Durban is the largest city in the South African province of KwaZulu-Natal. It is also the third largest city in South Africa after Johannesburg and Cape Town. The city is famous for being the busiest port in South Africa and the city’s warm subtropical climate and extensive beaches.

When you visit Durban then make sure that you visit the most beautiful stadium of South Africa, the Moses Mabhida stadium. The Moses Mabhida stadium was one of the host stadiums for the 2010 FIFA World Cup and hosted teams such as the Dutch, German, Brazilian and Spanish national teams. Nowadays the stadium is still a busy hub with a multi-use function.

Explore the story of football in the Moses Mabhida stadium on one of the guided stadium tours. Walk on the pitch, visit the dressing rooms and see where the teams get ready before getting on to the pitch through the tunnel. Experience the stadium in the footsteps of a football player.

Not only is the stadium home to South African football club AmaZulu but it also offers visitors several exciting activities amongst the restaurants and shops. One of the things not to be missed is to get yourself a ticket for the Skycar. The Skycar will bring you to the top of the arch of the stadium. From where you have the most amazing views of Durban. A trip up with the Skycar will cost you only ZAR 55 per person.

In the weekend (at 10am, 1pm and 4pm) you can alternatively join on a more adventurous way of reaching the top of the stadium by taking the, guided, 550 steps to the top. This will cost you, at the moment of writing, ZAR 90 per person.

If you are a real adventure seeker then the ‘Big Rush, Big Swing’ might be something for you. With this big swing you will take a ‘swing’ in to the stadium by plunging off the 106 metre fourth platform of the arch. This, currently, costs ZAR 595 per person and is totally at your own responsibility.

How to go about it:
For more information on visiting the magnificent Moses Mabhida Stadium and the activities they offer have a look on their website. For more information on other travel tips in South Africa have a look at our Travel Tips page.

*For latest rates visit the Moses Mabhida Stadium website

Whenever you have a long weekend available and you wish to escape for a couple of days, I recommend you to visit Johannesburg. Jo’burg – which is a commonly used abbreviation – is an interesting city, and especially when you are coming from Cape Town. The difference between Jo’burg and Cape Town is enormous; Johannesburg is truly African while Cape Town is more western.
I stayed in Jo’burg for two nights, which is enough to see the main sights. On my first day I went to Soweto, which is the largest township in the world, located next to Johannesburg. There are a few popular sights to be found in Soweto, which you can explore by bike with Lebo’s Soweto Backpackers cycling tours. With Lebo Backpackers there are many options for Soweto tours: 2 hour cycling tour, half-day cycling tour, full-day cycling tour, tuk tuk tours or walking tours. For more information about the sights which will be visited during the cycling tour, you can take a look at Ariam’s Travel Tip.

The next day I took the hop-on hop-off buses to go to all the sights in Johannesburg. The red buses are an easy and safe way to explore the city. The bus takes you to the most important areas of Johannesburg. Whenever you arrive at a stop, you can decide to get off the bus or to stay seated for the next stop. The stops I visited were Ghandi square, Carlton centre where you can find the “Top of Africa” building, Gold Reef City which is the Las Vegas of Johannesburg, Apartheid Museum, the vibrant neighbourhood Braamfontein and the former prison Constitutional Hill.
The Apartheid Museum and Top of Africa were the most interesting places for me to visit. The Apartheid Museum gives you a tour through the time of apartheid and the top of Africa is the highest building in Africa which gives an amazing 360˚ view of Johannesburg. It depends on how much time you would like to spend at each attraction, but it is doable to view all those attractions on one day. The red bus tours are a great way to view all the important sights of Johannesburg in an easy way and within a short amount of time.

There are many hotels or backpackers where you can stay while you are enjoying your short get-away in Johannesburg. Depending on your budget you can choose your accommodation. Lebo’s Backpackers is a great hostel with a good vibe in the middle of Soweto. I myself stayed in the area of Fairmount, which is a quiet neighbourhood with easy access to the centre of Johannesburg and the airport.

How to go about it;
Abang Africa Travel can book your complete get-away to Jo’burg including accommodation, tickets for tours, flight tickets etc. for you to travel care free. Contact us to arrange your trip to Johannesburg.

Feel free to have a look on our travel tips page for more advice that my colleagues would like to share with you.

I have just returned from a long weekend off to the province of Mpumalanga with as main purpose to visit one of Africa’s largest game reserves: Kruger National Park. This park is an excellent place to spot (most of) the Big Five. It is home to thousands of lions as well as endangered animals such as the African Wild Dog, Cheetahs, and even the Black Rhino. Also bird lovers will find Kruger National Park a perfect base for spotting over 500 species of birds!

I visited the park for three days and two nights where I slept in a typical African rondavel in the bush in the middle of Kruger National Park. During the night I could hear the lions roaring and I spotted 9 elephants, including a baby, from the bar area of the camp. As the camp was not fenced, meaning that any animal except large elephants could enter the camp. During the day I spotted ignalas eating plants just in front of my hut. The experience was truly amazing, and it will be a memorable one. I enjoyed every minute of my stay in the bush and spotting hundreds of animals. I think that staying in a bush camp is the ultimate way to experience the nature and wildlife of Kruger National Park to its utmost!

