Shorelines (25 page)

On our way to Storms River, deep in the Tsitsikamma Forest, we pass the emerald polo fields and arrive at the toll plaza. Something is amiss. The haze has settled on the highway, and visibility is down to 100 metres.

“Are you safe?” we ask the woman behind the glass in the toll booth. She makes a little face and shrugs. They’ve seen fires out here before.

Now the murk is positively apocalyptic and the sky has turned a completely unnatural, sinister shade of beige. Trees loom out of the haze like wintry skeletons. Two hadedahs circle overhead, confused by the mid-morning twilight. As are we …

Storms River Village is a tiny settlement tucked into a world of wood. There is a soft fall of ash flakes as we pull up at the Woodcutter’s Cottage on the main road. This is to be our new self-catering home for the next couple of days.

We unpacked all our worldly possessions into the cottage and went off to find Anneline Wyatt, who worked for Storms River Adventures. Anneline was distracted at first. We found out that her husband Martin was out fighting fires in the area.

“We’re all a bit worried about the direction of the wind and the flames,” she said. Which, in retrospect, was a very understated, Battle-of-Britain way of putting things. In fact, the village stood on the brink of annihilation. What usually saved it from going up in smoke was the fact that it was hard to burn the natural forest surrounding Storms River. The indigenous forest was moist, and so thick and dense that it lacked the quantities of oxygen needed to feed the fire. If Storms River Village had been located in the middle of a pine plantation, like some of the other villages in the area, it would stand no chance of survival. But this was a particularly dry season. Everything looked ready to burn.

The light was flat as we climbed into a large tractor-trailer with a busload of Dutch tourists for the Woodcutter’s Journey into the Plaatbos Nature Reserve.

We were lucky enough to have the current Miss Tsitsikamma, the lovely Jossy Abrahams, as our guide.

“Oh, our Jossy’s a real favourite with the tourists,” Anneline had said.

We drove into a forest where more than 500 plant species were to be found. Ferns were big business around here, with 16 tonnes of greenery sent overseas every week to garnish floral bouquets of European romantics. The harvesting was carefully monitored, to keep the business sustainable. Jossy gave us an insight into the forest.

“The blackwitch hazel is a natural air humidifier,” she said. “The hairy undersides of the leaves hold moisture and gradually release it during the heat of the day, keeping the forests moist.

“And here’s the
malleblaar
– the crazy leaf. Some of its leaves are sweet, while others are bitter. That’s to confuse the animals. The
kammanassie
tree gives off a milky latex if you cut it. It fools the stomach into feeling satisfied quickly, so that the animal moves away.”

The forest road we were slowly puttering down was once the national route through the district, built by the celebrated Thomas Bain and his army of convicts in 1885. Some say that this was the road-making genius’ greatest work, winding through the most spectacular part of the Garden Route and crossing the Groot, Bloukrans and Storms rivers.

“Interestingly enough,” said Jossy, “Thomas Bain used the old elephant paths to guide his way.”

At the low-water bridge, the Storms River flowed like Coca-Cola over the pale rocks, through reeds and shrubbery that could have come straight from the landscaped garden of someone important.

After a picnic lunch of chicken enjoyed in a woody setting, Jossy and her crew took us back to the village. The Dutch climbed in their air-conditioned tour bus and left the area. We prepared for our canopy adventure, which I had mistaken for a gentle stroll on some kind of platform up in the trees above us.

Then our guides started hauling out the harnesses and I thought Uh Oh, here we go again. Flinging ourselves about a dangerous place in the service of a good story. We looked up at the walls of the adventure company’s office and saw photographs of happy people speeding through the forest treetops, attached to wires.

With us this time was a six-pack of British tourists: three men and their wives, who were all hairdressers living in and around London. They travelled overseas once a year in a pack, and were as jovial as a jazz band.

