Friday3

I woke up at 6.30 and didn’t bother getting up as I thought horse riding was at 9.30, but at 8 Kate comes in saying it’s time to go, they’d forgotten to tell us it had been moved earlier so that we could ride along the beach before high tide. The ride was good fun, and trotting came back quite naturally and still haven’t quite got galloping, but I could play with the Contessa, the horse, as she would only move if it had another horse for company. Audrey, one of the Norwegian girls, Marie being the other, fell off, well she tried jumping off when the horse misbehaved slightly, which was a bit of a scare but she was okay. The Baz Bus to Umtata was about 2.5hours late.On the leg from Umtata to coffee bay the driver looked like a homeless guy, and a few of us thought he was begging at first, to clarify he looked like an English homeless guy, with a misfitting suit jacket, and sounded like he was high. When we got to Coffee Bay we were given a free, but Iain and I rushed off as we’d signed up for a Xhosa meal, this was at a local headman’s place, and he was late to the meal, as he’d been bitten by a dog, and it wasn’t known if the dog had rabies. The food was fantastic as we had a really good bean mix, with lots of different textures and a nutty sort of flavour. Then we had wild spinach with maize, which was also very good. Later we joined in the traditional ‘shuffly’ dance, but keeping more of a European personal space between us, the drumming was quite enchanting. We introduced them to the Hokey Kokey, Knees and Toes, and a funny chicken dance. It was quite nice as it felt like a two way cultural exchange, although it was odd as they asked us for some of our traditional songs or dances, and apart from Morris dances and dancing around a maypole I can’t think of any, or maybe I should count religious songs.