South Africa Accommodation
Everyone needs a place to lay their head. SA Logue has all the options - from the best backpackers up and down the coast to the most breathtaking 5-star safari lodges. Browse our growing list of reviews and book your stay!
- Read and see more: Hostel Highlights | Baz Bus | Backpack SA Photo Set
- Where to stay: Hotel Search | “Fair Trade” Luxury Accommodation
Boomer Travel In South Africa
Continuing the theme of debunking the bad press that has plagued South Africa in recent years, and highlighting in fact how safe it is to travel in SA, let’s have a look at the Boomer market, and why South Africa and surrounding region is the perfect destination for comfort loving oldies with a hankering to touch the wild.
Ease of Travel
African travel in general can be a multi-layered experience with the roughest of rough travel rubbing shoulders with displays of ridiculous opulence and splendor. Tour packages are usually insulated from the seething poverty of the outside, and tourists rarely touch the quintessence of Africa. In South Africa this is also true, but the contrast does not seem so striking here.
On the surface South Africa is one of the most sophisticated societies in the world, with an industrial and communications infrastructure that is comparable with anywhere in the developed world. In keeping with this the tourist industry is highly developed, efficient and sophisticated. Not only are the most obvious sights and sounds of Africa showcased and made easily available to the visitor, but the entire spectrum of a nation that enjoys incredible cultural, social and ecological diversity is in some way or another packaged in a manner that is both accessible and affordable.
Date: October 8th, 2008 |
No Comments
News From Marloth Park
Genie Retief is a renowned birding guide and wildlife expert who lives and works out of the Marloth Park Private Game Reserve on the borders of Kruger National Park. She is available for small group, private and exclusive tours through the park and in any of the birding regions of South Africa. Feel free to contact Genie on any matters wild or bird life in South Africa
I found a dead bushbuck fawn in the veld yesterday. It was so tiny with a wet head and chest that at first I thought it had been still-born. But on closer inspection it transpired that it was at least a month old and the wet areas were the result of being partially swallowed and then regurgitated by an African Rock Python. Looking around hastily in case the python was still around, we continued our work.
Our work this morning was to find and remove a very invasive weed called Chromolaena odorata, which can invade and totally take over the riverine habitat in our reserve. Where is our reserve? Well, Marloth Park is a wild-life conservancy which has the Crocodile River as a common border with the Kruger National Park. It has the same vegetation as the southern area of the Kruger Park. Here the houses – mostly small lodges – are built among the trees and animals are free to walk where they please.
Date: July 15th, 2008 |
No Comments
Pigs, Warthog, Monkeys and Elephant
Not You Again!
Some things change, and some things don’t. Robert Mugabe, after almost five weeks of political hiatus, remains in power, while galloping inflation – touted now at about 355 000% – necessitated the issue of another new banknote, the third issue in a year. This time it was a Z$500 million bill, up 400 million from the last. Currently the rate of exchange is Z$52 million to £1 sterling. A letter I recently received from a friend in Harare told me that a brief trip to the supermarket to purchase 2 onions, 4 bread rolls, 1 packet of coffee, 2 litres of milk and a cucumber came to a total of Z$1.25 billion, which would have been Z$1.25 trillion had the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe not recently removed several zeros from the local currency. You may ask me how does a man who presides over such unimaginable economic lunacy survive in power, and the truth is I haven’t got a clue.
Warthog’s Revenge
While on the subject of swine species, warthogs have been creating a bit of a stir in the industry recently, contributing their share to the regular, but admittedly infrequent incidences of bitings, maulings, stingings and occasional deaths. These often result from the too-close commerce encouraged by wilderness guides between soft skinned urban tourists and wild animals. In this case it was a Canadian tourist, Brunhilde Galke, 69, visiting Huntershill private game park in the Eastern Cape, who ran foul of a ‘tame’ warthog in the dining room of the lodge. It was probably neither her fault nor the warthog’s, but a waiter who should have known better than kick the animal after it upset a dustbin in the bar area. The warthog rushed the waiter, but then vented it’s spleen more effectively against Brunhilde as she left the dining room and was making her way across the yard to her accommodations.
