10 Great Things To Do When Next in Knysna

The Town of Knysna

When was the last time you were in Knysna? This ever pop­u­lar Garden Route town has plenty to offer. The middle of the year is when thou­sands of people des­cend on this town for the Knsyna Oyster Festival and those who've been train­ing take part in either the Knysna Forest Marathon and Knysna Cycle Tour.

But when the buzz of the Oyster Festival calms down and the tour­ists leave this town doesn't go to sleep ... it does the oppos­ite of that. Reason being because there is so much to do in and around the town of Knysna. There are plenty of fest­ivals that hap­pen each year, the Pink Loerie Mardi Gras is another favourite.

Not only is the town filled with fest­ivals but your will find a host of Things to Do in Knysna. I've taken a slice out of all the excit­ing places to visit and things to see and have round up 10 great things to do when you're next in town ... Continued

Where to Lunch in De Rust, and Why it's Worth a Visit

Lunch in De Rust

We don't mean to stop in De Rust. We're on the N12 that heads off the N1 close to the Karoo National Park en route to Ladismith, our inten­ded des­tin­a­tion, and have just come through the incred­ible Meiringspoort, when De Rust appears out of nowhere.

The main road through town is littered with col­our­ful res­taur­ants, cof­fee shops and the odd boutique. The place is hot and hum­ming. And a big board informs us that De Rust has won 'dorp van die jaar' and claims to be the best town in the Karoo.

Besides, we're hot and hungry. And with all the jolly jost­ling for atten­tion that each of the estab­lish­ments makes in a bid to get you to stop at their res­taur­ant (they're rather col­our­ful), the town deserves exploration.

The towns we've passed through, the heat of the Karoo and the incred­ible tower­ing sand­stone cliffs of Meiringspoort have all reminded me of author Ettienne van Heerden's The Long Silence of Mario Salviati (if there's one book that to me epi­tom­ises the Karoo, then it's this one, although the ori­ginal, is of course, Die Swye van Mario Salviati). Continued

Graaff Reinet's Obesa Nursery – Walk the Cacti Labyrinth

Obesa Cacti Nursery

You either get it, or you don't. With the Obesa Cactus Nursery. Although describ­ing it as a 'nurs­ery' hardly does the exper­i­ence justice. For a visit here, if you allow it, is far more of an exper­i­ence than it is a simple trip to the nurs­ery to pick up a cac­tus or two for your win­dow sill.

First of all the 'nurs­ery' takes up the bet­ter part of a block. For those of you who want to find it, hunt down the street dom­in­ated by a myriad psy­che­del­ic­ally painted houses. They're a series of guest houses that go by the same name as the nurs­ery (run by Johan's ex-wife, who remains a fan des­pite that). The nurs­ery is dir­ectly across the road, and all over the pave­ment, and, if you look around you, on just about every avail­able piece of ground.

That this is the work of a man with a pas­sion is obvi­ous. Having lived with a garden­ing nut who has trans­formed the bet­ter part of our city garden into a wild veget­able man­dala, I think I can handle it. Continued

The Red Windmill – another great stop just outside Napier

The Red Windmill

Eat, play, live at the nurs­ery | garden shop | res­taur­ant | play area | vin­tage shop ...

Just out­side the town of Napier, en route to Bredasdorp, sits a beau­ti­ful old Cape Dutch farm house, just off the road, with a bright red roof and white gables and walls. To the side of it stands a red wind­mill, admit­tedly minus its blades, but that's a story for later.

The Red Windmill isn't the farm­stall it first appears to be. Instead its some­thing of a col­lec­tion or col­lab­or­a­tion of four inde­pend­ent shops under the umbrella of Red Windmill. I bump into Dee Robinson. She's drink­ing cof­fee on the stoep with Erica (of Dave's Country Kitchen) and Lesley (of Cool Beans sweets shop). Everyone's laugh­ing and gen­er­ally hav­ing a rather fest­ive time. If this is what col­lab­or­a­tion looks like, count me in.

It's late in the after­noon on a Sunday and the lunch rush is over. Dee explains how she just had to have the house when it came up for hire last year. “I've had my eye on this build­ing since we arrived in Napier from Cape Town,” she smiles. “I didn't know what we were going to do with it, but I knew some­thing would emerge.” Continued

City Bowl Market on Hope – one-stop market for all your food needs

City Bowl Market

Is it just me, or has the Neighbourgoods Market at the Old Biscuit Mill in Cape Town become ridicu­lously busy, over priced and just plain unpleas­ant if you hap­pen to arrive at any time past 9am, and who doesn't?

I'm the last one to knock the Neighbourgoods. They're a first-rate mar­ket — they've out­las­ted the very best, they've set the bench­mark as far as excel­lent food mar­kets go, and could rival any sim­ilar European mar­ket. But enough already. It's really time for another mar­ket in the city bowl...

