Garden route

Garden route is a stretch along the coast. LP - "Within a few hundred kilometers, the range of topography, vegetation, wildlife and outdoor activity is breathtaking".
Arrived at Wilderness which is a very cute little green village with never-ending beach, which unfortunately is impossible to swim in due to the very strong waves and currents. That's the first time when I felt alright going out of the hostel by myself. Even though all the houses still had fences with high security around them, the local in the hostel said that it's all the paranoid people from neighboring towns who bought property there, meanwhile he lived there for 20 years and never locked the house door. Sounded good enough for me. So I set off for a walk, and there was a tunnel that went under the highway, suddenly, I didn't feel very secure. I waited for a bit until some people showed up, and crossed the tunnel with them.
Then I went for a walk along the beach, and I'll tell you that if your eyes were closed and somebody had put you on that beach, you'd have no idea that you're in Africa. Those houses are ones of the most expensive that I've ever seen. All of them having a price range of over $1M.
The hostel was one of the worst hostels I've ever stayed in. The downstairs dorm had 17 beds! There was only 1 washroom, no place in the shower to put the dry cloths, and upstairs, you had to go through the dorm to get into the kitchen! And I don't think anybody there could get any sleep when a group of 20 teenagers were having breakfast at 6:30 am.
In Wilderness I met Helena and Jecki - 2 British girls whom I travelled with for 4 days.
Next was Knysna which is a must stop on the garden route. I didn't see any must things in there. It didn't even have a beach. The girls got drunk and didn't want to do anything else, and I couldn't get out of the hostel by myself, so I was pretty much waiting for the time to move on to another place. The whole day I was watching TV, which wasn't too bad. I laughed a lot while watching some local drama. The quality is so bad, the acting, the content, the shooting, the everything. One guy was crying, and they shot this scene from all the angles, through the flowers, from right, left, above for 2 minutes (no joking), while absolutely nothing happened, he only cried in one position :) Half on the script was written with metaphors, I wonder if it's like that in regular life. But the program guide is excellent. You can choose by genre, like movies, entertainment, then by more categories, like action, comedy. The best I've ever seen!
We walked to the waterfront area which was a mini version of Cape Town, and also the hostel took us to "the heads". Those are some tall rocks between which the water passes through, which makes the little bay of Knysna. Daily due to the tides there is a quantity of 20 million elephants walking through these heads in 6 hours. That's how much water is passing through.
There was land for sale beside the view which was going for $800,000. After the heads, the driver asked us if we want to go to a short township tour. And since they often go for $50, and he was willing to take us there for $5, of course we agreed. When we got there, and got out of the car, all the kids run towards us, jumped at us, yelled, took our hands, pulled our cloths, fought between each other for who's gonna jump on us or get our attention, pretty much acted like monkeys. You could not get away from them, there was so much activity. Everything around looked very broken down, dirty, and shady. Everybody looked at us while we were examining everything around us. Still felt a little bit dangerous, but the guide comes there every day, so he knows the place. All the kids were kinda dirty, with ripped cloths, bare feet, but they looked happy, although they were very aggressive towards each other, constantly fighting, lighting matches close to faces, throwing stones, non stop action.
During the Apartheid Era blacks were evicted from properties that were in areas designated as "white only" and forced to move into segregated townships. Separate townships were established for each of the three designated non-white race groups (blacks, coloureds and Indians). Most South African towns and cities will have at least one township associated with them.
In most of the townships the people live free of charge. The government builds concrete houses, with running water, electricity, garden, garbage collection, doctors and schools. While other people wait for their houses, they build these shacks just on the border that are made out of anything that they could find, which would be either wood or sheets of metal with big rocks holding the roof. Townships could be huge, with thousands of people living there, and they would not be on the map, which provides some confusion for lost tourists who end up there and have no idea where they are. People who make it, usually don't move out of townships, because they don't want to be surrounded by whites, and prefer to have their own people around. I've been here a while, and this country is crazy. Everybody is so racist towards everybody else. White to Black, colored to white and black, black to colored. I think this is the country with the biggest economic gap I've ever seen. Normally the percentage of people with HIV is greater in townships because there are a lot of misconceptions about it. They think that condoms are made to stop the black people from having babies. And recently the president of South Africa raped some woman, when they were interviewing him, they asked him if he used a condom, he said no. They asked him if he knew if the woman was HIV free, he said no, but not to worry about it, because right after the intercourse he took a shower. And that's the president! So what can you ask from the regular population?
After we got back to the hostel, we all immediately took showers and changed cloths, just felt so dirty. I don't know, I didn't have this feeling when 5 monkeys jumped on me.
Went on to Platenberg bay, and in there finally did something useful and went for a hike. The hike was good, only 4 hours, and all plain, just the way I like it :) The scenery was beautiful with green mountain, ocean, orange rocks, waves crushing, seen a snake who caught a lizard, that was cool, and the lizard was still breathing. Then saw dolphins and seals hunting and surfing waves and that's pretty much it. Although this hike is the most beautiful on the garden route. For me the most beautiful scenery is tall snowcapped mountains with forests on the bottom, blue lagoons and wild flowers, just like in the Andes :)

Wikipidia - Apartheid was a system of legal racial segregation enforced by the National Party government of South Africa between 1948 and 1993, under which the rights of the majority 'non-white' inhabitants of South Africa were curtailed and minority rule by white people was maintained. Racial segregation in South Africa began in colonial times. However, apartheid as an official policy was introduced following the general election of 1948. New legislation classified inhabitants into racial groups ("black", "white", "coloured", and "Indian"), and residential areas were segregated, sometimes by means of forced removals. From 1958, black people were deprived of their citizenship, legally becoming citizens of one of ten tribally based self-governing homelands. The government segregated education, medical care, and other public services, and provided black people with services inferior to those of white people. Apartheid sparked significant internal resistance and violence as well as a long trade embargo against South Africa. Since the 1980s, a series of popular uprisings and protests were met with the banning of opposition and imprisoning of anti-apartheid leaders. As unrest spread and became more violent, state organizations responded with increasing repression and state-sponsored violence.
Black people were not allowed onto the streets of towns in the Cape Colony and Natal after dark and had to carry their passes at all times. They were denied the vote altogether and were not allowed to sit in parliament.

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