Date: May 15th, 2008 |
No Comments
Swaziland
An African Oddity
Swaziland certainly is an oddity. It is a tiny landlocked country that is viable as an independent nation only in the loosest sense of the word. It is also one of the few remaining absolute monarchies in the world. Statistically notable for both its extreme rates of poverty and having one of the single largest concentrations of aids sufferers globally, Swaziland is ruled by a fickle, anachronistic, self serving, preening and pampered multiple polygamist who goes by the name of King Mswati III. Bordered to the west by fiercely republican South Africa, and to the east by thoroughly revolutionary Mozambique, it is hard sometimes to determined exactly where Swaziland fits in.
Controversy
In the interests of getting the ugly bits over first, the myths surrounding King Mswati’s personal indulgence read somewhat like the habits of a feted dauphin of an oil saturated Middle East principality. Inasmuch as Swaziland is indeed an absolute monarchy, Mswati has cultivated an almost medieval approach to governance, characterised by his prevailing attitude of I am very much alright, and be damned to the rest of you.
Date: May 1st, 2008 |
No Comments
Dunes, Delta & Falls, Boots n’all in the Bush
Dunes, Delta and Falls Discoverer
Boots n’all Adventure Travel Shop has launched its Dunes Delta and Falls Discoverer, which, as the name implies, is a journey through the western quadrant of Southern Africa, combining the best of South Africa, Namibia, Botswana and Victoria Falls.
The trip kicks off in Cape Town, which at your leisure you can explore before jumping on the truck. From there it is north to the first stop of Lamberts Bay on South Africa’s Atlantic coast, which is a charismatic and often quite rustic appendage to the better known South and East Coasts. Here the focus tends to be less on sun and surf and more on whale watching, seafood, perusing the seasonal Namaqualand wild flower displays, and likewise the seasonal spectacle of some 30 000 Blue-eyed Gannets concentrated on Bird Island.
Namibia
From here it is north into the arid regions of the Namib Desert fringe with an overnight stop on the frontier between Namibia and South Africa along the Orange, or Gariep River. Activities are centered on the river, but also the surrounding scenery with it’s focus on a diversity of succulent plants for those interested in such things. The trip really gets cranked up, however, upon arrival at Fish River Canyon, the largest of it’s kind in Africa, and one of the most interesting and rewarding hiking destinations in the region.
The next day the journey into unique desert landscapes continues with a visit to Sossusvlei, which is a largish salt pan situated within the central Namib Desert, and protected by the Namib-Naukluft National Park. It is predominantly a red dune landscape with the haunting silence of a dead zone, but only deceptively dead, as a walk through the dunes with a local guide will soon reveal. Stunted trees, however, are fair testimony to an extremely harsh landscape, some as much as 900 years old.
Date: April 23rd, 2008 |
No Comments
Add your South Africa budget hotel or B&B to the Hostel Directory
If you own or operate a South Africa bed & breakfast, hostel, budget hotel, lodge or any other budget accommodation – or you know someone who does – you (or they) should enter the information into the new worldwide Hostel Directory . This will be an extensive and global directory of budget accommodations. You won’t get any spam from it but you should expect some more bookings.
The site is new but is part of a big travel network so this should be worth some minutes of …
Date: July 21st, 2008 |
1 comment
The Bo-Kaap: A Show Piece of Cape Town Culture
One of the most picturesque quarters of a beautiful city is Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap. Once known as the Malay Quarter, the area was in fact the home of a predominately Muslim population drawn from many quarters of the eastern world, and imported to The Cape predominately as slaves or bonded workers during the 16th and 17th centuries.
