African Anecdotes #5: San Pedro, San Pedro! – South Africa

“San Pedro, San Pedro!”

Yes, whenever I hear the words ‘San Pedro’ I’ll always think of that mammoth baca ride, with the young driver’s mate shouting “San Pedro, San Pedro” to try and pack in as many customers as possible. Also I could never forget our money escapades there.

Thankfully though, San Pedro had it’s charm, and the thing I’ll remember the most will be going down to the deserted beach the first evening we arrived there and taking in the beautiful view of the surf against the setting sun. The whole place seemed to have a breathtaking, and magical aura about it. I walked, jogged along the beach for 20 minutes or so, and had the whole place to myself except for a huge crab which I touched with a long stick to check if it was alive – it was.

The next day we were back there and we went for a swim. We stayed in the Marina hotel for three nights, which was in the Balmer district, just five minutes walk from this deserted beach. It was also very cheap, 12,000 CFA a night, and the rooms where great – each one being half of a small bungalow with a roof covered in branches (in the style of the village mud huts, but all beautifully plastered and decorated inside, with TV, shower, all the mod cons). The food was also excellent, even although you had to order it in the morning for the evening meal.

The Balmer district has three hotels, although with quite large distances between them (i.e. 30 minutes walk). We luckily happened to stumble on the cheapest one (the other two – Hotel Sophia and Motel Balmer – were 4 star joints, with rooms which cost about four times as much as the Marina). The Sophia – right beside the beach, towards the town centre – was the place where all the tourists seemed to hang out, lounging by the pool or on the private beach with it’s numbered beach couches. The Balmer was similar, except even more exclusive, with a golf course and bungalow rooms (like the Marina although I imagine much more luxurious) – it was away out of town at the far end of the Balmer district.

The whole area was kind of under-developed with (apart from these hotels) just a few rich, white people’s villas dotted here and there, with high walls, cameras and security guards sitting outside. Near the Marina there was the Italian Consulate’s villa; there were also a few large houses being built – some of them very impressive with curving stairways and pillared terraces. It was rather a strange contrast to see spic and span mansions with lawns and flowers in front of them, but with bumpy dirt roads leading up to them and surrounded by weeds and ‘brousse’.

Due to our cash shortage, we ended up trekking quite a bit. We wandered into the town centre, which – apart from some useless banks, a few shops, stores, bars and restaurants – had nothing really of note. The porte de pecheurs was worth a visit – with it’s smelly fish market, and boats of various sizes ranging from pirous (long wooden canoes) to massive transporter ships. We got one of the fishermen to take us on a quick tour of the port in a pirou. He was Ghanaian (like a lot of the fishermen there), and supposedly spoke English, but when I tried to have a basic conversation with him, I found that my version of English and his were more or less incompatible. He paddled us right under the biggest cargo ship in the place – and high up above us we were surprised to see that the crew were all Chinese. They waved at us, shouted greetings, and posed for a photo.

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