Category: South Africa

  • Best Of Southern and Eastern Africa

    Our three and a half months in Africa were extremely varied: we marveled at some beautiful landscapes, had some wonderful wildlife experiences, got to travel with friends, summited a mountain, endured some really rough and uncomfortable overland travel, dealt with some frustrating logisitcal setbacks, and overcame a bit of a “what are our goals here?”…

  • Video Dump 3: Argentina, South Africa

    Whoops, it’s been a little too long since we went back and found all the videos that didn’t make their way into a blog post, so this round-up takes us all the way back to the end of our South America leg, and into the beginning of our Africa leg! First, a huge drum troupe…

  • Yum: Amarula

    Within a few minutes of leaving the Kruger, we spotted a sign telling us that The Birthplace of Amarula was only a mere 13 km away. For those of you who are not familiar with Amarula, it is the second most popular cream liquor in the world (Bailey’s is obviously first, and frankly I can’t…

  • The Kruger

    Our final stop in South Africa was the famous Kruger National Park, world renowned for excellent game viewing. Some people had suggested we spent as long as a week in the park because it is so large and the landscape so varied, but we put aside three days and in the end it was the…

  • The Amphitheater: “South Africa’s Best Day Hike”

    Note: for no particularly good reason, we split the narration up between us. Claudia goes first: Claudia’s Part After our excursion in Lesotho, we made our way to a lovely backpackers’ called Karma in the “Northern Berg”. It is the closest to the start of the famous Amphitheatre day hike, which was the main reason…

  • Pony Trekking in Lesotho

    Lesotho is a bit of a geographic anomaly: a country smaller than the state of Maryland, high in the mountains and surrounded on all sides by South Africa. It was founded in the 19th century by the charismatic leader, King Moshoeshoe, who led his people into the mountains and negotiated a peace settlement with the…

  • The Wild Coast

    Having had our temporary fill of the mountains in Hogsback, we headed yet again for the coast to a backpackers’ called Wild Lubanzi. Yes, this is the third place we’ve stayed whose name starts with the word “wild”, but this backpackers is perhaps the only one where the adjective is 100% spot on. It is…

  • Hogsback: Living Off The Grid in the Amathole Mountains

    We came here on the suggestion of Ola, the daughter of the owner of Wild Spirit Backpackers’ (the same lovely lady who gave me an awesome haircut during our stay there). As usual, our Lonely Planet book was brief on the Amathole Mountains, but one interesting tidbit we did learn was that Hogsback was a…

  • Addo Elephant National Park

    In the 19th century, due to sport hunting, expansion of local farms, and a growing brickmaking industry, the population of elephants in and around Addo, South Africa dwindled from a peak in the many thousands to just a few hundred, and lions and rhinos were killed off completely. Under the pressure of agricultural interests, in…

  • The Garden Route

    The Garden Route, a coastal drive that spans roughly from Mossel Bay (a few hours’ drive east from Cape Town) to Port Elizabeth, about 250 km further east, is one of South Africa’s most popular and most hyped tourist areas. While we found some of the bigger cities overly developed and overrun by tourists seeking…