Port Elizabeth (PE) sits at the Eastern tip of South Africa’s infamous Garden Route, making it the ideal start or end to an epic South African road trip. With its unspoiled beaches, rolling sand dunes and warm Indian Ocean, PE is heaven on earth for nature lovers. Throw in a fascinating history, a buzzing city vibe, some very trendy restaurants and inhabitants renowned for being friendly and voila – holiday heaven!
Here is our suggested itinerary for a 1, 2 or 3 day visit to our incredible little city:
National Braai Month is over, but that doesn’t mean that South Africans will give up on our favourite meal. With seven blissful months of summer sunshine ahead of us, there is plenty of time to fire up the coals and slap some meat on the grill. Us friendly-city people are lucky enough to have the most incredible spots to enjoy our braais – whether it be at the beach, in the forest or in a local game reserve.
The drive from Penticton to Vancouver was long but spectacular, particularly through Manning Provincial Park where the road weaved its way through valleys with swirling misty clouds suspended among the treetops between the mountains. The weather was fierce and we drove through one hell of a hailstorm which made us feel sorry for all the motorbike holiday gangs and backpacking cyclists. The hail on the ground was so thick that we stopped for a hail-ball fight.Continue reading…
If you’ve had a squizz around our blog, you will know that we are massive fans of all things nature. Give us a few hours off, and before you can say boo, we’ll be heading to where the wild things are. It’s no surprise then that we end up so often at Addo Elephant National Park, given that we live an insanely short drive away from this SANParks gem.
Usually when we visit national parks we do the self-drive thing, and when we go to private reserves we take a guided game drive. This week, we mixed things up and went on a guided game drive in Addo National Park, courtesy of Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism.
So, which is the best option?
Our final day outing during our week in Lethbridge, was to the Canadian Badlands to explore Dinosaur Provincial Park. And what an outing it was!
After driving through mile upon mile of flat farmlands where you can see forever in every direction and the sky is an infinite artwork of puffy clouds, blue skies and magnificently angry grey storms moving across the horizon, the land all of a sudden dropped away into a massive gorge with rock formations in shades of brown and red around a snaking river.
We stood at the viewpoint at the end of the earth and marvelled at this bizarre natural phenomenon in complete silence and awe – the scale of this Mars-like landscape was just astounding. The eerie silence was only pierced by the whistling of the wind across the plains behind us and it felt like time stood still as we absorbed the incredible view.
