South Africa Adventure Tourism

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

The History and Culture of Lesotho

Thanks to K. Limakatso Kendall, traveller and writer, for this piece on Lesotho

Geography and Dinosaurs

First there was the land. Fifty million years before the Alps thrust skyward, sheets of golden yellow sandstone were heaved, tossed, and capped by volcanic spew that hardened into basalt. Dinosaurs slapped their tails in the muck and left footprints in hardening rock. (Looking for the plentiful three-toed dinosaur footprints is a great excuse to explore the hillsides now.) Lesotho had its own cute little vegetarian dinosaur called Lesothosaurus. Forests rose and fell. Great beasts competed, and a few survived.

The First People and Livestock

Around 8000 BCE the Baroa, or San—a small-bodied hunter-gatherer people with golden skin like the sandstone around them, traveled the lowlands in winter and the peaks in summer, and named the land in a language of many clicks. A few thousand years after the San, the Khoi, another nomadic group with a language based on click-sounds, arrived from the north. Some of the San and Khoi people mingled, apparently with relatively few conflicts, in a time when Britons prayed to be delivered from the fury of the Norsemen. The Khoi brought goats and sheep to Southern Africa around 600 CE, and in about 1000 CE, cattle.

Then darker-skinned peoples from the north and the south moved into the fertile valleys on both sides of the Maluti and established agriculture next to the Khoi and the San. The concept of land ownership was unknown, and the Khoi and San continued walking, herding, hunting and gathering while the newcomers planted millet and hemp. There was room for everyone, and the people who came to be called the Basotho lived in harmony with the land from the south banks of what is now called the Vaal river to the peaks of the Maluti Mountains, across the other side, into the valleys of Zululand that tilt down toward the Indian Ocean.

The complex societies that developed were probably decentralized, communal, and relatively egalitarian. Despite the considerable cultural diversity of the people on the land, there seems to have been little or no “tribal strife” among southern African peoples. Yet this land was no primordial paradise. Droughts or floods could be devastating; plagues of insects appeared and disappeared; wind storms, lightning, and hail troubled hunters and gatherers as well as farmers; wild animals and snakes terrorized small holdings.

Date: August 4th, 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

Sihle Khumalo: Dark continent, My black arse :)

This new release and first book by South African author Sihle Khumalo, details his travels from Cape to Cairo by public transport.

‘I had always wanted to write a book but I had never known what type of a book I would write. As my 30th birthday was getting closer I thought, why don’t I do the Cape to Cairo – which I had always wanted to do - and then after the trip attempt to write a book based on my travels and thus kill two birds with one stone. As they say, the rest is history.’

Read Pete “the meat” ’s review below:

From Cape to Cairo - that’s the intention, and that’s the span of the book. Shades of Kingsley Holgate and extended family, with Land Rover engines rumbling and belching, and loads of red rum around camp-fires at night! Maybe a lion roaring, or some hyenas yelping in the distance!

Well - not so, when Sihle Khumalo describes his real-life encounters. Same route, by and large, that many have traversed over the “dark continent”, but somewhat unusual, and a great deal more stamina required by the writer! Because, when the perspectives are flowing from an obviously suave, worldly-wise African graduate of Uni and sometimes life, choosing to get down and dirty on the roads and buses that span this large and complex continent we call home, this make for excellent reading, as well as some good laughs

So, sit back and travel tightly with our friend Sihle, as he buses through most of southern and eastern Africa’s states, backpacks through some very odd places, joins queues for hours at border crossings, gets mildly irritated at fruit and food vendors, becomes furious when he isn’t offered a lift in an air-conditioned 4×4 (with a license plate not far from where he started, two months prior!)………..and you find that he has crept right under your skin, whether it’s superficially black or white! Recall as you read, the personal resolutions he vows to keep, on his return to normality in SA (be worth finding out how our friend is doing on those, I suspect!). Chuckle at the ladies he tries half-heartedly to hook up with, en route, more out of curiosity, it seems, than serious intent

Date: October 16th, 2007 | 1 comment

Cango caves: Oudtshoorn South Africa.

The Cango caves near Oudstshoorn are South Africa’s oldest tourist attraction.

Discovered (again) in 1780 and opened to the public in 1806, the Cango cave system is a winding network of jewelled caverns stretching well over 5km (so far discovered)

The first great chamber you enter is called the Van Zyl hall (named after the man said to have discovered them), is as long as a football field, with gorgeous dripping limestone formations.

There are two tours available to the general public and from where the “standard route” ends the “adventure tour” takes you a little further into the cave and through some tight squeezes some no more than 30cm high. The caves are a humid, warm and reasonable well lit. Take good walking shoes and dress lightly.

Some Cango caves mystery and intrigue:

Date: October 8th, 2007 | 1 comment