After a long and frenetic first semester of second-year studies, I was all but chafing at the bit to leave the hustle and bustle of the Mother City behind for a month’s ‘down time’ back home. These days, any road trip that takes me back home is a cause for joyous celebration and something I look forward to with much eagerness as skyscrapers are replaced by neat, rural farmlands and sleepy towns, and the masses of city folk by dusty Merino sheep. However, my spirits were even more buoyed than usual by my parents’ proposal to take a slightly longer…
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In October of last year I had one of the most invigorating and almost life-changing travel experiences – not abroad as you might expect but rather +/- 60 km south-west of my beloved home city of Cape Town – when I visited Cape Point. Earlier, our trio of travellers visited naval Simon’s Town & its unique Boulders Beach. As late afternoon approached, we curled around the breathtaking False Bay coastline before eagerly passing through the access gate of the Cape of Good Hope/Cape Point Nature Reserve. (Note: There is an entry fee of R55 for Children (ages 2-11) and R110…
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Cogman’s Kloof Pass A recent drive back to Cape Town earlier this month made me realise how much I underappreciated the beautifully majestic and decidedly rugged mountains that surround my adopted hometown of Montagu during the 13-year period in which I resided in or near the quaint, little dorpie. It’s true that now instead I am blessed to wake up every morning to the sight of the one true mountain, fondly referred to as ‘The Table’, but its beauty is different to the, in places formidable, Langeberg mountain range, which encircles Montagu. It’s less foreboding and rough around the edges…
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If you visit the beautiful Stellenbosch in the Western Cape, be sure to visit the Jonkershoek Nature Reserve. The entry fee is R25 per person and the nature reserve is accessible via bicycle, car or by foot. If you’re pressed for time, take the 10 km drive. The road (which is considerably bumpy in places but which a normal car can manage if only you drive carefully and slowly over the worst patches) takes you into the reserve (there are signs indicating the access point of the 3 km hike to the waterfall found near the midway point of the…