#Hotels

Last week I stayed at two lovely getaway spots within an hour (give or take) of Joburg: Farmhouse@58 in the the Cradle of Humankind and the Donkey Dairy in Magaliesburg. It felt incredible to get out of the city after two months of no traveling. The pandemic makes me forget how essential it is to recharge my batteries in nature every once in a while, and I couldn’t have chosen two better (or more different) places to do this. I’m blogging about the Farmhouse today and the Donkey Dairy is coming next week.

I waited until the last minute before deciding where to stay on the last night of the Blogitect Road Trip. The first eight nights of the trip were meticulously planned, but I delayed choosing a stopover town for the ninth night. I wanted to find an unusual town – something interesting and unexpected – off the beaten path but also roughly halfway between the Sunshine Coast and Joburg.

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.

It’s been weeks since my stay at Kings Walden – in Agatha, Limpopo, above the town of Tzaneen – and I’m not sure why it’s taken me so long to write about it. Perhaps it’s because this magical place is difficult to describe in words.

People are always asking me for recommendations on places to stay in Joburg, and I never know what to say because in Joburg I tend to sleep in my own house. But here’s a place I can recommend for sure: Zietsies Guest House, which is technically in Auckland Park but I call it Brixton.