Enter stage left – the City Bowl Market — situ­ated on the rather obscure Hope Street in Gardens, which, not being a city bowl dweller myself, I man­aged to cap­ably miss for twenty minutes before finally find­ing it (but I did get to drive around Gardens, which was lovely). Continued

CocoáFair – the Biscuit Mill acquires a taste for chocolate

CocoáFair

There is a little more to CocoáFair than simply chocol­ate. For many of us just the prom­ise of loc­ally made, artisan, organic chocol­ate is enough of an invit­a­tion to have us reach­ing for a taste...and believe me, hav­ing sampled, it is a mouth-watering experience.

But Thor soon explains, as I query the name, that yes, CocoáFair is def­in­itely about the fair­ness involved in the way the cocoa is traded, but the emphasis is also very much on the 'affair' with cocoa – not only the love of it, but the rela­tion­ship of cocoa with the people who grow it, and the people who turn it into chocolate.

And an affair there most def­in­itely is. On dis­play on shelves to my right and left are bars of organic chocol­ate, pralines, truffles, a bar­rel filled with incred­ibly reas­on­ably priced raw cacoa, organic sugar, and sliv­ers of chocol­ate — bagged, and tied up with a rib­bon. Continued

Staying in the Townships of Cape Town

Langa, Cape Flats

For those of us whit­ies who live in Cape Town, the town­ships of Khayelitsha, Gugs (Gugelethu) and Langa are places one sel­dom vis­its. Most of us give them a rather wide berth, if truth be told, their asso­ci­ation with crime, gang­ster­ism, poverty, Aids and anti-white sen­ti­ment enough to main­tain the segreg­a­tion of our past.

And yet, on the odd occa­sion an attempt to find a short-cut to the air­port, or a flat tyre just out­side Langa (dur­ing which I was given tea, a chair on which to sit and a far cheaper offer on a pair of new tyres than I would have got else­where), has brought me into con­tact with a totally dif­fer­ent view of the townships.

Anxiety is met only with open-hearted hos­pit­al­ity and kind­ness. And for any of my friends who visit from Europe, a town­ship tour is an auto­matic itin­er­ary item, mak­ing my avoid­ance of some­thing they hun­ger to visit, ever so slightly embar­rass­ing. I begin to sus­pect that my take on town­ships is skewed. Continued

Goedverwacht – The Eden of the Sandveld

Goedverwacht

Dave Cornelius stoops to enter the Home of Snoek en Patat, Goedverwacht's local cof­fee shop that also func­tions as the heart of the little vil­lage, at least as far as the youth is concerned.

He can't be more than 22 years old, but he smiles and con­fid­ently holds out his hand for me to shake. He's been hast­ily recruited to come and talk to the English woman who has graced the premises after being dir­ec­ted to the cof­fee shop by a couple of the local kids, in search of a little more know­ledge on the village.

Goedverwacht is some­thing out of Eden. The little dorp – where col­our­ful fruit trees and gar­dens line the main road through town — lies around the back side of the Piket Mountain with a river run­ning through it.

It's gor­geous, but don't tell too many people. Continued

High Constantia – wines that bring one a little closer to heaven

High Constantia

I feel like one of the priv­ileged few when a friend of mine men­tions he knows a wine maker. And not just any wine maker. We're talk­ing High Constantia here.

“Where is High Constantia?” I ask, los­ing any kudos as a wine con­nois­seur, whilst men­tally fol­low­ing the Constantia wine route down the hill from Constantia Nek – Groot Constantia, Klein Constantia, Steenberg – but I soon real­ise, on closer exam­in­a­tion, that the route has acquired a couple of 'newer' farms – well, 'new' in the sense that they're newly on the route.

High Constantia is any­thing but a new farm. Groot Constantia, way back in the year 1693 when High Constantia first came into exist­ence, had to pass between the very gate posts that still stand down at High Constantia Village (people know it more com­monly as the vil­lage where Green's res­taur­ant is) in order to reach their farm. Anyone trav­el­ling out here, had to bypass High Constantia in order to reach Groot Constantia. Continued

Sabie Valley Coffee – Spilling the Beans

Sabie Valley Coffee

Let me start by dis­pelling a few cof­fee myths: you shouldn't store ground cof­fee in the fridge but in an air­tight con­tainer, decaf cof­fee is punted by the industry because it retails at a higher price not because it's health­ier for you, instant cof­fee is usu­ally chicory and Robusta cof­fee (cheaper to pro­duce, inferior taste, higher in caf­feine) not Arabica, and there is no money to be made in grow­ing cof­fee crops in South Africa.

