Buccaneer's Hostel in Cintsa, South Africa & another Scat tale...

In Cintsa, we stayed in another excellent South African hostel- Buccaneer's Backpackers.  The hostel was great on three levels: the facilities, the setting, and the staff. 

 

The setting is in a highly vegetated coastal hillside that sits about the river and ocean.    It was neat to also see some historical photos of the hostel from it's opening in 1986 until now.  The views from almost everywhere on the hostel grounds were beautiful.  The hostel is on the other side of a coastal river from "Cintsa East" which includes all of Cintsa except Buccaneer's.  Unfortunately, it does not appear that Buccaneer's will be able to retain its seclusion for long.  Our horse riding guides told us, and there were plenty of signs stating the same, that golf course estates and new gated community housing developments were on their way.  Glad we got here now instead of a few years later.

 

The pic attached to this post is from the Buccaneer's grounds.

 

The facilities were perfectly situated on different levels of the hillside.  They consisted of a number of buildings most of which appeared to be two bedroom flats.  They each had their own kitchen, bathroom, porch with ocean view, and two bedrooms.   You shared the flat with the people in the other bedroom.  There are also a pool and poolside bar, a large bar for the evenings below the main house, activity area, sauna, jacuzzi, massage rondavel (hut) and yoga hut.  This is where Ozell and I went for our massage and sauna session.  The hostel served a set dinner each night of the week with both a meat and vegetarian option.  This profitable for them (even though it is quite reasonably priced) because there are really no other options for the guest other than cooking your own.  The only restaurant and store in the town was across the river which is accessible easily enough it just takes 15 minutes walking down the beach, but is not worth it due to the lack of options.  The whole area has a population of 2000 I think.  There were social activities each day at 4:30pm which usually meant playing volleyball in the dirt pit they had.  The activity did come with 10 liters of free wine for the participants so it was fun.  In the evening, people would gather in the main bar and bullshit, play pool, and drink.

 

Most of the guests were pleasant people.  One notable exception would have been the two 2-3 year olds whom were quickly referred to as "Free Range" or "Feral" children.  The fault is with the parents and not the children.  The children were allowed to play in and around the pool naked all afternoon.  Okay, that is perfectly fine.  I've seen plenty of small children playing nude and actually think that it isn't necessarily a bad thing to delay the conditioning of shame of oneself for a few years, but these children shat (past tense of 'to shit') everywhere!  By the time Ozell and I sat down by the pool, I had already noticed that the boy had shit all over his naked ass.  I thought that was embarrassing for the parents because the feces on his butt were readily observable.  But since I hadn't seen him shit himself and had not seen him in the pool yet, I didn't think too much of it.  However, a few minutes later, the boy's equally young sister (maybe fraternal twin) was walking around the picnic table on the pool deck, braced herself against the bench portion, and shat a big pile of yellow crap on the deck and herself.  She then proceeded to play for a while oblivious that she was walking back and forth through her dung and tracking it everywhere.  Probably a half hour went by with both of the feces ridden children playing around the pool.  Occasionally, they would stand on the pool steps with their feet submersed.  The boy wouldn't have been too bad because he never submersed his ass.  The same could not be said for the girl's feet.  Finally, the mom notices the pile of shit the girl left near the picnic table (on which the girl had already climbed with her poo painted feet), and decided maybe it was time to clean it up along with her children.  She did clean up the pile, but not well enough that the flies were no longer able to recognize the places contained feces.  She also cleaned up her daughter.  She ignored her son however, and he still had a shit covered ass.  We then watched him sit down by the pool with his feet in the water and scooting his ass back and forth like a dog with worms.  Thus, he proceeded to tidy himself up a bit by depositing some of the poop stuck to his ass on the pool deck.  After a bit longer, the mother appeared to finally notice the shit all over her son's backside and decided to clean him up too.  Where was the father in all of this?  Sunning himself poolside, letting his wife take care of all of it.  Then the happy family went back to their cottage.  I was thoroughly amused at the entire episode.  Ozell was thoroughly disgusted.  Hahahahaha

 

The staff at the hostel was also a good group of people.  Most of the workers were just temporary and some fellow travelers who were spending a few weeks in a place trying to work through their trip.  It is a great way to travel if you are willing to cut down on the number of places you stop but stay for longer periods of time because many hostels are willing to take on temporary help if you can give them at least two weeks of work.  In return, you get free lodging and highly discounted meals and drinks.  The work is not usually too strenuous nor the hours really long.  You still have plenty of time to have fun, and lots of the work can still be fun liking manning the bar or working down at the pool.  Anyways, there was a group of five travelers who were there working for a few weeks before moving on again.  There were also some more long term workers their who all knew the working travelers and other long term staff because they all went to university together in a city a couple hours away.  They were all very nice, funny, and fun to be around.  They even shared some of their weed with me which was very nice.

 

Cintsa was a fun stop in a very secluded part of the Wild Coast.  I recommend it and Buccaneer's Hostel to anyone heading to SA.

 

Horse riding next post...

 

Sean