A few days ago, a friend of mine said she just wrote a poem using the word “shitbucket.” I told her I had an incident that involves shitbuckets and South Africa, and I made a promise to tell her that story someday.
Today is that day. (Don’t worry. When I say “shitbucket,” it’s not what you’re thinking.)
My friends and I had been traveling through South Africa for nearly a month. We spent the bulk of our nights camping in thin, leaky tents at wildlife parks — dirty, shivering and surrounded by hyenas.
It’s so fluffy!
Any accommodation with four walls and a roof had to be a step up from sleeping on the ground, right?
No. And Bib’s backpacker hostel proved it.
Bib’s is located in St. Lucia, a coastal part of South Africa that is laced with marshes and wetlands. It’s the kind of place that begs the question, “Is that a log or a crocodile near my leg?” And the answer is almost always crocodile.
Yeah, that one’s a crocodile.
Hippos are also known to roam the streets, but you do not get them confused with logs. Or anything else.
He looks hungry. I might even say hungry, hungry.
The city of St. Lucia itself is overgrown and weathered. It reminded me of the little towns in Florida that used to be resort hotspots — formerly posh, now just mildewy buildings populated by weird old people who keep pet alligators.
In keeping with the overall theme of mold, the hostel had damp, saggy mattresses and wood walls that never quite seemed to stand upright. My friends and I didn’t care, though. We were scrappy and tough! We slept on dirt! We used bushes for toilet paper!
We were, however, dismayed when the front desk clerk told us the internet wasn’t working. We might not need toilet paper, but wifi was necessary.
“That’s not part of the deal,” the clerk sneered. “What made you think we even have internet?”
My friend, P, pointed at the big sign in front of the hostel. “Your sign says, ‘International Hostel and Internet Cafe.’”
The clerk just shook her head and pointed us to an internet cafe down the road.
Along the way, my friends and I passed boarded-up surf shops, neglected cafes, dank little bars and dilapidated discotheques. It was early evening, and we were tired and cranky. After a month of near-freezing temperatures, suddenly we were slick with sweat and buckling under the humidity of the wetlands. We desperately needed to cheer ourselves up.
That’s when we came to a consensus — this was the town where we would get our party on.
We had all been so good for a month, carefully watching our minimal backpacker budgets and avoiding all bars and nightlife. Not that there’s much wild nightlife in Kruger National Park, unless you count a lioness eating a zebra.
We deserved this, and St. Lucia was the spot. We were going to slip out of our hefty backpacks, unzip our convertible hiking khakis into shorts and let our dirty, knotted hair down. We were going to get crunk.
First stop: A random, dumpy bar that advertised a fish bowl of alcohol.
The bartender ran out of fishbowls, so he used a bucket instead.
“What’s in it?” I asked the bartender.
“Do you care?” he said.
Excellent question. I did not.
I think it had algae.
By the bottom of the bowl, I had forced the bartender to play Die Antwoord on my iPod and berated other bar patrons for not knowing this South African rap group.
Second stop: A ramshackle nightclub with a band that played terrible cover songs. Was that REO Speedwagon? Or the sounds of a dying wildebeest? I’ll never know. We danced anyway.
This nightclub is also where sloshed, aging Afrikaners felt comfortable enough to grab us. They gyrated with tight denim pants against us and bragged about their boerewors.
My friends and I were just about to leave when we were saved by a handful of young university students. The guys said it was so-and-so’s birthday, they were having after-hours at their rental place, blah blah. You know how these things go.
Third stop: We ended up back at the guys’ vacation rental.
Some dude. Some drinks.
They blasted some Akon and gave us drinks with no ice. My friend, D, ended up in her underwear in the pool. Some other people did too. I think there was some kind of accident involving a wet passport.
Inside the apartment, one of the young men decided to play mixologist and crafted a specialty shot called “Shitbucket.” It involved leaning one’s head back and pouring a combination of questionable liquor down one’s throat. It also involved several people chanting “Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET! Shit-BUCKET!”
This right here is everything my mother ever warned me about.
No, wait. THIS is.
It tasted like root beer that had been freshly made from actual roots. Dirt and all.
After that, I had two more.
Final stop: We made it back to the hostel. The bars had long closed, but the hostel’s party was just getting started. And by that, I mean the owner was handing out free beer to girls and wearing a thong Speedo. To this day, I don’t remember if he was actually in a thong Speedo, or if I just remember him as the type to chillax at his place of business in a thong Speedo.
Here’s what I am certain of: At that point, the night got worse.
Stay tuned for part two tomorrow.
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