CORNERWAY HOUSE, Plettenberg Bay

The Garden Route along the Cape’s south eastern shoreline is one of South Africa's most enjoyable travel destinations. The N2 snakes its way from the coastline towns of Stilbaai and Mossel Bay through the Tsitsikamma Forests and along to the famous surfing beaches of Jeffreys Bay. There are places to see, views to enjoy, things to do, and food to be eaten all along the route, provided of course you can find wheelchair accessible accommodation.

In the region east of Plettenberg Bay lies a destination known as The Crags. It is home to numerous well-known attractions such as Monkeyland, Birds of Eden, Jukani, and the Knysna Elephant Park, to name but a few. We normally stop in briefly, en route elsewhere, at the Peppermill Café for my “Eggs Benedict” fix, but during a recent visit we decided to give this area more attention and take the time out to enjoy each attraction to the fullest extent. All of them are wheelchair accessible, although some require assistance over rough ground and through the natural forest environment. All that was needed was to find suitable accommodation in order to spend a couple of days in The Crags. Easier said than done. After contacting a total of 15 B&Bs, and holiday lodge style accommodations, I was not able to find a single one which was wheelchair accessible. I even contacted the local informal tourist bureau, who in turn made enquiries on my behalf, but nothing was forthcoming. Of course, as so often is the case, there were endless reasons why there was a lack of accessible accommodation, but none of them hold water in this day and age.

What I found particularly annoying was the fact that the attractions were accessible, but not the accommodation. The cart was being placed before the horse. I don't know whether there is a co-ordinating management structure for the region. If there is they need to get their act together. I cannot help but compare The Crags complete lack of vision with the far more intelligent view shown by the Robertson Wine Valley. They have a wide selection of wine farms seeking to attract visitors. One way of encouraging those visitors to spend more time in the valley is to provide suitable accommodation, and to enable disabled visitors to enjoy the valley they provide wheelchair accessible accommodation. This has proved to be very successful and there are a number of accessible B&B in the Robertson Wine Valley. It is not rocket science, it is common sense, but then we know that that is not so common.

For our holiday we therefore had to extend our search for accommodation a little wider to include the nearby town of Plettenberg Bay. There still were not very many choices available despite this being a long established tourist destination, but we were able to find a suitable B&B. What was The Crags loss, became Plettenberg Bay’s gain, and a very pleasant and enjoyable discovery it was.

CORNERWAY HOUSE is very well located within the town of Plettenberg Bay and provides a high level of accessibility, ranging from the paved parking area and paths to the spacious bedroom and bathroom, with easy access to other areas of the house. The interior of the house was directly accessible from our room and is all on one level, including the dining and lounge areas, although there is one step down to the exterior breakfast area which is used when the weather is fine. The ensuite bathroom is unusual in that although it does not contain the usual collection of grab rails (although these might well be added by the time this article was published) it is remarkably disabled friendly thanks to its spacious nature and the layout of the shower, handbasin, etc. In fact, I found it more friendly than most of the establishments we have visited.

Add to this the welcoming and accommodating nature of Robin, Dee & Kathy who run CORNERWAY HOUSE and one is provided with an excellent base from which to explore this area of the Garden Route. Highly recommended, and certainly on our list for a repeat visit.

CORNERWAY HOUSE

Tel:         044 533 3190

Email:    info@cornerwayhouse.co.za

Addo Elephant Park - Accessible Big-5

2012 was not a good year, not the least of which was my managing to break a femur which rendered me housebound for five months. However, you all know us well enough to realise that life’s little challenges don't get us down and we therefore decided to end the year on a high note by testing the proverbial travel waters up the Garden Route to Addo Elephant NP. En-route we first enjoyed a mellow escape to Storms River Mouth which, for the first time ever, did not live up to its name and provided beautiful calm weather enabling us to walk along the shoreline and watch the hyrax's (dassies) playing on the lawns and over the rocks.