Today cof­fee crops cost more than any other agri­cul­tural crop in the coun­try. South Africa used to grow lots of cof­fee dur­ing the '70s and '80s, but today, remark­ably, the Sabie farm runs at a loss, some­thing Tim freely admits. It is the roast­ery, the retail and dis­tri­bu­tion of cof­fee around the coun­try to enthu­si­astic local cof­fee sup­port­ers that keep Sabie afloat.

All this, and more, I learn in a rel­at­ively short space of time from a remark­ably per­son­able Tim Buckland (no rela­tion to fam­ous mime artist, Andrew, I checked), the owner of Sabie Valley Coffee who does weekly cof­fee tours of his roast­ery in the Lowveld. Continued

Casterbridge in White River, almost a Hardy novel setting

Casterbridge

White River is linked to Nelspruit by the R40. The two towns are so close (20 minutes' drive) that it is only time before they merge, incor­por­at­ing the rather innoc­u­ous Rocky Drift that at the moment serves as a buf­fer between them.

The secret to travel, any­where, is to do as the loc­als do – 'when in Rome' and all that. I real­ise more and more that it isn't about read­ing travel bro­chures – they'll send you where they want you to go – but fol­low­ing the trail of loc­als, as they'll lead you to spaces and places where spend­ing your hard-earned dosh will feel that much more reward­ing. Continued

Le Pâtissier — when in Hazyview, visit the Belgian Baker

Le Pâtissier

Croissants, coun­try ham, quiche Lorraine, pastries that include apple turnover, Belgian milk tart, chocol­ate eclair, Danish eight, apple fran­gi­pane, cus­tard slice; Belgian break­fast with an assort­ment of cheeses, crois­sant or pain au chocolat, health bread sand­wiches, artisan breads of every descrip­tion, and cof­fee to die for...

Hazyview, when we get there, is busy. That it rests just out­side the Kruger National Park is doubt­less the reason, par­tic­u­larly as every second vehicle is some rendi­tion of the safari jeep; the type with staggered rows of seat­ing remin­is­cent of a mini-theatre on wheels – 'ta da, we're here to see wild life!' Continued

Kruger – the low down on what to remember, where to stay, what to do and spotting the Big 5

Kruger National Park

The Kruger National Park is undoubtedly THE place to be when it comes to see­ing game in what should be their nat­ural envir­on­ment.  Even if dur­ing school hol­i­days the num­ber of people enter­ing the park is ques­tion­able, traffic fairly con­ges­ted, and the tend­ency of indi­vidu­als to do silly things like feed hyenas and mon­keys (now a con­stant pest in vari­ous rest camps) a sign that even in the Kruger, humans are encroach­ing on the free­dom of the anim­als within. Despite this Kruger Park is a fant­astic experience.

One of the world's largest game parks, Kruger has received a  myriad accol­ades for nature con­ser­va­tion and, more recently, has begun lower­ing fences that sep­ar­ate the park from neigh­bour­ing reserves, allow­ing the wild­life within even greater access to land and water, and increas­ing the chance to spot game. Continued

Southern Kruger — we review 3 restcamps + hot spots for sighting game

Southern Kruger

The south­ern region of the Kruger National Park lies between the Crocodile River to the south, the Sabie in the north and, in the east, the Lebombo Mountains. Nothing quite pre­pares you for the park's impact, the trees and hills an unex­pec­ted fla­vour to the pic­ture I had of the bushveld as, well, flat (des­pite hav­ing gone to the Kruger as a child).

The south­ern region gets more rain dur­ing the year which trans­lates into more game, shaded by the pres­ence of the Cape chest­nut, coral tree, lav­ender fever berry, and white pear. Continued

A Diversion en Route to Barberton – Boondocks Labyrinth

Boondocks Labyrinth

Stuart and I get off on the wrong foot with one another. It doesn't help that I hear incor­rectly when he intro­duces him­self, and pro­ceed to call him by the wrong name until he gra­ciously cor­rects me when I finally shake his hand at the gate.

He bears this inad­vert­ent dis­cour­tesy without cri­ti­cism, grace­fully in fact. As he does my chal­len­ging tone (I'm a little stressed and Stuart gets the brunt of it. Would it make me look a little bet­ter if I added that I don't like talk­ing on cell phones?).

I later laugh at Stuart's account of what it takes to hold a tele­phone con­ver­sa­tion up on the hill at Boondocks. It is noth­ing short of undig­ni­fied and involves pla­cing one's head vir­tu­ally inside a pot plant with one's der­rière exposed – cell phone recep­tion is vir­tu­ally non-existent, except at the site of the plant and inter­mit­tently on the edge of the escarp­ment. And Telkom refuse to bring in a line all this way. Not hav­ing any tele­com­mu­nic­a­tion or inter­net access forms a large part of the charm of Boondocks. Continued