In mid July, one of my favorite people came to visit me. My long time bestie and sister from another mister, Jeananne, came all the way here to spend three weeks traversing this beautiful country with me. She was only our second visitor and I was so excited for her to arrive!!
We started in Cape Town and Hout Bay and spent a couple of days there. There is a fantastic restaurant in Hout Bay called Massimo’s. If you’re ever there and you get the chance, check it out. You won’t be disappointed. This was my second trip to CT and while the city is nice, it’s super crazy and busy. We opted to stay in Hout Bay, which is much more chill. It’s also closer to the things we wanted to do. Our first full day we did the “big drive” – Chapman’s peak drive to Simonstown (Boulder’s Beach for the penguins) to Muizenberg (home of SA surfing) then back home. The next day was Camp’s Bay, Beta Beach, and Cape Town.
Hout Bay 
Beta Beach 
Table Mountain 
Boulder Beach penguins 
Muizenberg Beach
From there we moved on to Franschhoek, in the heart of wine country. We were there for three days and two of them were booked on the wine tram 🙂 It was a most excellent three days… I can highly recommend the wine tram. The food and wine were great, but the wineries themselves were simply beautiful. There’s an incredible amount of history that’s been preserved in this region.
When the fun in the cape was done, we flew to Durban. Reid picked us up from the airport with the caravan and we drove up the coast to St. Lucia. St. Lucia is located inside the iSimangaliso Wetlands National Park. We stayed at the Sugarloaf campground there, which we found to be fantastic. The sites were all really private and the facilities were adequate for what we needed. We were also within walking distance to the beach! We spent three days enjoying the warm weather and the sunny beach, and exploring the area. We will definitely go back!
The last stop on the trip was Kruger National Park. We stayed in the Berg-en-Dal campground and it was really nice. It was our first time staying inside the park and I really loved being able to get up and go straight out the gate of the camp in the morning instead of having to wait in line to get in the park. We had some stellar sightings. Kruger never disappoints.
After four fantastic days at Kruger, it was time to go home. It’s also time for me to mention the menu. Before each trip we take, I do a meal plan and sort out what we will need before we leave. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner for eight days was on the program for this trip. At some point, I will do a post just on meal planning for our trips but for now I can tell you that we ate well on this one. Banana bread, curries, and shrimp scampi were a few of the meals. I did actually take pictures of food this time as well. Sadly, I lost all the pictures I took on my phone because it had to go in for service when we got back. That included all the pics from our campsites and some of the animal pictures. Live and learn!
Once we were back home, we had a few days to relax and explore Joburg. Africa has the most amAzing sunsets and it also has an amAzing craft gin industry. So we did a gin tasting and enjoyed those two amAzing things together! Yeah, there’s an inside joke there….
Still playing catch up, so more soon!