At Addo we enjoyed some fantastic elephant encounters, and as a bonus saw two big male lions on the last day, a first for us in the park. The first elephant encounter was really exciting and we had to trust ourselves, and the elephants, and just enjoy the moment. At one stage we must have had about fifteen elephants, one of which looked no more than a couple of days old, standing around our car (both sides, front and back), all within less than an arm's length of our vehicle. Every window and every mirror was filled with elephants. They monitored us very closely since we were stationary, with the engine turned off, and elephants had approached us, not the other way around. We had to believe that they would not view us as a threat. In a second close encounter one teenager decided to test how well our rear bumper was attached to the car, and then went on to similarly examine the tail light, all this while Loretta was filming a youngster blowing bubbles in a waterhole on the side of the road.

It is the elephants which keep us coming back to Addo, but what helps to make it such an enjoyable destination is the fact that so much of the park is accessible to wheelchairs. We have stayed in their “chalet” accommodation before, but more recently have discovered that their “cottage” accommodation is more suitable for a married couple. The cottage consists of a single spacious room with a kitchenette, small dining table, double bed, and a separate en-suite fully accessible bathroom. Bookings are best handled through SANParks who have a particular lady in charge of all disabled accommodation (Sinah Makgala, Tel. 012 426 5306, sinah.makgala@sanparks.org). She is both helpful and efficient and does an excellent job of ensuring that the facilities are not abused by those for which they are not intended.

Inside the game viewing area of the park there is a large enclosed picnic site called “Jack's Rest”, named after an old rhino that used to frequent the area. A number of the picnic areas within the enclosure are wheelchair accessible, and there is an accessible ablution block as well. The tar roads within the park are excellent, and the gravel roads are kept in very good condition, all of which makes for a pleasant game viewing experience. Outside of the game area the park's reception, shop, restaurant, exhibition centre, waterhole viewing site, and separate underground viewing site are all accessible.

In Addo you have a “big five” game park (elephant, black rhino, lion, buffalo, leopard), in a malaria free region of the country, which accommodates disabled travellers. A destination of choice for us!

The Right Proportions

Is it my imagination or did the Paralympics this year generate more interest than in the past? Perhaps it was due to the fact that our time zone coincided with the Olympic venue, or perhaps the media coverage was better than years gone by? I found myself enjoying them more as a pure sporting event rather than a spectacle. This year the Paralympics appeared to have all the ingredients for success. Fantastic venues, colour, variety, controversy, and achievements.

I for one welcome the controversy surrounding Oscar Pistorius. In a strange way I felt proud that the South African star was at the centre of things. So often we see athletes from other countries setting standards and pushing the envelope, this time we were doing it, or more specifically Oscar was doing it. I was pleased he voiced his concern following the shock 200m defeat. Perhaps the timing could have been better but the point needed to be made, and it was, in no uncertain terms, and set the tone for the rest of the championships. I was sorry that Oscar felt that he needed to apologise for his statements, if anything the International Paralympic Committee should have been the one apologising. The research and development of prosthetic sporting equipment has seen rapid development in recent years, while the sports administrators have been dragging their proverbial heels on how to manage them for some time, hence they are now finding themselves to be somewhat short of the winning line. The question of the length of carbon fibre blades has been an issue a long time coming, in this case it happened to bubble over into the public domain during the Paralympics.

