South Africa
Johannesburg to Cape Town
Johannesburg
June 17, 2017
We spent two nights in Johannesburg at a very nice B&B. The Outlook Lodge is an early-century home converted into a very comfortable lodge offering excellent breakfasts and service to match. We’ll be spending four more days at Outlook at the end of the South African portion of our journey.
Colesberg and Karoo National Park
After some hassle, we had our rental car delivered on the 12th. On the morning of the 13th, we headed off on our 1,500 km drive to Cape Town, with stops in Colesberg on the 13th and Karoo National Park on the 14th.
Colesberg is a small farming town, and the area is known for its lamb. We stayed one night, had a great lamb dinner at a nearby cozy restaurant, enjoyed a great breakfast the next morning and continued on to the Karoo.
Karoo National Park is a wildlife reserve in the Great Karoo area of the Western Cape near Beaufort West. This semi-desert park covers 750 square kilometres and is a sanctuary for springbok, gemsbok, Cape mountain zebra, buffalo, eland, kudu, ostriches, lions and more. It is an amazing landscape formed over 280 million years.
We arrived early in the afternoon and headed out in our Toyota Corolla for a 2½-hour drive around a 50 km loop of gravel road, where we were lucky to see some of the animals mentioned above. Our accommodation was excellent and offered an amazing view of the flat-topped hills of the Great Escarpment.
The evening silence that permeated the area was hard to describe. You could literally hear the blood flowing through your ears. Karoo was the perfect appetizer for things to come.
Onward to Cape Town
On the 15th, we headed onward to Cape Town, passing through spectacular countryside, snow-capped mountains and the Cape Winelands in the Western Cape province of South Africa. The views were awesome.
Beautiful…the landscape and seeing the native wild life on your road trip from Joberg…brings back memories when Joyce and I were there 43 years ago!😘