#Eastern Cape

I recently returned from a weekend at the National Arts Festival in Makhanda (formerly Grahamstown), where I was invited to participate in the Standard Bank Art “Be Part of the Arts” social media campaign. The National Arts Festival (NAF) has been running since 1974 – it was born the same year (and the same month!) as me – and it’s a rite of passage for South Africans who love theatre, music, dance, and art of any kind. People have been raving for years about how fabulous NAF is; I have no idea why I’d never gone before.

Read Quirky South Africa Part 1, about padstals, and Quirky South Africa Part 2, about Bethulie and the Gariep Dam.

I was talking to some South African friends about my visit to the Garden Route recently, and one of them said: “Maybe this is a dumb question. But what is the Garden Route, exactly?” And I realized that even though I’ve been there multiple times I did not exactly know.

I’m not sure when I first saw a photo of the Big Pineapple. It might have been in a blog post, or maybe somewhere on Instagram. But I do know one thing for certain: The moment I saw the Big Pineapple, it rocketed to the top of my South African must-see list.

Last year, before the pandemic, I started a campaign called #10SouthAfricanTowns. I planned to visit ten small towns all over South Africa during 2020. Bathurst, 20 kilometers inland from Port Alfred in the Eastern Cape, was one of the first towns I put on the list. It had been a dream destination of mine for years.