#Western Cape

After our recent stay in Suurbraak, Thorsten and I had a weekend to kill in the Overberg before flying back to Joburg. We decided to spend two nights in Greyton, about 90 minutes from Cape Town, where neither of us had been before. We also made an afternoon detour to Malgas for lunch and a wine tasting at Sijnn Wines.

Thorsten and I recently spent three days in Suurbraak, a tiny town in South Africa’s Overberg region. Thorsten (who is an architect) designed a holiday house there several years ago; now he’s designing a second house for the same clients. I was lucky enough to get invited along on his scouting mission.

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 visited Cape Town for the first time more than 11 years ago, with my mother. During that trip, Mom and I attempted to climb Table Mountain in a hilariously foolish way – I’ll let you read about it yourself in the blog post I wrote back then, called How Not to Climb Table Mountain. We ultimately turned back and took the cable car to the top instead.

To finish off my Western Cape road trip (read about the earlier parts of the trip here, here, and here), Thorsten and I spent two days at the De Hoop Collection in a remote part of South Africa’s Overberg region. The De Hoop Collection is a privately owned lodge inside the De Hoop Nature Reserve, which is run by the provincial government entity CapeNature.

I’ve been wanting to visit Cape Agulhas since my first visit to Cape Town in 2011, when I took a day trip around the Cape Peninsula and learned that the Cape of Good Hope is not, in fact, the southernmost point in Africa. It took another decade but I finally made it to Cape Agulhas, Africa’s real southern tip, a couple of weeks ago.