Meet South Africa

In South Africa, September is both Tourism and Heritage Month, so no there’s no excuse needed to justify a road trip through the country. And here’s a mathematical equation that proves it beyond doubt:

Tourism Month = 9 days + 7 South African provinces + 3000-odd kilometres & 10 awesome humans (Dale from SA Tourism, Heather of 2summers, Di of The Roaming Giraffe, Anje of Going Somewhere Slowly, Rose of Go Travelbug, Instagrammer Andy Carrie, videographer Lloyd ‘Joyd’ Koppel, our Human Google Guide Kenny, friendly driver Jimmy and moi) + countless photographs & many laughs = 1 epic #MeetSouthAfrica road trip.

The Meet South Africa Crew. Photo by: Heather Mason

Simply put, there’s no better time for an awesome road trip adventure across South Africa to discover some of the country’s lesser known dorpies, which is the Afrikaans word for ‘small towns’, as well as its biggest attractions.

Come, I want you to Meet South Africa with me: these are the places we visited. I’ll be writing about them in upcoming posts, and will link to each post below as I go along, but in the meantime here are some teaser photos.

1. Graaff-Reinet and Camdeboo National Park, Eastern Cape

2. Nieu Bethesda, Eastern Cape

3. Bethulie, Free State

4. Clarens and Golden Gate Nature Reserve, Free State

5. Dullstroom, Mpumalanga

6. The Panorama Route: Blyde River Canyon and Bourke’s Luck Potholes, Mpumalanga

7. Maropeng, Gauteng

There were all the ingredients you’d expect of a road trip: pee breaks beneath bridges (for the guys, at least), push-up challenges at petrol stations (all I will say here is that Heather is a machine), snorting laughter, 4:30am wake-up calls to capture the sunrise and sundowners, heck there were even pre-sundowners, as well as a fair amount of healthy debate about where we were going and the route we were taking.

So, if you’d like to follow in our tyre tracks (and footsteps), here’s a Google Map of our journey. Have you recently taken a road trip, where did you go and who did you take along? Please share your adventure with me in the comments below.

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I was hosted by South African Tourism, I maintain full editorial control of all content published on this website. You can find more of my photographs from this road trip on my Instagram account by using the #EagerJourneysSA hashtag.