Every surfer has heard about the Mentawai Islands in Indonesia. How could you not? Iconic waves like Macaronis and Telescopes have featured in any number of surf videos and magazine articles ever since they were first discovered. But visiting the Mentawai Islands doesn’t exactly look like the photos anymore. Empty lineups are fast becoming a…
The Eastern Cape coastline is well-known for its Wild Coast; a wild, undeveloped and rugged stretch from just north of East London right up to Port Edward and the border with KwaZulu-Natal. The Wild Coast includes such popular holiday destinations as Coffee Bay and Hole in the Wall, and is the ideal destination if you…
The Eastern Cape’s Sunshine Coast was anything but that when Bevan and I arrived a few days before Easter – just in time for the arrival of a nationwide cold front that left snow on the Drakensberg, and gale force winds and huge swell pounding the coastline. Luckily, this wasn’t our first visit to the…
The Garden Route National Park encompasses an almost continuous stretch of coastal land from Wilderness in the Garden Route’s west to well past Storms River in the east. Bevan and I have previously visited the Knysna Lakes and Diepwalle Forest sections of the park and this time we were in for a treat – exploring Storms River…
Pretty much every place Bevan and I have been priviledged to visit on the Ultimate South African Road Trip has been worthy of more time than we had to explore it. If we had given in at every spot though, we would be looking at a few extra years on the road! We made the exception for Plettenberg…
The Western Cape’s Garden Route is a 300 km stretch of coastline that begins in Mossel Bay and ends at Storms River near the boundary of the Eastern Cape, and includes popular tourist towns like George and Knysna. As the name implies, the Garden Route is an area recognised for its natural beauty – the…
The Kruger Lowveld region of Mpumalanga must be one of the most scenic areas in South Africa. Now, anyone even slightly familiar with this cover-girl country will realise that that is a bold statement, but after having spent time visiting the area around Sabie and Graskop, it is one that I firmly stand by. This…
The N2 freeway that runs from Cape Town towards the Garden Route must be one of the most frequently traveled tourist routes in South Africa. While the freeway may be the quickest way to get from one destination to the other, Bevan and I are not well-known to choose speed over scenery! We decided to take…
The Northern Cape has always been one of those places that has held a certain romance for me. I love the idea of a wide open land, wild and largely untouched, the horizon blurred by midday summer heat mirages followed by the extreme of negative temperatures during the winter months. This is a land you…
The Namaqua region of the Cape West Coast is home to some spectacular stretches of coastline – calm protected bays with white sand beaches, or rocky wild points. The sea along these stretches is alive with kelp forests that line the shallows, flocks of birds like cormorants and waders, as well as bigger animals like…
If I asked you to imagine the Cape West Coast, it wouldn’t be hard to picture wide sandy bays, whitewashed fishermen’s houses and seafood fresh from the ocean. This region is well-known for its coastline, and with good reason. The Cape West Coast also has some incredible inland farming areas to explore though, and this is…
Leaving the West Coast Peninsula and now-familiar places like Saldanha Bay and Paternoster behind us, Bevan and I continued our exploration of the coastline. I was very confused though when I heard talk of Velddrif, Port Owen and Laaiplek – all of which seemed to refer to the same place on the map! It was only after visiting this…
Leaving the industrial town of Saldanha Bay behind us, Bevan and I continued our exploration of the West Coast peninsular region, heading towards the town of Paternoster. Picture-perfect Paternoster Paternoster is one of the oldest fishing villages on the West Coast. Our first glimpse of the bay was from the top of the small dune…
As we discovered early on our journey of exploration on the West Coast, this area is full of surprises and unexpected attractions. We spent some time exploring the West Coast peninsular region and discovered all kinds of unique activities. Exploring the West Coast Peninsula back in time For starters, we visited the West Coast Fossil…
The Western Cape’s West Coast region was new territory for Bevan and I. From the first time that I saw pictures of whitewashed houses and turquoise water, I wanted to visit the West Coast. A life on the ocean, fresh fish straight from the sea, windswept white sand beaches – it all sounded too good…
