Road Trippin’ the Eastern Cape

Jeffrey's Bay, South Africa
34.0507°S, 24.9102°E

South Africa is the country that Sarah and I planned to spend the most time visiting during our year-long trip. After our Johannesburg visit and Zulu Nyala safari, we still had more than six weeks to go.

Our plan from the start was to spend considerable time in Cape Town, given that we had heard so many great things about the city and it’s surrounding areas.

But first, we had to get there from the far northeast corner of South Africa. We could think of only one way to do this…road trip!

Driving the Eastern Cape

South Africa’s Eastern Cape province starts about 100 miles south of the city of Durban, and then further west meets up with the Western Cape province (where Cape Town is located). The Eastern Cape is full of small coastal towns with amazing ocean views, but further inland it’s mountainous and includes a very dry, arid region called the Karoo. We mapped out a plan that would take us mostly along the coast, but also into Karoo for about a day before making our way into Cape Town.

Sarah and I rented a car and started the 1,500-mile drive, planning to take about a week to make the trip. We had no reserved accommodations but did have a short list of towns we wanted to visit. We mostly just winged it day-by-day, cruising along listening to a mix of music and podcasts (Chris Stapleton, Bayfm 107.9, Tim Ferris, Bill Burr), and asking important questions of each other (Are you hungry? Pee break? Can you pass the biltong?). The main roads in South Africa are well maintained and very easy to navigate, so most of the trip was a relaxing drive.

Port Edward to East London

Our first stop was Port Edward, right on the border of the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal provinces. It’s a popular vacation spot but because it’s currently winter in South Africa there wasn’t a whole lot going on. It did, however, provide us with our first views of the Eastern Cape’s rocky coast, which were pretty spectacular.

We left Port Edward and headed off on our longest drive of the road trip, an eight-hour ride to East London. We took an inland route which passed through several small towns and villages, each of them dotted with hundreds of colorful homes.

Port Elizabeth and Jeffrey’s Bay

After a night in East London, we headed for the biggest city in the Eastern Cape, Port Elizabeth. We booked an Airbnb for two nights in a small garden apartment that was only a few blocks from the Indian Ocean and very close to the city’s small downtown area. For the first time since we arrived in South Africa, the weather was bad (very rainy and windy) so we weren’t able to do as much as we liked in Port Elizabeth, a place known for its beaches and it’s amazing hiking and cycling. But we did explore its coast by car, which was well worth the drive.

After a couple of rain-soaked days in Port Elizabeth, we continued our drive down the coast but didn’t get far. After driving about an hour, we arrived in the town of Jeffrey’s Bay and saw a huge crowd of people walking towards the beach. We stopped to get breakfast and learned that the crowds were heading to watch the World Surf League’s “2017 Corona Open”, a professional surfing competition. The weather had turned and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so we decided to head down to the beach to watch.

“J-Bay”, as Jeffrey’s Bay is known, is home to one of the most famous surfing breaks in the world. The town hosts the J-Bay Open every year, which is also famous for being the place where Australian surfer Mick Fanning was attacked by a great white shark in 2015. If you haven’t seen this video, it’s worth a watch.

The weather stayed great, the tournament was really fun, and we loved the feel of the town, so we decided to stay in J-Bay for the night.

The Garden Route 

We left J-Bay and headed to the town of George for lunch, before continuing from there to Calitzdorp, where we would spend the night. We actually have no idea how we ended up in this town, but getting there was an amazing drive that took us through the Karoo region into the Western Cape.

The Swartberg Mountain Range, viewable from our Airbnb in Calitzdorp, were snow-capped (we had no idea we would see snow here), and our night in Calitzdorp was cold – really cold. In fact, our Airbnb host Bronwyn seemed really surprised that we were there in winter, and told us they don’t get many guests this time of year. We understood why at about 3:00 a.m. when the unheated room we were staying in felt like we were back camping on Kilimanjaro….this time without the sub-zero sleeping bags.

Cold weather aside, Calitzdorp is a very cool little town surrounded by some beautiful wineries. It’s known in South Africa for its port wine in particular, and we were greeted by Bronwyn with two glasses of local port when we checked in.

The town is located on South Africa’s “Garden Route”, a scenic drive that winds through the Western Cape and has an incredibly diverse landscape from its beaches to its forests and mountains. Its wildlife is equally as diverse, and the Garden Route boasts some of the best whale watching in Africa as well as a town (Oudtshoorn) known as the ostrich capital of the world.

In Vino Veritas

Our last stop before Cape Town was Franschhoek, recommended to us by the chef we met while eating lunch in the town of George a few days earlier. The town is in the heart of the Western Cape’s wine country, and its downtown is surrounded by wineries.

We had only planned for one night in Franschhoek because we were anxious to get to Cape Town. But after arriving at our Airbnb the owners, Ane and Carl, told us the “wine tram” is something we have to experience. The most popular tourist activity in Franschhoek is its wine tram that delivers visitors to a number of the local wineries for tastings. We decided to stay an extra night and bought tickets for the tour the next day.

We were glad we did. The surrounding areas were beautiful and the wine tastings were very fun. Not to mention the wines were awesome and cheap (most bottles were about $3). We met a South African couple on the tour that had just returned home after stints at teachers in rural China and were en route to new jobs in Switzerland. We swapped stories and drank a shitload of good wine with them.

Final Destination: Cape Town

We woke up the next day and loaded up our rental car for the drive to Cape Town. We were both moving a bit slow, feeling the impact of the day-long wine tastings, so were glad we only had a short hour-long drive to Cape Town.

As I drove and Sarah repeatedly swore off wine forever (I have my doubts), she found a few Cape Town apartments online that looked suitable for our month-long stay in the city. We drove around and checked out the neighborhoods each of them was in, before deciding on an Airbnb in the Oranjezicht area. We had found our home for the month.