It all comes down to proportions. This was brought home to me whilst watching Oscar win his 400m heat, and was reinforced again during the 400m final. The camera followed him down the home straight, keeping pace with Oscar as he ran. What struck me was how “able-bodied” he looked, and the fact that he had a genuine natural rhythm to his running. This was in stark contrast to some of his competitors who appeared to be barely in control of their legs throughout the race. No doubt Oscar’s performance is due to his intensive training, but a large part of his running style has to do with the fact that his blades are in proportion to the length his legs would be if he had them. Therein lies the key. There is no issue with a single leg amputee because the prosthetic leg has to be made in proportion to the other, normal leg. With a double amputee however one does not have that limitation, but, and it is an important but, there are physical proportions to take into account. Make them too short and one looks stunted, make them too long and one begins to resemble a running spider!  An orthopaedic surgeon would be able to tell us exactly what the proportions of a person’s leg would be depending on the size of their upper body. There are accepted norms that are well documented which give the proportions of upper body to hips, hips to knees, and knees to feet. These are the proportions which Oscar had to conform to in order to participate in the able-bodied Olympics, and in my opinion that decision was correct. The dimensions and construction of his blades sparked a tremendous amount of controversy but I believe that the decisions taken have borne fruit in a positive manner which could not have been imagined at the time.

If prosthetic dimensions are allowed to be extended beyond the physical norm we run the risk of the Paralympics, or any disabled sporting competitions, becoming freak shows. The potential is there for disproportionately long legs for the runners, and outlandishly long arms for the javelin throwers. In some strange way however I think a sense of normality returned during that Paralympic 400m final race when a steady, controlled and rhythmical run triumphed over what we are quite an obviously abnormal prosthetic limbs. I imagine that a few sporting prosthetic researchers might have gone home to their drawing boards and decided that while some of their running blades appeared revolutionary on paper they were perhaps not practical on the racetrack.

I admire Oscar for his willingness and determination to challenge the accepted norm for disabled sports people. His place is secure in history as the first disabled athlete to run in the Olympics, but I believe his greatest victory has been to run in the Paralympics in a manner befitting of an able-bodied sprinter.

My Top Gear Top Tip (with apologies to the fans of Top Gear)

I have a theory that we are able to think more clearly when lying down due to the improved blood flow to the brain. The ways of the world begin to make sense, and how things interface and work together becomes a whole lot clearer from this horizontal view. I recently spent a rather a lot longer lying down than I would have liked, whilst recovering in hospital from a broken femur. With a lot of time on hand, and very little to focus on, I noticed that my hospital bed was designed in the United Kingdom, manufactured in China (isn't everything?) and was obviously being used in South Africa. If ever there was an example of globalisation this was it, and I was lying on it. I have seen this cross pollination of expertise elsewhere, most notably in my power chair, whose frame is made in America, the motors in China, the electronics from New Zealand, and believe it or not the rubber tyres from Russia! But I digress.

I got to know my hospital bed quite well, and together we travelled the highways and byways of the hospital en route to x-rays, theatre, and various other fascinating destinations. One day, upon returning to the ward, the matron and her entourage walked in and she proudly pronounced “my bed” to be “her bed”! Now I knew instantly by the way she carried herself that this was the matron, and she was not a lady to be trifled with. She had all the makings of a classic hospital matron. A portly build, ample bosom, broad shoulders upon which resided a pair of epaulettes bristling with bling, a firm voice and a steely look in the eye. The porter who had just pushed me back into my ward looked somewhat startled, and a little intimidated, at her proclamation. She immediately launched into a series of questions about how he felt the bed handled around the hospital. This caught him somewhat off guard, he stammered out a casual reply whereupon she dismissed him almost immediately. All the time of course I was lying there, listening to and watching this fascinating exchange.