Cape Malay
Most of the original inhabitants of the Bo-Kaap derived from areas of Dutch overseas influence, with the majority being Indian, but with influences also from Malaysia, Indonesia, Madagascar – itself populated largely by migrant and bonded groups from the Indian Ocean trading axis – Ceylon, Indo-China and Japan. These, in combination with the original Dutch settlers, merged and melded and in due course laid the foundations of the unique Cape/Dutch, or Cape/Malay culture that has over the years tended to be most obviously manifest in architecture and cuisine.
Date: July 8th, 2008 |
No Comments
Vulture Restaurants: Dining with Vultures
An Empty Place At The Table
At one time the vulture was one of the most ubiquitous species of the African plains, the harbinger of death, the clean up man of the veld, but most visible these days, it seems, only when it is not there.
There is nothing that quite captures the morbid quintessence of survival on the African plains quite like the image of a congregation of vultures tearing to shreds the rotting carcase of a wildebeest. From this it is easy to imagine various vulture species surviving mankind long into the post-nuclear era, but in truth vultures are just another of the many species falling behind in the race to survive the adaptation of Africa, and the world, to the needs of mankind.
Vultures, of which there are nine species listed in the SASOL Birds of Southern Africa, are one of those peculiar indicators that scientists look at to establish the general health of an environment. If vultures are visible in numbers, then all is well on the ground, if not, then grounds for concern exist. In recent years vulture populations have been falling dramatically, and not only in Africa. Countries like India, Pakistan, Nepal and Cambodia are all currently documenting dangerous declines in their vulture populations.
Date: May 6th, 2008 |
No Comments
Canyons, Cheetahs & Kruger
Canyons, Cheetah & Kruger
Canyons, Cheetahs & Kruger is somewhat cheaper in value as Boots n’all trips go. It is certainly not as good value as the Dunes, Delta & Falls option. In truth adventure travel through Mpumalanga, unless you happen to have to stop and change a flat tyre in a hijack hotspot, or one of those long freeway shoulders where livid red signs warn you for your own safety not to stop, is likely to be minimal.
The main features of the trip: Blyde River Canyon, Kruger National Park, Edeni Private Game Reserve and an endangered species reintroduction program are all worthwhile, but they come across a little as short hop trips of the kind one might take from a backpackers lodge while waiting to jump on an overland truck or to fly out.
Date: April 24th, 2008 |
No Comments
Backpacker’s Lodges: The Cool Side of Traveler Accommodation
Backpacker’s Lodges
Backpackers lodges are by now a fairly common phenomenon worldwide, but in Africa they have long been the backbone of the independent traveller movement. Most started out as rough converted suburban houses on the outskirts of African cities where the first trans-Africa overland trucks could shed their pax for a few days and restock and recharge. Sometimes there was a pool, but if not there was always a bar, plenty of booze and good music. Typically they were run by ex-overland drivers or couriers, and what might have been lacking in facilities was always more than made up for in atmosphere. As the overland truck travel industry boomed and diversified through the 80s, so did the numbers and styles of these ad hoc lodges and truck stops. In due course they developed a variety of groovy angles, often of the didgeridoo and djembe variety, and moved out of the cities and into the tourist areas where they evolved themselves into what we now take for granted as the backpackers lodge.
Continent Wide
These days the network is spread deep and wide across the subcontinent. While overland trucks still make up the bread and butter of a lot of lodges, from Nairobi to the Cape, from Windhoek to Maputo, there is a huge choice for the independent traveller, covering just about anywhere that it is reasonably possible to access. With South Africa’s re-entry into the world community in 1994 the movement took instant root and exploded. South African capital and the South African capital mindset quickly grew the concept from a simple cottage crash-pad in a picturesque location into a multi purpose entrepot for travel venture, information, fellowship and exchange. Despite this the concept is still wrapped up in many shades of cool, and the basic services are still cheap, safe and clean accommodation, with internet access, valuables deposit, local information, approved tours and excursions, plenty of alcohol, and usually an angle or two on how to score some pot.
Date: April 14th, 2008 |
No Comments
