RSA Part 2 - Dinosaurs in the mountains

Having taken advice from Werner and Alan our new planned route to Cape Town should be extremely scenic. And what a start as we turned off the motorway and headed into the areas Nottingham Road and Rosetta in what could have easily passed for England in autumn. However, a reminder of where we were soon presented itself during the evening in our hotel. We hooked up with a fellow hotel guest, a great Belgium guy named Lesley who was in Durban on business and chose to trek/hike on his days off in the nearby Drakensburg mountain range. Despite talk of this lunacy a nice evening was being had by us over dinner but several times we overheard the old married couple who owned the place speaking to our young black waiter and waitress in such a way that is just not acceptable in Europe. After four or five instances of what amounted to verbal abuse the young waitress effectively resigned as she made for the door in tears. We’d found them both very professional and whatever the problem was she was still our waitress and so deserved her tip from us. I motioned for her to wait just before she left by the main door in order to arrange her tip but as I was doing so the old fart re-emerged from out the back and seeing her still in his hotel he continued to abuse her. What we’d been hearing during the evening became more and more unbelievable and was actually quite upsetting and this was the final straw. Livid, I got up and tore into the owner and a huge row ensued in front of everyone in the bar and restaurant. Mick, at this point outside having a smoke heard the commotion and came in to find me in full flow and despite trying to calm everyone down was just used by me (as Lesley was) as back up for how disgusting we found the whole thing. Had the old man been nearer my age then things would’ve have certainly gone right off but sadly as will be the case it’s probably changed nothing and a new victim will soon have to take his and her shit on a daily basis.
Trying to forget this sorry episode we rode off the following morning alongside the stunning Drakensburg mountain range which marks out Lesotho’s eastern border. We then met and shared a lunch with two nice South African couples on GS1200’s and made our way to Port St. Johns on the south coast which was a sort of hippy/backpackers (actually that’s pretty much the same thing) hang out. More importantly though it signals us having officially crossed Africa all the way to the Indian Ocean. Now all that’s left is to head west along the coast a final 1600km to Cape Town...