OUR annual holiday is at last drawing nearer after what, through various circumstances, has been a particularly long gap between extended camping trips.
Like many of our fellow South African tent travellers out there, we find a long break between camping trips hard to endure. Most of us assuage our impatience to be back on the road by making full use of weekends and public holidays to enjoy short excursions and camping trips, close to home.
One of the benefits of living in South Africa is the massive choice we have when we decide to spend a few days away from the hustle and bustle of urban life, communing with Mother Nature. Almost every town or city dweller anywhere in South Africa has access to plenty of untouched natural splendour within a couple of hours from home. And if a townie is not averse to camping, a weekend break needn’t cost much at all.
With the Table Mountain National Park wrapped around their city, Capetonians don’t even have to leave their urban confines to find natural beauty and plenty of pristine places. This national park comprises a wealth of green, conserved enclaves including Table Mountain, Cape Point, the upper reaches of Kirstenbosch Botanic Gardens, beautiful forests, pristine beaches and incredibly scenic drives like Chapman’s Peak and Ou Kaapse Weg. When Capetonians do wander further abroad there is a multitude of wonderful and incredibly varied destinations within a couple of hours drive in any direction.
Friends in Gauteng have introduced us to the most amazing little oases of peace and tranquillity right in the heart of South Africa’s busiest, most crowded area. There are so many little bird sanctuaries, nature reserves and even fairly substantial game reserves squeezed between the built-up areas.
Johannesburg, Pretoria and the surrounding towns are all just a couple of hours away from magnificent game reserves like Pilansberg and Marakele National Park, too, not to mention countless smaller wild places and privates reserves.
There is a whole string of towns along the eastern side of our country whose citizens are close enough to Kruger National Park to treat this premier reserve of ours as their own back yard. Imagine being close enough to Kruger to spend weekends there whenever you like!
Eastern Cape townies can’t complain, either. With Addo, Cambeboo, Karoo and Mountain Zebra National Parks and all sorts of smaller nature reserves fairly close to urban centres, they are well catered for, too. They also have easy access to one of the wildest, most beautiful coastlines in the world
Bill and I have spent quite a bit of time in the remote Northern Cape and have explored its ‘Green Kalahari’ plus all sorts of lovely places like the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park, Witsands Game reserve and the New Mokala National park. We’ve met plenty of people from larger centres like Upington and Kimberley who are lucky enough to be able to use these wonderful arid parks as weekend retreats.
In short, South Africans are just so fantastically fortunate in that none of us needs to go far afield to find a small or even a large piece of wilderness to escape to when the stresses of modern living get a bit much. So how do we find all these amazing weekend getaways? Apart from the many South African publications and websites that are excellent sources of information, word of mouth usually works the best.
The ever-growing tribe of South African tent travellers is a pretty friendly tribe and camping grounds in this country are almost always friendly places, conducive to meeting interesting people. We tent travellers – and those travellers who are allergic to canvas but who still visit as many wild places as possible – have an amazing network for sharing information about new and exciting destinations.
Not long after Mokala National Park opened, for instance, we began hearing rave reports about it and the more we heard the more determined we were to get there. Eventually we did and this gorgeous new national park lived up to all our expectations.
While the average stay-at-home South African (amazingly, in this beautiful country of ours, there are quite a few stay-at-homes) has probably never heard of it, Mokala is now firmly on the map as far as tent and other travellers are concerned.
No matter where you live if you are a regular visitor to South Africa’s wild and wonderful places, big or small, I bet have all sorts of magnificent secret gems, not yet fully established on the tourist map, that are right on your doorstep. When it comes to unique and well maintained wild places how richly blessed we are as South Africans.
By frequently visiting our favourite wild and wonderful places we can also have a hugely positive impact on conservation. Ideally, Government and the people of South Africa should be conserving our biodiversity for no other reason than because biodiversity is important. In real life, that is not always the case. To many, something fairly abstract like biodiversity does not appear to have much value. However, people are far more inclined to preserve and safeguard something if it has an obvious, immediate commercial value. By planning plenty of holidays and weekend breaks we can help to fund conservation and to give it a commercial value that the non-greenies will respect. From a tourism point of view conservation can be a real money spinner.
Also, each and every one of us who cares for South Africa’s natural heritage can become green policemen. You’ve heard of neighbourhood watch? How about being part of a green watch by reporting infringements of environmental laws in your neighbourhood, by lobbying all levels of government regarding green issues and simply by photographing and reporting visitors to our game and nature reserves who ignore the rules and regulations. Perhaps, by keeping our ears and eyes open and reporting anything a little suspicious we, too, can play a part in the war against poaching. Every little effort helps.
With beach, berg, bush and even battlefields to choose from we KwaZulu-Natal campers are also blessed with a wide choice when we need a few days break. Bill and I live on the South Coast near the border between KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape so as well as all the lovely destinations our province has to offer we have the Wild Coast on our doorstep.
Over the last few weeks our virtual tent travels have taken us far afield, across our borders in many directions, visiting many different African countries. Let’s stay a little closer to home for a while and take a look at some of the weekend getaway places Bill and I have visited while waiting for our next big road trip.
But what’s your favourite wild and wonderful haven that you go to when you need a short break?
