A weekend or two ago I found myself spending a night at Mount Camdeboo Game Reserve outside Graaff-Reinet before an early morning meeting. What is spending time on a game reserve without a game drive so we headed out for a drive late afternoon. The road took us right into the mountains on the reserve and how can one not prefer this over the busy rush of city traffic?
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3mMnBzvdEk&w=500&h=400]Last week I posted the new promotional video for the Greater Addo and Sundays River Valley area. This week I want to present to you the new video for the Karoo Heartland which covers the towns of Somerset East, Cradock, Middleburg, Nieu-Bethesda, Graaff-Reinet and Jansenville. The perfect weekend breakaway from Port Elizabeth and truly a place where the land meets the sky.
Every now and then I post a photo or two that wasn't taken in Port Elizabeth or the greater Nelson Mandela Bay. Normally it's because I have run out of PE photos or haven't had a chance to take one. Today is one of those days. I'm posting this from Mount Camdeboo Game Reserve outside Graaff-Reinet where I am attending the Karoo Heartland AGM tomorrow. On my way here I stopped at my favorite two Karoo gnomes a few kilometers…
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRkfQuaVq7M&w=500&h=400]Nelson Mandela Bay Tourism has a brand new destination marketing video promoting the fact that Port Elizabeth with Algoa Bay and all it's adjacent game reserve truly is an African Wildlife Hotspot. At a recent tourism conference I attended, a representative of Kruger Lowveld Tourism in Mpumalanga implied during one of the panel discussions that the Eastern Cape doesn't offer visitors an authentic wildlife experience. So let's see what Nelson Mandela Bay and surrounds have to offer. Algoa Bay with…
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i525U1q3CaE&w=500&h=400]Follow the guys of Chasing the Raibow as they go zipling along the longest duel zipline in Africa. Right here in the Sundays River Valley at Sunland near Addo.
We stopped by Falcon Rock Country Restaurant for the first time on Saturday and discovered a really nice and affordable spot. Just after we got there I headed off along the trails to go and find a Geocacher and along the way discovered the actual Falcon Rock. If it wasn't for all the gum trees growing around it the rock would have been quite a prominent feature. Afterwards I went to have a look at the establishment's website and found…
After a morning coffee at Crossroads Country Kitchen we headed to Falcon Rock for lunch (it was all about checking these places out as options for the Damselfly's office Christmas lunch at the end of the year). There was a youth group busy with team building activities and I enjoyed watching them for a bit trying to do a bag jumping race with groups of about six kids in a bag. It was so funny and I wasn't the only…
Behind the Crossroads Country Kitchen next to the kiddies play area is a veggie garden. Not just a veggie patch with a few things growing there but a proper dincum vegetable garden from where they get a lot of the veggies and salad used in the restaurant. Not just is it a veggie garden, it's also the scratch patch for a couple of residents chickens. The other thing I really liked was the fact that visitors can take a walk…
Who doesn't love a pie? I don't mean those heartburn for hours garage pies but rather a proper "home made" farm stall type pie with real meat. Like the ones that caught my eye at Crossways Country Kitchen on Saturday. Beef or Venison. Take your pick.
An activity I would really like to take up if I had the time and the money for a proper bike, is mountain biking. We have some great mountain bike tracks around Port Elizabeth at places like Norm Hundlin, the Baakens Valley, Hopewell Reserve and then out at Crossways where I stopped by on Saturday morning. Crossways has various trail options ranging from easy and moderate to hard. Some of the Crossways trails link up with the Jbay Bike Park…