My Trans-Provincial Roadtrip- In Pictures!

Late last year I made the decision to move cities for my studies, leading me back to city in which I was born. This move presented the opportunity for a road trip through four provinces, a trip that took my dad and I two days and over 1200kms. And I tried to take as many pictures as possible over the trip, to document the beauty of the vastly changing South African terrain- and here they are!

So the beginning of our drive started off with us accidentally stumbling upon the most incredible mount pass- the Prince Alfred Pass. With I think almost two hours of no signal, no tar road, and sheer cliff drops, came the most breathtaking views of the valleys between Plettenberg Bay and Uniondale.

The crazy change of colour and flora around every corner literally had us stopping for pictures almost every ten minutes. As momentarily scary as the pass was (my tiny car + dirt road + single lanes around the whole mountain pass = vaguely nerve-wracking), it was so well worth it- so much so that I still look at these pictures in awe.

I mean just look at those misty mountain shadows in the distance!!!

Then the drive just turned into us trying to get as far as we could before we were starving- which was fun because you will always get that deep hunger pang about 100kms from anywhere that might have food that isn't a packet of Doritos and a coke. Although, we got extremely lucky because we found the cutest town- which I wish I had taken more pictures of- in the Eastern Cape. It was basically in the middle of the Karoo desert, in what is called the Sarah Baartman District. I mean, Aberdeen is so old and in its little time capsule of the mid-1900's that they still have streets named after old South African presidents (shoutout to van Riebeck street too). But unexpectedly we had honestly the best meal, quite likely the best I've had this year- at a little, beautiful, restaurant called GEORG. It was built into an old prison building, that was a bookstore before the German owner of GEORG decided to turn it into the little heaven he did.

After lunch and the last stretch of the drive, we ended up in a guest house in Bloemfontein for the night- in prep for an early morning start the next day; although, we did drive through Graaff-Reinet which is a classic farm town. Centred around the most exquisite church and surrounded by not much else. It was actually so beautiful, thinking back, that I'd love to go there for a weekend trip to just to take in the charming area and history of the town.

The white details on this church are breathtaking- I'm a little obsessed.

And onto day 2; This stretch of the trip was quite literally a long straight road with flat grasslands on either side of us. Because of this, there aren't that many pictures besides these Route 66 style open road images.

One exciting thing was crossing the Vaal river! But unfortunately I was too excited about it to whip my phone out in time- whoops.

The fascinating thing was how similar all the land was, but with really tiny detailed differences. We started noticing how up in the mountains on the Western Cape border there was deep Mars-red sand and rocks, while the Eastern Cape had open fields of this white-yellowish brown grass. And between the Free State and Gauteng the most minuscule difference was that the trees and shrubbery were vaguely bigger and a different kind of green. It was fascinating (I mean when you drive 12 hours through the Karoo, you have to notice these things). We also counted windmills and water pump mills. You know, the classic road trip games.

It was a super special drive and something that I actually want to do again, despite how long it was. We were very much chasing a destination but I would truly love to road trip this country and take the time to stop and take pictures of the beautiful bits and bobs of towns that are scattered between the major cities.

I highly recommend taking a moment to travel ones own country before planning extravagant overseas trips. I know I have not done it nearly enough, but after this road trip I definitely think I'll be looking into it more- next up is the West Coast!