Sommaire pour May 2025 de Getaway

Approximately halfway between Cape Town and Upington, south of the Hantam Mountains in the Great Karoo, lies Calvinia, established in 1845 following the Dutch Reformed Church’s establishment of a parish. Today, this quaint town, formerly known as Hantam, offers visitors warm hospitality, unique attractions and stunning natural beauty. STEEPED IN HISTORY For obvious reasons, one of the town’s oldest buildings is the Dutch Reformed Church, built on Dorp Street in 1899, 50 years after the area’s first community church, and declared a National Memorial in 1982. It is a striking architectural landmark, with its towering steeple and impressive stonework a testament to the town’s colonial past. The town’s ‘oldest authentic building’ is Hantam Huis (calvinia.co.za/hantam-huis-restaurant), built in 1854, declared a national monument in 1983 and today, after much restoration, is…

STAYING POWER There is no denying that Japan has many buildings steeped in history, but did you know that it is HOME TO THE WORLD'S OLDEST HOTEL? Nishiyama Onsen Keiunkan, in the Yamanashi prefecture at the foot of the Japanese Alps, first opened its doors in 705AD, so the onsen ryokan (Japanese hot spring inn) has been operational for Over 1 300 YEARS! While modernised today, the 13-century-old establishment continues to 'uphold traditional Japanese culture in its architecture, gastronomy, hospitality and other special touches', which attract many guests. In 2011, Guinness World Records recognised its staying power, officially naming it the oldest hotel in the world - a title no other hotel can beat. SAY WHAT? While Papua New Guinea may only have FOUR OFFICIAL LANGUAGES (Tok Pisin, English, Hiri…

Samantha Reinders's work involves travelling extensively between Africa and Asia - her work for some of the world's leading magazines, newspapers, and NGOs takes her from Bangladesh to South Sudan, Kathmandu and Ulaanbaatar - though her traffic fines might catch up with her in Prince Albert in the Karoo, where, between assignments, she walks the veld with her dog, Montgomery. When asked why she loves doing what she does, her answer is almost always the same: the people. This collection of images pays homage to a fraction of the remarkable characters she has met, among them presidents, pensioners, poets, paupers, pimps, and at least one penguinologist. The handiest tool in her kitbag isn't a fancy lens or a filter but empathy, which allows her into the lives of people she…

1. On Horseback From the saddle, you’ll have an elevated view across the Northern Drakensberg Nature Reserve’s stunning grasslands and indigenous forests and onto the ridges and towering mountains beyond. It’s a peaceful way to cover the landscape, and riding on horseback takes you much closer to herds of eland than you can on foot. Many properties in the NDNR have horses and can arrange rides for guests. The Northern Horse (drakensberghorseriding.co.za)caters to day visitors and those wanting to experience overnight trails through the reserve (highly recommended). 2. Ride Epic Drakensberg Singletrack More than 80 km of well-maintained mountain-bike trails criss-cross the hills and grasslands in the NDNR, and many properties within the reserve have direct access to the colour-coded Drakensberg Trails network. All Out Adventures (alloutadventures.co.za) established the network,…

We hovered around the foyer at Jaguar Land Rover Sandton, the new multi-million-rand Defender OCTA standing proudly on display. South African Adventurer Kingsley Holgate and his mighty beard were also attention-grabbing, as he circled the car in admiration. ‘I’m sure you’ll be in one of these soon,’ I said. Kingsley responded, ‘It’s a beautiful vehicle, but we need dogs, workhorses for our expeditions.’ Kingsley and his son Ross circumnavigated the Makgadikgadi Pans in land yachts in 1993. According to Ross, journeys that started as geographical challenges quickly became centred on humanitarian aid, and 40 years later, they’ve completed 30 expeditions, many of them the first of their kind. Driven by the fight against malaria and the Rite to Sight campaign - which, inspired by Kingsley’s late wife, Gillian ‘Mashozi’ Holgate,…

Clifford Roberts GO BIG IN JAPAN (P102) Clifford Roberts spent his formative years in France with adventurous parents. His travels have taken him on many wild adventures, from riding the roof of a taxi to Kin Pun Sakhan in Burma to dodging bullets while camping on an island of the Paris Boulevard Périphérique. He has searched for foxes in the Icelandic wilderness and trekked Tierra del Fuego. At the heart of these pursuits is a voracious interest in people, cultures and nature. Clifford lives in Cape Town with his journalist wife Maryke, where he gardens, bakes, occasionally distils, and tinkers with pickles and preserves. Narina Exelby NEW KID ON THE BLOCK (P68) Narina Exelby is a roaming writer whose default setting has always been to seek out quiet spaces. In…

We're more alike than you think, us humans and gorillas. Most of our genes, perhaps 80% of our DNA sequences, are similar or identical to the gorilla version. Of the many examples of gorillas' intelligence is their ability to comprehend simple sign language. Hanabiko, nicknamed 'Koko', was a female Western lowland gorilla born in the San Francisco Zoo, whom Animal Psychologist Dr Francine Patterson cross-fostered in the mid-'70s to teach her sign language. Koko mastered more than 1000 signs and was said to be able to connect up to eight words to express wants, needs, thoughts and simple responses. Primates also use tool sets for multiple purposes, according to a study of chimpanzees in the Moukalaba-Doudou National Park (MDNP), Gabon, by Primatologist Dr Ghislain W. Ebang Ella from the Gabonese…

