DEPARTURE LOUNGE // SPRING 2019
Garden Route, we had our fair share of
adventures – and misadventures.
We helped fishermen drag in nets
teeming with flopping fish in Cape
Agulhas; got giddy from daring each
other to peer down at the cavernous
gorge from the Storms River Bridge;
watched snakes being roasted on a
fire pit at a Karoo farm; mischievously
rearranged the white stones spelling
‘Houw Hoek’ on the Elgin mountainside;
and shrieked at pufferfish inflating as
we reeled in our hand lines off the
Stillbaai pier.
No TVs. No cellphones. No bookings.
No plan. Just the open road, and a whole
lot of country to explore.
As I took a final look at all the
awe-inspiring adventures in this Spring
edition of Sure Travel Journey – from
slackpacking the Wild Coast (page 34)
to tunnelling lava tubes in Réunion
Island (page 40), diving through muck
in Indonesia (page 38) and braving The
Island of The Dead (page 30) – I had just
returned from a spontaneous road-trip
up the Garden Route with my daughter.
We didn’t do anything as wild as climb
Everest (page 16) or kayak around
Iceland (page 58), but we did hunt for
fairies in Swellendam, have a picnic
at the foot of Tsitsikamma’s Big Tree
and, just like those childhood trips, we
goaded each other into vertigo-inducing
peeks off the Storms River Bridge. On
our last day, as we explored the seawater
caves at the foot of Knysna Heads, my
kid looked up at me and said, “We’re
adventurers, hey mom?”.
Yes, we are. All travellers are.
Daredevil, roadtripper, luxury cruiser
or slackpacker – whatever your travel
style, there’s an adventure waiting for
you. All you need to do is flick through
these pages and pick one.
NOTE FROM THE EDITOR
Departure
Lounge
I wouldn’t describe myself as an
adventure traveller, at least not in a jump
off a bridge, take on rapids, ski black
runs kind of way. I prefer standing on
the bridge, cruising down a river (slowly)
and sipping Glühwein next to a fire while
others take on the pistes. Adventure-lite.
But there is one kind of adventure I
excel at: the unplanned road trip. It’s a
travel style I inherited from my mother,
whose idea of a family holiday was to
pack us kids into her 1976 yellow VW
Kombi and put foot, stopping wherever
took her fancy. Throw in some pink
Steri-Stumpie, boiled egg padkos and
never-ending sibling battles in the
seatbelt-less backseats, and you had the
perfect recipe for technicolour disaster.
Most often, though, it wasn’t.
In-between winding our way along
rugged West Coast dirt roads,
being hypnotised by long stretches
of shimmering Karoo asphalt and
watching the yellow field farmlands of
the Overberg blur into the lush green
journey
Published by Bonzai Media
for Sure Travel
Editor: Melany Bendix
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