How to go about it:
If you are planning to go to Kruger National Park as well, I would recommend staying in in a camp as well. Do not hesitate to contact us for more information on our preferred suppliers.

Don’t forget to have a look at our travel tips page for the tips my colleagues would like to share with you

Cycling through the Soweto township was one of the best experiences I have had. In this part of South Africa I had a great time and enjoyed unique experiences by staying at the Fair trade Tourism in South Africa certified Lebo’s Backpackers.

The tour started with a township lingo lesson (Tsotsi Taal) at a hill with a beautiful view of the stadium and the Orlando Towers. We learned how people from Soweto greet each other and other useful phrases. For instance we learned the common “Love, Peace and Happiness” handshake that I used many times already here in South Africa.

After learning about Soweto’s history and culture we continued to the former hostel settlements where you can find a “shebeen” (informal bar shack). Inside the shebeen we had some traditional and odd tasting “Joburg beer”, which is a sorghum beer brewed by a loose collective of South African breweries using maize, wheat, water and yeast. Coming from the beer nation – Germany, I probably had different expectations of beer, but the more I drank the better it got. After the drinking we put on some traditional Zulu jewellery and started dancing and singing.
The next stop on the tour was the Hector Pieterson Memorial, named after a 13 years old boy. When the guide explained what happened on this square the group became silent. The story of the little boy, who was shot in this street during the Soweto uprising on June 16^th, 1976, touched us all with many goose bumps on our body. The 16^th of June nowadays is a holiday in South Africa in memory of Hector and the other 200 students that were killed. Till this day the area still reflects the struggle from the past and is branded by this vibrant vibe. Touched and mindful, the group continued biking down to the famous Vilakazi Street to see where the two Nobel Prize winners lived – Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

Lebo’s Backpackers is the perfect accommodation for an authentic Soweto experience. Lebo’s home is very friendly and makes you feel at home.  Even though no meals are included at Lebo’s Backpackers, there is the possibility to request breakfast, lunch and dinner, which are freshly prepared every day and with love. Furthermore, Lebo’s offers many activities, such as the FTT certified bicycle tour through Soweto.

How to go about it;

Contact us for more information on things to do in South Africa. We create a your tailor made holiday into a unique experience.

Don’t forget to have a look on our travel tips page for more advice that my colleagues would like to share with you.

The first weekend after I arrived in Cape Town, I drove along Chapman’s Peak, which is affectionately known as “Chappies”, with my colleague Bas. It is one of the most spectacular marine drives in the world of 9 km long with 114 curves.
The drive offers you gorgeous 180° views and there are many possibilities along the route to park your car in order to take some pictures of the surrounding and to have a pick-nick.

You can choose to do Chapman’s Peak by car, motorcycle, bicycle or by foot. Along the way you can also drive towards Simon’s Town, where you will find penguins on the beach.
I would recommend you to go there in the afternoon, so you could also stop to see a beautiful sunset when you are on your way back to Cape Town.

How to go about it;

Contact us for more information on things to do in Cape Town and South Africa. We create unique experiences on your tailor made holidays.

Don’t forget to have a look on our travel tips page for the tips my colleagues would like to share with you.

Meet the Great White Sharks for a day!

A couple of weeks ago after I had arrived in Cape Town I went on a shark cage diving excursion. We got picked up at 4.30 in the morning and took a bus towards Gansbaai, which is located next to Hermanus. While you are sailing towards the diving spot, you will get a short briefing about what to do, and more importantly what not to do.
Being in the cage gives you the opportunity to experience the greatest and yet most misunderstood predatory force of the seas from up close. You are in a cage with a maximum of five people, whilst the sharks are being attracted by death fish. This does not only attract the great whites, but as well thousands of smaller fish. This gives you a beautiful view of the diverse marine life that South Africa has to offer. It is an amazing experience which seems more terrifying than it actually is.

How to go about it;
You have the possibility to arrange a cage diving excursion via Share Africa Travel. If you wish to take the cage diving a step further, you could also choose to join one of our projects, which is a white shark volunteering program. Don’t hesitate but contact us now for more information.

Don’t forget to have a look at our travel tips page for the tips my colleagues would like to share with you.

Cederberg Mountains

Most of the roads in the Cederberg Mountain area are dirt roads. You have to be careful and watch out for pot-holes, but it makes so much fun to drive these roads, especially with a shaking small old golf. This doesn’t mean however that you cannot drive with a normal vehicle in the Cederberg area. As long as you stick to a slow pace your drive will be beautiful and very doable. The roads just add to the feeling of going on a real African adventure!f Cape Town and it is part of the greater Cederberg Conservation area. It also was recently proclaimed as a World Heritage Site. The area stretches from the Middelberg Pass at Citrusdal to just north of the Pakhuis Pass at Clanwilliam. The landscape here is totally different to the landscape in Cape Town and its surroundings. It is rough with impressive rock formations like I had never seen before and is home to some unique flower species like the endangered Clanwilliam Cedar.

