Inquired or enquired about hiring a car to drive along the Garden Route (well trodden/driven road between Cape Town and Port Elizabeth) from Rent a Cheapie. Their website declares that they offer unlimited mileage on all cars. This seemed pretty good as the hire price was already very reasonable.

It turns out that the mileage is not actually quite so unlimited as it promises. If you go more than 200 km from Cape Town then there was an extra 799 rand to pay. When this became clear during my telephone enquiry it led to the following conversation.

Me: But your website clearly states free unlimited mileage is included in the cost of hire. You make a big thing of it. “Free unlimited mileage”.
Him: It is
Me: No it isn’t.
Him: It is.
Me: O K, we”re going to be driving to Knysna today (several hundred km). Is that free mileage?
Him: No.
Me: Not free?
Him: No. You draw a circle round Cape Town of 200 kilometres and you can drive anywhere in that circle absolutely free.
Me: Most of that circle is in the Atlantic Ocean. The Atlantic Ocean makes up the majority of your free mileage zone.
Him: You can’t drive into the Atlantic.
Me: I’m not going to. I want to drive to Knysna.
Him: That will cost an extra one off payment of 799 rand.
Me: And then the extra mileage is free.
Him: Yes.
Me: That’s really not free unlimited mileage then, is it?
Him: It is if you pay 799 rand extra.
Me: And then I can drive as far as I want?
Him: No. If you go across the border you have to pay much more.
Me: For free mileage.
Him: Exactly.
Me: Why isn’t it called kilometerage?
Him: Pardon me?
Me: Never mind. Could you tell me if there are any other, what I like to call, “hidden costs”?
Him: (in an outbreak of uncharacteristic openness) Yes. Lots.

After a long list of possible extras we could pay for, none of which, thankfully, we needed, I told him I would let him know. It then turned out, having rung several more hire companies, that theirs was still the best deal, even with the non-free free mileage so we went down and hired from them and tootled off in a car in which I can now drive for as many kilometres as I like (so long as I don’t drive across the border, and keep out of the sea).

We headed off along the N2 which is the road that runs all the way from Cape Town to Knysna. It’s one half of what’s called The Garden Route and we were told we would find it stunning. Now, don’t get me wrong, the mountainy bits were pretty enough but most of the rest of the way was nothing to write home about. (And yet, here I am……)

As we got closer to Knysna things got a lot more impressive. Long, curved sandy beaches. Sun-kissed wouldn’t do them justice. More like sun-snogged. Dramatic cliffs. High, steep sided gorges with a picture book perfect river running through them – the sort of river that makes other rivers feel just a little bit inadequate. I’m suspecting there is a lot more of this scenery to be seen.

Looking forward to seeing it.

Bringing to bear all the expertise which comes from an entire three days in a place, for sure, apartheid is a thing of the past; but it’s also for certain from what I’ve seen so far in one small corner of the country, that whites, blacks and coloureds form three very distinct groups economically. Stop and look at who is driving on the highways, who is working where, who has what would pass the test of being able to call themselves free.

Bur, it’s early days and I have no real concept of how things were before – so I’d like to dig a little deeper.

Knysna – Monday Jan 19th, eve

Lack of internet availability in places has caused a couple of minor inconveniences, one of which was that we didn’t know if the people we thought we were due to stay with in Knysna knew we were coming. Minor detail, of course – but Ella had emailed last week to say we would be arriving on Monday, if that was OK, but we had no idea whether they had replied or whether it was still OK for us to come as we’ve never spoken to the couple and correspondence thus far has been a little on the vague side as our plans for this first week were not finally firmed up until the last minute.

Turned up to the address we’d been given in an earlier email. We went up to the big metal gate and peered through and tried to look as welcomable innable as possible. A lady looked at us for a long time from behind the almost closed blinds of the sitting room. I think she thought she couldn’t be seen but with the light on behind her she might as well have been standing outside waving a flag.

We just kept standing there as we didn’t know what else to do. There was no bell to ring. No intercom thing. No side gate to go through. She waited. We waited.

We waved. She knew she’d been spotted and that her non-existent cover had been blown. She snatched up a small scruffy dog and came walking down the drive holding it as one might a machine gun. She was very Dutch.

This became clear when she started talking. We soon discovered, having said “Hi, we’re Jon and Ella: we did email: we hope you’re expecting us because otherwise this is going to be a little awkward……” that it was going to be a little awkward.

She was not expecting us at all.

It was made a little less awkward when we found out that although it was almost exactly the same address as on the email we had – she and her husband were definitely not called Steve and Dee but she thought that there might be another road similarly named to that one on a development the other side of town.

She fetched her husband who was even more Dutch than she was and he took to describing where we should go using a series of noises which sounded like he was trying to shift something stuck to his lungs.

He kept talking and I kept nodding until it seemed a long enough time had passed that I could walk away without seeming rude.

Using my awesome sense of direction and a phone call we ended up in a sufficiently useful place by the side of the road that our correct host could drive to and rescue us.