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Things to do near Cape Town

Are you planning a trip to South Africa soon, but are looking to do something slightly different than beaches and taking the cable car up Table Mountain?
This is the post for you! Below is a list of things to do near Cape Town.

The different places I have included, Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Wellington, are about a 50 minute drive from Cape Town. You can plan these day trips, or choose to stay a night out of the Mother City and in these charming places.  

Wellington 

  • If you are looking for a different way to see South African vineyards and olive farms, head down to Diemersfontein for a horseback ride into nature. A lovely lady will take you on a given morning to see the beauty this part of the Western Cape has to offer. Click here to visit the website. 

If horse back rides aren’t really your thang, Katrin also does walking tours into the vineyards. Bring your hiking boots! 

Preview of the horse ride. I met these two lovely ladies here, one of whom is in the photo. They turned out such interesting girls! This girl is an actress and has her first series coming out soon. Her friend owns Nude Wear, a swimwear company that supports body positivity (love it!), studies a triple major, and also acts. The people one meets!
  • One of my favourite passes in the Western Cape would be the Baines kloof. I love the drive through there, it’s absolutely stunning and I recommend simply to go and take a look. 

Paarl

  • Although the Spice Route is quite touristy already, it’s well worth a visit. Not just for the location or the food, but the beer tasting is fantastic. You can choose whether you want to taste 4, 7, or 9 (NINE) beers. It goes without saying the tasting glasses are not standard beer glasses, but they are big enough to get a proper taste 😉 All in all, it’s a lovely way to spend your afternoon. Click here for more info.
  • Take a drive up the Du Toit’s kloof, bring some wine, beers, snacks and a sober driver, and enjoy a spectacular sunset at one of the car stops. A blanket would serve well, both to sit on and to stay warm. 
  • A must-do in my opinion is see and thereby support rescue lions and tigers at the Drakenstein Lion Park. You will have the opportunity to see many lions who have been rescued from circuses, canned hunting grounds, pet trade and other heartbreaking circumstances. You can even adopt a lion! 
    I think this organisation does great work and I fully support all places that help animals live a better life. 
Rare (not roar) white lions

Stellenbosch

If you have a slightly bigger budget than the average Joe, how about seeing Stellenbosch, Paarl, and Wellington from the air? Flown by no one other than my talented dad, if you find yourself in South Africa in the summer months he would love to take you for a beautiful round trip! Starting at the Stellenbosch Flying Club, you can enjoy a nice breakfast or lunch with roaring propellors around you, then take to the skies yourself! Contact me for more details so you can see this beautiful part of South Africa like few others. Feel special 😉 

Photo: Roberto van der Hoeven

 

If you have any questions or your own suggestions feel free to contact me or leave a comment 🙂 

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A luxurious choice

I have made a happy, relieving decision recently. Personal decisions to calm your mind and to choose your personal path are so important for your personal wellbeing. For a while I had been struggling with this decision in my mind; making one choice generally means to sacrifice the good stuff the other choice would bring. Although this is really a luxurious choice, it’s not an easy one. 

See, I  moved to South Africa when I  was 12 years old. A very influential age – your teenage years are upon you and life revolves around development. In this age group much more than any other, I will argue. I lived in South Africa till the age of almost 19, when I left SA for (temporary) good. This immigration influenced my way of thinking about this world in a massive way. My place to settle down ranges from East to West, North to South. My ‘the one’ could be anywhere on this planet, speaking any kind of language. But to be realistic, I will never live in all the countries this beautiful earth offers me. This means that I constantly question what I am missing out on, where next I will go or where next I will live a part of my life. I am very grateful for everything I am able to do, but at the same time it is quite a lonely existence. 

The man I love and I are not together, because we don’t know if we will ever be. My closest friends are spread over the globe, whom I can always call but hardly ever meet. A luxurious choice, I know. But nonetheless a hard one. My family is spread over 3 different countries, none of which I can be in at the same time, to see them all, at once. I love my family, I love my friends, so where do I choose to go? Even the answer to this question differs: choose yourself, choose your family, choose your friends. Depending on the person I talk to, and his or her culture and background. 

Life is beautiful, especially when one can make such luxurious choices. But wow, it is a difficult one. Confucius would tell me to choose my family. They are the reason I exist, and why my existence matters. Laozi would tell me to go with the flow, to evaluate each choice as it presents itself in terms of my life lived in contentment. 
Pretty much, the choice comes down to yourself. I often make choices based on my gut feeling, reasoning, but perhaps most importantly to me is that it is in accordance with how I want to live my life. In all honestly, life is so incredibly short for many of us. If you have to think about the bigger picture – what is the life you want to have lived when you are looking back on it? 

My actual decision

~~~~ coming back to my luxurious choice – I have decided to narrow down the countries in which my possible future lies. It might not even happen, I might end up somewhere 4000 km to the East. But at least for my mind and for my research, it makes things a lot more comfortable. They are:
– China
– Singapore
– Australia
– South Africa
– The Netherlands 

I might just see you there 😉 

Could you say no to this, though?