With the porter scurrying out the ward I decided this was the time to make myself heard, and commented about the fact that since I had been lying in a bed for a number of days at that point I could possibly comment as to its behaviour. This seemed to break the ice and the matron proved to be a lot more approachable than her formal exterior. There followed a long and somewhat strange discussion about the comfort, cornering abilities, steering, braking and fittings of my global bed. For a time we were transported into some sort of parallel medical motoring show universe! We discussed speed wobbles down long corridors, tracking to the left or right, understeer and oversteer, flappy paddle ceramic wheel brakes, and the proper location of controls and switches. All of this was carefully absorbed by the matron who appeared to have a mission in life to create the ultimate hospital bed, the GTI of medical automation. In me she had found a kindred spirit, and we immediately became friends. In return for my input regarding the driving abilities of a hospital bed I quizzed her about the amazing collection of different beds on show in the various wards. I always believed that a bed, was a bed, was a bed, but it appears that those designers in the United Kingdom are kept quite busy coming up with new models. A small change to the headlights here, a tweak to the aerodynamics there, and a firming up of the suspension over there. Of course all of the adjustments are electronic these days. Gone are the days of the crank handle at your feet end which could be used to raise your head. That is all been replaced by touch controls, and computer operated mattresses which inflate and deflate automatically in order to relieve pressure. Pretty soon the porters will be out of business when the new models are released with satellite navigation allowing the bed to find its own way around the corridors.

I sadly parted company with that bed during a brief sojourn in the operating theatre. I encountered the matron again a few days later. She found me, but had now lost her bed. The last I saw of her she was wandering the wards somewhat frustrated, searching for the English born, Chinese raised, and South African domiciled symbol of globalisation.

So my Top Gear top tip is, “If you want to know about the cornering ability of a hospital bed ask your nearest matron!” And on that bombshell we come to the end of the show. Goodnight!

The Bearable Lightness Of Being Me

My “Bearable Lightness” is a far cry from Milan Kundera’s “Unbearable Lightness of Being”, free from the deep social philosophies and political clouds of the Czechoslovak Communist period in 1968. Indeed my experience really is about lightness and freedom as opposed to darkness and complexity.

One of the effects of my condition is that I am extremely thin. Extremely with a capital E! I keep waiting for Hollywood to phone asking me to play the lead role in a starved prisoner of war movie. They wouldn't need any special effects, lighting or make up, I would just fit right in! Someone once told me that dystrophy was known as “stickman’s disease”. Well, that's just me, a stickman, on a diet!

This skinny-ness of course comes hand-in-hand with lightweight, something which mostly works in my favour. My slim profile enables me to use a very narrow wheelchair which in turn translates into one which can enter, exit, and navigate confined spaces very easily. My low weight saves me from the dangers posed by pressure sores and extended seating. Every so often this (s)lightness of being leads to some interesting interactions.

Once in a while I come across someone who feels that my skinny condition is somehow self-inflicted, apparently through a bad choice of diet. I, of course, know this to be untrue but when some folk get an idea in their head it is impossible to budge it and they are best left to run their course. When I was admitted to hospital in 1977 for a Harrington Rod spinal fusion operation the senior nursing sister took my light weight is something of a challenge, with a public decree that she would fatten me up during my stay under her care. I have to give her credit for a steadfast determination and bulldog-like unwillingness to give up, but when I did finally check out of hospital nine months later I was exactly the same weight as when I was admitted! I could easily have dismissed her failure on the basis of the awful hospital food which we were subjected to, but my parents had brought me a full supper every night (with pudding!), over and above the lunch and supper that was provided by the hospital, thereby giving her every possible chance of success. In fairness she did concede defeat in a very magnanimous manner, albeit quite baffled as to why all her efforts had been in vain, and with her confidence as a fatter-upper somewhat dented.

My light weight does not bother me in any psychological way and I have never felt the need to be ashamed or hesitant about it. It is the way I am, I've always been, and probably always will be. Not everyone shares this view however, and particularly in the corporate world one is expected to fit into certain predefined criteria. The only time I can recall ever having to be consciously deceptive about my light weight was when I applied for my first job at Old Mutual way back in 1978. They decided that before my job interview I should first be examined by their in-house doctor on the understanding that if he found something disturbing Old Mutual could cancel the interview without obligation to me. These days I am sure there is some law against such activity, but this was 30+ years ago and the times were very different. I had the medical examination and then the time came to weigh me. This presented a challenge to the doctor who was not quite sure how to manage it and ended up leaving me and my father alone in his examination room with a scale. My father weighed himself, then picked me up out of my wheelchair and weighed both of us, not an easy feat as you will discover if you try it yourself. The difference was, naturally, my weight, but when we wrote the figure down on the application form it looked so small that we added 20 kg to the figure! No one questioned it, my interview was successful, I went on to work for the company for the next 10 years, and the rest, as they say, is history.