So there I was, like a big, fat flying squirrel on five cups of coffee, whizzing towards the trunk of a fast-approaching tree. Not the usual picture of grace. More like a wombat on a wobbly. One of the British women braked to a complete stop on the first run and was left dangling in mid-air, wide-eyed and tearful. I hugged my tree trunk. It was time to go again, a 100-m green rush of forest flight.

My wife had a grin from ear to proverbial ear. She loved this stuff. Julie ‘Gonzo’ du Toit, who should have been a trapeze artist. Eventually we were all in the full swing of the adventure, and the adrenaline was flowing like hot wine in a ski lodge as we babbled away like howler monkeys in the penthouse of this magnificent forest. We stayed silent for just long enough to catch the flight of a red-winged Knysna turaco (loerie) and hear the insistent call of a forest buzzard as it flew nestwards.

The Hightop Speed Queen and I slept like exhausted lumberjacks that night. The next morning, the normally dramatic outline of the nearby Tsitsikamma mountains was obscured by smoke from the advancing fires. We went for a short walk in the forest, taking photographs in the artificially muted light as flakes of ash rained down gently.

Ashley Wentworth ran Storms River Adventures. On his office wall was an array of framed photographs of Ashley in dark suits, with smiling businessmen at glitzy awards functions.

“I keep them up there just to remind myself of what I escaped from,” he said. “Thank God I’m out of all that.”

“All that” was a long time spent working for multinational pharmaceutical companies.

At 46, Ashley sought to change his life completely. So he and his partner Fiona (I didn’t catch her surname at that moment) came here and turned Storms River Adventures into an ethical, eco-friendly, job-creating operation. They won award after award in the world of fair trade.

A shadow of pain crossed Ashley’s face as he continued:

“Then in 2000 we had that catastrophe, when 13 people died while blackwater-tubing on the Storms River. We had taken over the tubing operation from the former owner and had tested it completely for safety. We’d even flood-tested it to make sure we could get people out of the gorge if the water ever came down.”

But when a flash flood poured storm water into the Witteklip tributary of the Storms River, the situation went out of control in two-and-a-half minutes. The affected group was close to the take-out point and the enormous surge of water washed them past it, turning a nearby Grade 1 rapid (which even a child could safely navigate) into a Grade 5 (un-runnable, similar to a waterfall).

In the enquiry that followed, Storms River Adventures was exonerated of all blame.

“There was nothing anyone could have done to foresee or mitigate the extent of this flood,” said Ashley. “No one actually drowned. All deaths were from neck and head injuries as the force of the water knocked people against rocks.”

Storms River Adventures was at the epicentre of empowerment in the village, which included a catering company (serving a very good
tramezzini
), and a craft shop, where we met a guy who once had a tree fall on him and survived, albeit with a metal plate in his head.

Ashley’s company had trained more than 360 guides, who were now working all over southern Africa and beyond. We asked about the fires.

“You live with that danger all the time,” he said. “The last big one we had was in 1998, just after we arrived. The police came around one morning and ordered the village to evacuate. We took all the staff down to the rugby field, which is surrounded by indigenous forest. The fire bypassed us, leaving most of the village unscathed. We fear smoke inhalation more than the fire itself.”

Anneline came in with an update from Martin in the field (so to speak):

“It’s crossed over to Coldstream and is heading towards Soetkraal. There are three fires in the range at the moment, and one’s coming to us. A lot depends on wind and rain. It’s now at the Bobbejaan’s River. I don’t think the highway is closed yet.”

We walked outside. People were quietly preparing for the worst, filling water tanks. One of them looked as though it had just snuck out of a museum for an adventure.

“This is ridiculous. That fire tank is useless at the moment, because the pump is in for repair,” said Ashley, with a rueful smile.

More people arrived, wide-eyed, with the latest news. Between the Bobbejaan’s and Groot River, the fire was right up against the road. The driver of a tour bus reported seeing two leopards and an aardvark crossing the road in a panic to get away from the fire. It was pandemonium all along the upper reaches of the Garden Route.

I, meanwhile, had been wandering through the village and found an intriguing collection of Cadillacs in an Art Deco showroom right next door to a Victorian hotel complex. Hmm.

