering the bulk of my food and accommodation costs and for this, i am incredibly grateful the MCSA, the committee members who determine the winner of the Supertramp Award, and the anonymous donor who funds it. In order to prevent me sacrificing that food and accommodation for film stock and guitar strings, as often is the choice dictated by mine and my friends' sense of priorities in times of financial crisis, i will be performing where i can find venues and selling various crafts from my cart on the South African roadside.

Well that's about all the details i can provide now as my tolerance for predictive text and small keys has been exeeded. More tomorrow!