Driving Through South Africa on a Road Trip: From Pretoria to Stellenbosch Through My Camera

2 weeks ago

You wake up at 3 am. Outside of your window, everything is still dark. This early, 3 am, has always been a strange hour in the morning. Some call it a devilish hour, when strange things happen.

This hour has never been good with me. But here I am. Waking up at this ungodly hour to start a road trip for the next 7 days of my life, with my partner.

But there I was, coffee in hand, preparing to get this thing started. So much could go wrong, but here I am writing this, so everything planned out. We packed my partner's small car full to the roof, and we set off just before 4 am. We wanted to miss all of the traffic, and we luckily did. From 5 am in the morning, everyone started driving to work. And as we drove on the highway to our first stop, we saw it, the thousands of cars lining up on the opposite side of the road. As the sun rose from the horizon, the line of cars started. We missed the traffic. First mission successful!

And that is when we struck what felt like gold: thousands and thousands of sunflowers facing our way! We stopped next to the road (something you should really not actually do in our country) but there we stood, taking photographs of sunflowers even before the sun came out. It was also a strange hour, just before the sun broke out through the horizon, but it was light, not dark. There was a strange energy in the air.

For the next couple of days, I will thus reflect on this road trip, writing stories about it, and just reliving the moments we had. It felt like it never happened, almost like years have passed, but here I am thinking back to our road trip, planning what I want to share.

We took thousands of photographs, we visited places that few really go, but also where thousands gather. We had great moments, and strangely, we only had one or two small moments of fear. The rest was actually a perfect road trip. We did not even have one scare, and I am thankful for this.

We started in Pretoria. Our first stop was in the Free-State, Bloemfontein. After that, we moved down to Gariep, a very small and almost desolate town. Then, we drove to Graaff-Reinet and did some hiking to a very beautiful place. After this, we drove some of the most desolate roads, where for almost 300km we were the only car. Luckily, this stretch took us to a most beautiful camping site. There, we stayed in a cabin, at Storms River, in the Tsitsikamma National Park. After this wonderful stay, we were in the garden route, a small slice of heaven. We travelled then through Knysna, George, and then we arrived in Stellenbosch.

After almost 2000 kilometres, we arrived at our destination for the next year. Here we are, thinking back to our trip. I hope that you will enjoy the series of upcoming posts about our trip through South Africa.

For now, happy travelling, happy drinking, and happy photographing!

All of the musings and writings are my own. The photographs are also my own.