My wife once confided to me that she always hoped that her husband would carry her over the threshold in the traditionally accepted manner of newlyweds. The choice therefore of me as her life partner made this something of a challenge, but it did present the opportunity for a role reversal. Someone was carried over the threshold, but the carry-er was not me, and the carry-ee was not her!

I have little doubt that my “undernourished” appearance is one of the main contributing factors to my being a target for would be donation givers as has been discussed in previous blog entries. There is nothing quite like the sight of a gaunt disabled person to tug on your purse strings! Whilst the merits or de-merits of this can be discussed in great detail my thoughts on this rather strange aspect of my life are well known. One group of people who never shy away from forthright observation and questioning are children, and the fact that most eight-year-olds have more meat on their bones than I do tends to attract attention from the little devils. Sometime ago I had one youngster ask me quite openly why I was so thin. Quick as a flash a friend replied “because he never ate his vegetables”! There were startled looks all around, and then gales of laughter. It was a moment of brilliance which I am sure paid dividends for many years thereafter every time there may have been some of eating resistance at the dinner table.

The Way Things Should Always Be.

It is always refreshing to learn of a new B&B which is wheelchair accessible. It is even more enjoyable when a B&B is located in our favourite town of Robertson, in the heart of the Western Cape and on the famous Route 62. A tremendous amount of good work has been put into making as many of the wine farms in the Robertson Valley accessible as possible, and in the process a number of accommodation establishments have also modified the facility to more easily accept disabled tourists.

GUBAS DE HOEK is located in the heart of the town yet provides a level of peace and tranquillity which allows one to fully relax and shake off the stresses of work. As we have come to experience in our country towns our hostess Balbina made us feel most welcome on arrival, helped along with a much-needed cup of tea and delicious biscuits!

Balbina had of course already been in communication with me when I made my first enquiry. At that point she e-mailed me an extensive and detailed document outlining the accessible facilities that she was able to provide. When someone goes to this level of care you sit up and take note! Balbina explained all the facilities, which ranged from the accessible parking through to a well thought out and fully equipped bedroom and bathroom. A great deal of consideration appears to have gone into the construction of the work areas, cupboards, hand basins, shower, etc. All too often we have encountered accommodation where the rooms have been modified in order to try and provide accessibility. Somehow they never seem “right” and important features are often omitted. In the case of GUBAS DE HOEK accessibility appears to have come first, and the rooms are designed from that point forward. Everything works well together and there is a logic and flow to the rooms which make them easy to live in. It really is the way things should always be.

Paved paths lead through the garden and connect to the main house which offers a lounge and dining area, all of which is accessible. We were provided with a remote control for the front gate, which allowed us to come and go as we pleased. A measure of the standard of accessibility is usually the ease with which one relaxes and settles into a holiday mode. Whenever we have looked back, whether it be a long weekend getaway or a multiweek holiday, and commented about how easy it was to travel, that invariably was as a result of the accommodation being wheelchair friendly. When one's holiday “home” is welcoming and comfortable it sets the right tone for all else that follows.

I can strongly recommend GUBAS DE HOEK in Robertson is an excellent base from which to explore the valley and everything it has to offer a disabled tourist.

GUBAS DE HOEK
Gunther and Balbina Huerttlen
Tel. / Fax : 023 626 6218
eMail : info@gubas-dehoek.com
Website : www.gubas-dehoek.com

Spin -vs- Reality

I recently read an article, or was it an advertorial, entitled “In Place / SAA Customer Service” by Steve Allison in a local disability magazine. I read the article extoling the virtues of SAA/ACSA twice, and my wife then read it, and we came to the conclusion that we must be living in some sort of a parallel universe because the SAA described was certainly not the same SAA we experienced earlier this year, or in recent years for that matter.