Our final destination was the small village Kromsrivier in the heart of the Cederberg Mountains. The area is of a dramatic beauty; a mixture between wilderness, rough rocks, huge mountains and a small romantic river that fills the whole valley with live. From our cottage we hiked to the Disa Pools. This hike was about 3 hours one way.
During the stunning 3 hour hike you will pass different types of desert landscapes. First you will see predominantly rocks, sand and a few desert plants that can survive the remote conditions. The closer we came to the pools the surroundings became to look more like the Garden of Eden. Part of the route is that you have to cross the little river twice. The deepest you could be walking through the water is knee-deep. The flora and fauna here is amazing and of unexpected color.  After this the route takes you through the bush until you arrive by a small waterfall with a huge natural pool; the Disa Pool.

After the long walk it was the perfect place to refresh ourselves and enjoy a long and well deserved break before heading back to our cottage for the night.

The next day we decided to go on a horse-riding trip through the Kromsrivier Valley, relax on the back of the proud animals whilst enjoying the stunning landscape. Both of the activities we did I would recommend to travelers visiting the Cederberg Mountain area. And great it is to finish off your day with a crackling campfire and braai whilst watching the stars in the clear sky!

I personally had never seen such a clear view of the stars in my life before. This was due to the fact that there was absolutely no light in the surroundings besides our small campfire and I felt like being in another world.

The Cederberg Mountain area also offers a lot of other hiking trails and activities like Rock Art, 4×4 driving, bird watching, fishing, mountain biking and more. An area of unspoiled beauty, not to be missed!

For more travel tips? Check out our travel tips page by clicking here!

About 1.5 hours drive away from ‘the Mothercity’ you can find the West Coast National Park. A true place to relax and recharge your batteries and delight in the silence and sense of place of this unique eco-destination with its rich biodiversity heritages. The West Coast National Park is situated approximately 100 km northwest of Cape Town on the Atlantic seaboard of the Western Cape Province.

The park extends from Yzerfontein in the south to Langebaan in the north. The conservation is located near the popular holiday town of Langebaan as well as Saldanha, the West Coast’s busiest harbour town. From here you can spot the majestic Table Mountain in the background.The park not only conserves indigenous fauna and flora but also a range of important natural and cultural assets. The park is exceptionally rich in biodiversity and supports important numbers of coastal birds as well as a unique floral diversity. The park nestles against the Langebaan Lagoon which is included in its boundaries. This site is a Ramsar wetland of global conservation importance. South Africa has a total of 19 wetlands on this special list.

Please contact us directly to find out more about the West Coast National Park, the things to do, places to stay and where to eat. Our team of Travel Specialists will gladly assist you further. The West Coast National Park, a true hidden gem!

Just about a month ago I did the Garden Route in four days. Here I visited the Tsitsikamma National Park. At first we did a route through the beautiful forest, where you constantly get a glimpse of the sun among the leaves. Among the forest sounds, you heard a lot of different birds who were whistling in the park. More than 200 species of birds can be found here. If you pay attention, it is possible you’ll see some of them. There’re also many mussels to be seen among the black rocks, where the African clawless otter also hunts.

The farther I walked down along the path, the better I heard the sounds of the rough sea. What an overwhelming sound was that! Every step I was closer to the crashing waves.

Once I arrived there, the fresh forest smell was replaced by the raw sea wind.

Further ahead on the route we got to a big water spring that was nourished through a giant waterfall. What a powerful view!! It was possible to swim in this water, a lovely refreshment after a tough walk like this. It is also the perfect spot for cliff diving. I saw jumps of at least 8 meters high..

This National Park is situated along the coast of the Indian Ocean. The park consists of high mountains, cliffs and bushy forests and big amounts of fynbos.  It has an 80 kilometer coastline, which is interrupted by beaches here and there. The Storms River pushed its way through the Tsitsikamma Mountain Range and runs into the ocean.

There is also a lot of chance, during this walk, to see dolphins jumping above the surface.

I can guarantee you, this is a route in a million. I did a walk in one day, but it’s also possible to do it for a couple of days, whereby you’ll stay the night in special accommodations in the National Park.

A memorable route during your trip through South Africa!

Contact Share Africa to do the Garden Route with their guidance. You could do a self-drive tour or look for tips in accommodations.

Take a look at my colleagues’ travel tips!

One of the most peaceful memories of my trip through the north eastern part of South Africa is a picnic at the Bourke’s Luck Potholes at Blyde River Canyon. From the car park it is only a short and easy walk (also accessible with prams and wheelchairs) to Blyde River. The potholes are holes in the river edge that the water has been forming throughout the centuries. Enjoy the view then walk over to the river bed with its possibilities to spread out the blanket and to enjoy the yummie food and drinks that you brought.

Especially in the late afternoon, the setting sun creates a warm and beautiful light. I am sure you will enjoy it.

The area around the Blyde River Canyon can be part of a self drive tour through South Africa. We are very happy to tailor make an itinerary, according to your time, budget and interests. Ask us for possibilities.

Also check out my colleagues travel tips. They have come around quite a bit.

]]> https://www.old.shareafricatravel.com/pias-travel-tip-2/feed/ 0