Over Christmas 2016 and into the New Year, a friend and I drove more than 3,000 km across South Africa and into Lesotho, with a stop in Dubai on the way.
It was my first time in Africa. In 2 weeks we went shark-cage diving, rode an ostrich, did a safari in our own car, and crossed into a country that many people have never heard of.
How far is 3,000 km, really?
Let me put the number in Singapore terms. 3,000 km over about 14 days works out to roughly 210 km a day, every day, on average. The drive from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur is about 350 km, so it is like doing more than half of that trip daily for 2 weeks straight.
The timing helped. December is midsummer in South Africa, so the days are long, with the sun setting in Cape Town at around 8pm, which matters a lot when you still have 200 km to cover after a late lunch.
So why drive at all, when a tour bus could do the work? South Africa drives on the left, the same side as Singapore, so the steering wheel sits on the side a Singaporean driver expects. And with our own car, we could stop for a view, a farm stall or a herd of something on the roadside whenever we wanted.
What is shark-cage diving actually like?
Here is how it works. A boat takes you out to where great white sharks feed, and a steel cage is tied to its side. You climb in wearing a wetsuit and a mask, the crew throws fish bait into the water to bring the sharks closer, and when one swims past, you hold your breath and duck under to watch it. You need no scuba licence for this, which suited me, because I snorkel and do not dive.
Did I really ride an ostrich?
Yes, I did. It sounds like a joke, but the farms there offered rides to visitors.
The ostrich farms are around Oudtshoorn, in the Little Karoo, a town that got rich from ostrich feathers in the late 1800s, when every fashionable hat in Europe needed one.
How does a self-drive safari work?
Most people picture a safari as an open jeep with a ranger. In parks like Kruger, you can also do it yourself. We did ours in Addo Elephant National Park, near Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth). You drive your own car on the park roads, you stay inside it the whole time, you get out of the park before the gates close at sunset, and the animals are wherever they happen to be that day.
That last part is the whole game. You drive slowly, you scan the bush, and you watch for other cars stopped at odd angles, because that usually means someone has found something.
Is Lesotho really a country?
When I first told people I was going to Lesotho, I had to add, “Yes, this is a country!”
Lesotho is an independent kingdom completely surrounded by South Africa. Only 3 countries in the world sit entirely inside another one, and the other 2 are San Marino and the Vatican. The difference is altitude. The whole of Lesotho sits above 1,000 m, and its lowest point is around 1,400 m, which is why it calls itself the “Kingdom in the Sky”.
How did the trading fit in?
I kept trading the whole time, for about 15 minutes a day, just as I do at home.
That routine is the reason a 2-week drive across a continent is possible at all. I wrote up how it works, the watchlist, the alerts and the time zones, in how I trade while travelling.
What would I tell a friend planning this trip?
If you are planning a South Africa road trip, the one thing I would tell a friend is to count the kilometres before you count the sights. The country is huge, the sights are far apart, and 210 km a day adds up fast when you also want time to stop.
This trip came 2 months after my trip to Ireland, Iceland and the UK, so I went from Iceland in October to South Africa in its midsummer.
Have you driven in South Africa? Would you get in the shark cage? Let me know in the comments.
All my other trips are on the travel log, country by country, and more photos are on Instagram, @iamrecneps.