Il dolce far niente is an Italian phrase that means ‘the sweetness of doing nothing’, which many of us strive to experience at least once while on holiday but rarely do, especially when travelling in Africa. After a two-week trek through Botswana, setting up and breaking down camp every few days, we head to Otter Island Camp in Zambia, where I plan on doing nothing. A shelter I don’t have to put up myself, a proper bed with fresh linen, and reading in a hammock for hours beckon, all promised by said camp. We cross the border at Kazungula, and from there, it’s about a 30-minute drive to Katombora, the village where we meet Dennis, our contact and a stakeholder in Otter Island Camp, and his crew. After lots of…

Sticking the Landing Paro, Bhutan, is noted for its immense beauty. But visiting ‘visually stunning’ Bhutan, which is 97% mountains, between India and China, requires a lot of trust and faith in the pilot flying the plane you’re travelling on. The airport’s runway is so dangerous to land on that, to date, only 50 pilots have qualified to land or take off there. There's a tall mountain on either side of the Paro runway, which at 2 265 m is shorter than average (between 2 438 m and 3 982 m), so pilots can only see it from the air just before they need to land. Throw in thunderstorms and golf-ball-size hailstones at certain times of the year, and you can understand why so few pilots can land and take…

On a low-level flight between the Wild Coast and Virginia Airport just outside Durban two years ago, the pilot pointed out an incongruous patch of bare ground surrounded by lush vegetation near the north bank of the Mtamvuna River. 'That's the smallest desert in the world,' he said. Having lived and farmed on the fringes of the Namib Desert in Namibia for some time in my younger years, I was intrigued. I'd never heard of the place, and it took a lot of digging to unearth any information on the site the pilot called the Red Desert. Enquiries finally led me to Port Edward in southern KwaZulu-Natal and Matt Williams, the custodian and part-owner of the Red Desert Nature Reserve (reddesertnaturereserve.co.za), a private-public stewardship initiative between landowners and Ezemvelo KZN…

Mist rises. It rushes up against the sandstone cliff, then drifts across horizontal rock slabs, collecting as droplets on mosses and shrubs and the long, skinny leaves of the red hot pokers that grow here in abundance. This mountain is called Babangibona (Father, I see in Zulu), and every few moments, the mist thins, and we look down across the vast, fertile grasslands that cloak these rumpled foothills of the Northern Drakensberg. The post-dawn mist closes in again, and we hear a rhythmic fa-whooh fa-whooh as, one after the other, Cape vultures nesting on the cliff face below us take flight. They mingle with the mist, disappearing and re-emerging gracefully into sight. Later, as we traverse the grasslands on horseback and the early autumn sun washes green hills in sunlight,…

Sitting in a game vehicle at Tintswalo Safari Lodge in the Manyeleti Game Reserve, watching a leopard take refuge from a pride of lions high up in a tree, I marvelled that only five hours had passed since I'd eaten breakfast at home in Cape Town. It was as if I'd crossed over from a sprawling suburban landscape into another world of adventure in the breathtaking bush. The speedy journey to Tintswalo Safari Lodge had been made possible by a direct flight to Hoedspruit from Cape Town that took just two and a half hours, followed by a one-hour drive - slightly longer if you encounter wildlife lazing on the Reserve's driving paths. Hoedspruit's Eastgate Airport is on the border of Mpumalanga and Limpopo, and is a gateway to a…

I'd been in the whirlwind of Tokyo for days, and now I was looking for a hole in the ground (literally), a restaurant offering respite from the heat of the day. This city is as intoxicating as they come, billowing charm and mystique in a fume of freneticism. But at some point, everyone here seeks a low-fi break. When I found a grubby noodle bar, I wasn't surprised it sported a logo of an animated mole wearing a baseball cap. For years, the strength of the Japanese yen meant most travellers couldn't afford to visit the island chain bordering the Pacific Ocean and the Sea of Japan. However, its currency began to lose value, and my wife and I were among the many who made up for lost time by…

And Here's What You Said… I don’t know how he [the guide] stayed so calm and avoided eve contact. Wow! Alidas Perry You get tourists who think that it’s okay to walk up to predators and take pictures. Irresponsible, the lot of them! Ilje Nel Habituation of wildlife for tourist value threatens the wildlife, which may be killed if it compromises the vehicle's occupants’ safety. Susan Parker-Smith SOCIAL MEDIA We Asked: Are you planning a holiday in the northern hemisphere to take advantage of warmer weather? Where are you headed? There are worse places to spend a South African winter than Paris during springtime. Jaryd Adams I’d love to spend the summer on the Amalfi Coast. Lynn Reid I'm heading to Vietnam later this year, which I cannot wait to…