Sure Travel Journey Vol 5.1 Summer 2019 | Page 14

DEPARTURE LOUNGE // SUMMER 2019
Tales Road
FROM
THE
AMI KAPILEVICH FINDS AN OLD PHOTO WITH A LOT OF MEANING
I still have a photo of Michéle taken on our
first trip together, as she ate a bowl of cereal
with a bird on her arm. We were staying at
a backpackers in Coffee Bay in the Eastern
Cape, and a tame budgie in the canteen took
a liking to her.
We took a lot of photographs on that
trip – of the endless, grass-covered hills,
majestic cliffs and vast beaches – and most
were objectively more striking images than
this one. But this picture is special because
it represents the moment I knew I had
found something rare and valuable: a
great travel companion.
On our second or third day in Coffee
Bay it began to rain. Hard. And it rained for
the entire week. The Bomvu River that we
were camping alongside burst its banks
and flooded half the campsite. On our last
night there we woke up to discover that
our inflatable mattress was actually floating
on water. Our bag was completely soaked.
The only dry item was a pair of Michéle’s
baby-blue corduroy shorts, a couple of sizes
too small for me, which I wore for the entire
drive back to Cape Town, enduring stares at
the KFCs and petrol stations along the way.
Before we could make that drive, however,
we had to get my car out of the field we
had parked it in when we arrived. The rain
had turned the field into a mud pit, and my
62 ILLUSTRATION
// MAKE MEMORIES
FOR LIFE
© NATASHA JOHNSON
14 // MAKE MEMORIES FOR LIFE
single-cab Isuzu bakkie couldn’t make the
incline in the slush. I was, to put it mildly,
completely stressed out, up to my knees and
elbows in mud and naked – except for that
tiny pair of baby-blue shorts.
Michéle found me cursing and spluttering
in the mud, spinning the wheels of my
bakkie deeper and deeper into the slush. I
can’t remember exactly what she said, but I
remember that she took me by the hand and
led me into the canteen for a cup of tea. And
that’s when I took this photograph.
Since that time, Michéle and I have been
on a lot of travels and adventures. We’ve
stuffed our suitcases with bargains from Bali,
and we’ve been stranded in Zurich with less
than five dollars between us. We’ve eaten
melt-in-the-mouth crabs in the outdoor
markets of Singapore and chewed the
toughest steak in the whole of Madagascar.
We’ve lived it up in Mauritius and we’ve
slummed it in the Klein Karoo.
Travel teaches you a lot of
lessons and one of the most
important I learned was also
one of the first: a good
travel companion is a
good life partner. I
found my lotus flower
in the Transkei mud,
and I married her.