From the time that we started planning our Ultimate South African Road Trip, Bevan and I were looking forward to exploring our country’s west coast from Cape Town up to the Namibian border. Perhaps it is because we have grown up in KwaZulu-Natal that the west coast has this allure for us – it is…
The iconic Table Mountain stands proud over the city of Cape Town. It is an instantly recognisable sight and together with its scenic beauty and floral and animal diversity, is one of the reasons why Cape Town is voted as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. The mountain itself has also been…
Early in February, my Facebook home page was alive with posts about a weird but natural phenomenon that was happening in the coastal waters close to False Bay along the Cape coastline. There had been a bloom of bioluminescent plankton, and at night, the water was shining turquoise blue! Now maybe it’s an indication of the…
For me, Mountain Zebra National Park in the Eastern Cape province is a very special place. Heck, the entire of the Eastern Cape province is a special place for me, but that can be the subject of a different article! Mountain Zebra NP is situated on high ground close to Cradock. The entire park has…
A lush primary forest is the last thing you’d expect to find in the hot, dry and acacia-thicketed Eastern Cape province. In this largely thicket- or shrubland-dominated region the small mountain village of Hogsback is a rare gem, an oasis of cool green and misty mornings. Hogsback The Amathole mountains form the southern end of…
The Golden Gate National Park is home to some of the most incredible mountain and rock formations in the famous Drakensberg Mountain Range. This escarpment forms the dramatic border between the mountainous kingdom of Lesotho and the KwaZulu-Natal and Free State provinces of South Africa. Lesotho is a country built in the clouds. The entire country…
The Kruger Park is so much a feature of the Limpopo province that it was hard to avoid! After a great cultural visit at Lake Fundudzi, we found ourselves heading back to the bush. Unlike our first self-drive stay in the Kruger Park, this visit was going to be a little different. Anyone who follows…
Venda Culture was something completely new for me! Even the language, Venda, is something unfamiliar and doesn’t sound at all the Nguni languages of isiZulu and isiXhosa that I’ve grown up around. I had no idea what to expect from our next stop, and after Kruger National Park’s drought-ridden landscapes I certainly didn’t expect lush, fertile…
The Kruger National Park needs no introduction so Bevan and I spent some time exploring this famous park to find out what all the fuss is about. South Africans love the bush. I’m not sure exactly why that is, considering a vast percentage of us live in urban areas and our connections to the bush…
Hazyview is generally known as a gateway town to the Kruger National Park. However, after a few days exploring the town and its other surrounding regions, we discovered that there is quite a bit more to Hazyview than meets the eye. Getting to know Hazyview Hazyview is a relatively small town in Mpumalanga’s Kruger Lowveld…
The small towns of Graskop, Sabie and Pilgrim’s Rest in the Kruger Lowveld region of Mpumalanga, are all situated in close proximity to each other. While there isn’t much distance between them, each town does have its own unique charm and appeal. Much like Sabie, Graskop has a plethora of beautiful natural sites like walking…
The Kruger Lowveld region of Mpumlanga has some spectacular scenery. The area around Sabie, Graskop and Pilgrim’s Rest in particular form part of the Panoramic region and one visit to this area will explain why. Bevan and I recently spent some time adventuring through this area. The town of Sabie is the first town that…
Barberton in the Kruger Lowveld region of Mpumalanga isn’t a place that we were too familiar with before this trip. The only time we had ever heard about it before was on the daily weather forecast. Apart from its tendency to be partly cloudy with the occasional afternoon thundershower, we really didn’t know what to…
No other place seems to have played as pivotal a role in the history of South Africa as that of KwaZulu-Natal. Specifically, the battlefields region around Dundee. All three powers of the early South Africa met here – the Boer and Zulu in the 1830s, British and Zulu during the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879, and…
Ithala Game Reserve totally blew us away! Ithala Game Reserve just outside Louwsburg in northern KwaZulu-Natal is a relatively new reserve. Established in 1973, the land previously had a number of uses including gold mining. Evidence of varied and poor land use management is visible in some areas of the park in the form of…
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