I booked and purchased two SAA tickets in January for a flight from Cape Town to Durban, and, trying to do the right thing called their offices to confirm that I was in a wheelchair, and would need the services of their PAU. My call was handled in a very offhand manner by someone who could barely speak English, and then to top it all I was told they “would decide if I could fly or not” but I had to phone them to find out if I was to be so lucky! I called each week, and each time was given a different excuse as to why a decision had not been taken. After a month, and with the departure date now only a week away I was told that because the flights had been sub-contracted to SA Express and Mango they could not guarantee that I would be loaded on the aircraft. SAA fobbed me off on Mango, Mango claimed it was not their problem, and SA Express were not even interested in talking to me. After calling in some contacts I was able to secure an eMail from SAA stating that I would be boarded. None of the promised returns of calls ever materialised.

On the return leg I requested a luggage tag/receipt for my wheelchair (one is not covered by insurance without it). The check-in counter told me that the boarding gate would provide one. The boarding gate told me that the air crew would provide one, which was of course absolute nonsense, and they knew it. Past experience has taught me not to wait until one is at the doorway of the aircraft, was the engines roaring in the background, to resolve these issues. Nor should one wait until being seated and all your negotiating power is lost. I was informed that I was being “difficult” because I insisted on a receipt, not and did not leave the airport building before I had received it .

My seats had been allocated mid-plane? Why is anyone’s guess as the aircraft was barely half full and there were seats available nearer to the entrances/exits. The slipper chairs provided no upper body support and had no chest straps for me, even when being carried manually down the stairs out of the one aircraft (I thought we had left that method behind years ago). The staff did not appear to understand the consequences of no upper body support, so my wife had to hold my shoulders else I would have toppled over. It was like being in a time warp back to my first flight back in 1981 when disabled travel was virtually unheard of.

The disturbing fact that comes through time and time again with my travels is a fundamental lack of understanding of the purpose of their jobs by the SAA/ACSA staff. One gets the distinct impression that a disabled passenger and their wheelchair are viewed merely as yet another item of luggage. That impression is all too often reinforced by the manner in which one is handled both physically and mentally. The most frustrating aspect of these encounters is that I know personally that during the late 1980s and early 1990s a tremendous amount of good work was done between the disabled advocacy groups and SAA/ACSA. Sadly it appears that with the changes in these companies, the retrenchments and replacements in staff, the knowledge and expertise that had been developed has been lost.

ACSA are still trapped in the old aircraft boarding mindset used prior to all our major airports having walk-on tunnels to the aircraft. They do not appear to understand that with the advent of the walk-on tunnels there is no longer a need to use a PAU (passenger assistance unit). Everywhere else in the world one waits at the boarding gate, the ground staff wheel you down the tunnel prior to boarding, get one seated, pass the wheelchair to luggage services, and then load the remaining passengers. Here in South Africa ACSA take one out the building, load one onto a PAU, drive to the aircraft, raise the PAU, offload you from the PAU, seat, take the wheelchair back onto the PAU, down to the ground, stow the wheelchair, and then back to the airport building. It’s insane. When we landed at our destination my wife asked them to bring up my wheelchair, she loaded me in, and we walked off down the tunnel. The whole process took less than two minutes. The ground staff were dumbfounded and stared at us open mouthed has we disappeared down the tunnel into the airport building. They appeared to have never thought of that before.

As I said earlier, this is not an isolated incident. My experiences with SAA and ACSA have found them to be uncommunicative, rude, aggressive and on occasions deceitful. My travelling companions have often expressed shock and embarrassment at the manner in which I have been treated and handled by the staff. It has subsequently come to light that SAA/ACSA is sponsoring various disabled initiatives, hence the fluff piece about their customer service.

SAA/ACSA caring companies?
I remain unconvinced.