Africa Trip 6-21 Nov 2004

My road trip in South Africa started out in Johannesburg. My travel buddy was Felix. Our plan was to travel from Johannesburg to Cape Town along the eastern coastline and then take an internal flight back to Johannesburg to connect our flight back to Singapore. My pictorial itinerary is shown below.

We made booking from internet for our first night's stay only as we will be on the road the next day. After checking in, we made our way to a Chinese restaurant for dinner. We talked to one of the staff and told him about the plan of our trip. Prior to my trip, I have been reading online news about Johannesburg and it seems that it is not a very safe place. I asked the staff about it and he warned us of cases of car jacking. If even the local people said so, it must be true! This information did worry us to certain extent. Guess we just have to be street smart and avoid parking in deserted places.

So, early next morning, we rented a manual Toyota hatchback at Tempest for about $5400 Rand and we hit the road that same day. I wanted one with an automatic transmission but the only available was a manual version. Our first destination .... Kruger National Park.

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We entered Kruger via the Phabeni Gate early in the morning around 5am. It was one of the 10 gates into Kruger. The gate was located at the south western end of the park.

The highlights of visiting the park was to spot the Famous Big Five of South Africa. And they were: lion, leopard, elephant, white rhino and buffalo. Many travellers regard a visit to South Africa as incomplete without having spotted, and perhaps photographed, the Big Five. We drove around Kruger for 10hours hoping to catch a glimpse of all the wildlife within the park. As the day goes by, the heat gets intolerable. We could only spot herbivores grazing the vast grassland. I suspect the carnivores are all hiding away from the hot sun and we managed to spot none! So disappointed.

We left Kruger and drove along the Eastern Cape Route to enjoy the magnificent coastal views.

We stopped over at Durban for the night. Our next checkpoint was Hermanus. This is the place where one can get really close to watching whales on land.