The owner’s son, a young guy called Jean du Rand, at first thought I was trying to flog magazine advertising, which upset me too. Although he was giving me the ‘tradesman’s entrance’ runaround, I insisted on seeing the legendary Jan du Rand, owner of all those magnificent machines at the front.

He was also the laird of the Tsitsikamma Village Inn, which looked very Rattray in mien and design. This was the original site of the Tsitsikamma Forest Inn, complete with original yellowwood floors in the old bar.

Jan du Rand arrived, a little grumpily at first, but he soon warmed to us upon realising we were not out to sell him space of any kind. We spoke about the fire.

“When you evacuate,” said the big man, “you must stay in the middle of the road. And don’t stop, because that’s when the fire will take you. Just keep going.” Little did we know – that bit of advice was to be our mantra the next day.

Jan confirmed that Mad Martin had, in fact, designed his new hotel. How did such a plummy Scot like Martin Rattray ever end up around the same fire as this hale, hearty old Afrikaner?

“I used to play bowls and tennis with his parents, Gillian and Peter,” said Jan. Now you see. Never judge a book, I say.

And the Cadillac Junction outside?

“I grew up in Hanover in the Karoo. Back in 1958, when I was a teenager, one Bok Theron bought himself a Cadillac and used it only on Sundays. I admired that car so much.

“In 1990 or so, I went to visit a car collector in Cradock and found myself staring at the very Cadillac once owned by Bok Theron. It cost me a fortune, but I just had to have it.”

Warming to his subject, Jan took us off to his Cadillac Shack, a showroom done up in deep-rose pink. His pack of well-groomed, big-fin Cadillacs stood waiting, amid displays of old Underwood typewriters and vintage vinyl from the sixties. In the corner was a gleaming red 1973 Ford Mustang.

“That’s my muscle car,” said Jan. Outside, people were rushing about in a tizz over the looming clouds of fire smoke. Inside, we were talking Newton Metres, V-8s and 4 km a litre. Jan was keen to take us for a ride on the N2 to his petro-port at the Storms River Bridge.

“They’ve just found a suicide at the bridge,” he said. “Wanna go for a spin?”

Initially, the little private-school boy in me recoiled. Go for a ride on a fire-straddled highway in someone’s outrageously indulgent ‘muscle car’ while aardvarks are fleeing for their lives? To see a dead body? Are you mad?

The travel writer in me said Bloody right, old son. Get into that Mustang before the guy changes his mind. So Jules and I shared a look and a smile and then hopped in. Besides, I liked Cadillac Jack du Rand. He reminded me of my brother, who also had those larger-than-life eccentricities.

As we pulled out into the road, everyone stared. Jan hardly noticed. Out of the speakers a 1950s singer warbled moodily.

The Mustang kept growling and leaping forward like a beast desperate to run. Jan was weighing up the odds between impressing us and being caught. As he eased his foot off the accelerator, he realised how lucky he had been. One of the Knights of the Order of the Shady Trees was lurking in the undergrowth with his radar camera and his reflective shades.

We arrived at the petro-port just as the mortuary van was leaving with the body.

While the fires had been keeping the Garden Route in a fever over the past few days, a young Capetonian with his own problems had bought a one-way ticket on a luxury bus to the Storms River Bridge. Once there, he went to sit under one of the mainstays of the bridge, opened his briefcase, took out a blank piece of paper and began to write.

Days later, someone would spot dozens of pieces of paper littered on the ground, look up and see a body swaying from a belt tied to one of the bridge beams. The man had apparently struggled to compose his suicide note.

Once we’d passed the rather smoky traffic cop on the way back, Jan let the Mustang out of its cage and quantities of proverbial rubber were burnt.

“Dinner’s at seven,” Jan announced. We couldn’t possibly. We were busy. Stuff to do. Serious stuff. And then the devil-writer with the pointed little horns blurted:

“OK then. What should we bring?”