After filling our boots at the Billabong factory outlet shop in Jeffreys Bay, we drove to Port Elizabeth airport and hopped-on a short flight back to Cape Town to spend our last night in South Africa. Tomorrow we head north-east into a different country and continent — the United Arab Emirates in the Middle-East, Asia. […]

When we first announced to our friends, family and fellow travellers that we intended to travel independently through Southern Africa for just over three months, we were met with a lot of questions about personal safety, exotic illnesses, scary creatures and dire transport. As our trip loomed ever closer, we ourselves were apprehensive about these […]

Our last day on the Garden Route — and our penultimate in South Africa, oh no! Balls, we’ve just about left the best ’til last and sadly only have one evening and one morning to spend at Jeffreys Bay. The Island Vibes backpackers hostel put us into a wonderful beach front room with patio doors […]

Bloukrans Bridge is home to the world’s highest bungy jump (bungee/bungie/however-you-want-to-spell-it) at 216 metres. Whilst Squiffy had no intention to jump, H and I were both rather more open to the idea. Until we saw it. For me, a bungy jump represents the final word in adrenalin sports so I’m kind of a little disappointed […]

Just after Plettenberg Bay, we called in at Monkeyland and Birds of Eden. Both are rehabilitation sanctuaries for primates and exotic birds (respectively) previously caged and kept as pets. These animals cannot be released into the wild as they would likely be eaten by predators for breakfast (as pets they’ve never known about predators or […]

Lovely sea views were the theme of our stay in Plettenberg Bay, known simply as ‘Plet’ by the locals. Lunch at the Look Out cafe was followed later that afternoon by sundowner cocktails, on a roof top bar over-looking the sea. Both were very enjoyable, although, as usual for us, the latter was not incident […]

Kynsna is pronounced ‘Nighz-nah’. Glad we got that sorted; I still can’t pronounce it properly, so don’t feel too bad. Chatting to the locals as we travel South Africa, it’s plain to see that different people look for different things in life. When asked what the next town is like, we envitably get “Ooh, it […]

Gansbaai is home to shark alley, visited great white sharks migrating between the two oceans. What better way to observe these marvelous/misunderstood/monstrous beasts (delete as necessary) than to lower ourselves into the confines of an underwater metal cage and bait them to charge at us with jaws agape. The water temperature was between 10-12 degree […]

Hermanus is billed to have the best land-based whale watching in the world and we certainly don’t disagree. In the space of about two hours, I reckon that I saw about twelve whales. Apologies for the somewhat blurry photos, it was kind of hard to photograph the whales from distance with such little warning! (Oh, […]

A trip to Stellenbosch is not complete without a drive along the wine route and visit to a least a couple of wine cellars to taste their wares. So on Sunday morning, after a late breakfast, we hopped in the car and drove out into the countryside. Unfortunately, JC le Roux, my favourite South African […]