Weekend adventures with Archie and Zoe
Cape Town is a phenomenal place and it’s easy to spend weeks just visiting local places and eating vast amounts of amazing food that every restaurant seems to almost give away, but we were keen to explore a bit more of South Africa and we’re lucky enough to have a few friends who already live here.
Archie Leeming — a true adventurer friend from university — and his girlfriend Zoe have lived in Cape Town for a couple of years and head out almost every weekend to find amazing camping spots and natural sights to enjoy. South African’s love the outdoors and spend most summer weekends surrounded by mountains and amazing sunsets, so by tapping into this local knowledge, Archie and Zoe have found some of the area’s treasures and were keen to show us.
The first weekend was a more relaxing affair. A remote New Years Eve party — ‘Search’ — kicked off the weekend. A 500 person festival in the middle of nowhere, where party goers danced at roughly built stages to an eclectic mix of music including disco, afrobeat and house. Apologies for the lack of photos, but I was keen to focus on the incredible event, especially as I had the pleasure of my brother joining me for it.
The next day, with stinking hangovers, we packed up camp and headed to a secluded gorge in Greyton, where we numbed our brains in icy water.
We then set up camp next to an inland beach, where Archie fired up our first South African BBQ — a braii. One incredible sunset and a number of sun-downers, we caught an early night in preparation for our main activity of the weekend …
Rafting.
We inflated our 3 £8 dinghies, walked 45 minutes into the local Wildlife Reserve then jumped in.
We then proceeded to pull ourselves over rocky rapids and down mini waterfalls back down to the bottom. Typically, I ended up impaling our poor dinghy on a thorny bush, so it became a race against time to hit the bottom before fully deflated. An incredibly fun activity for so little money.
Back to Cape Town we went.
The next Thursday, Archie and Zoe had taken 2 days off, so we set off for the main event. 4 days of camping in Cederberg and Beaverlac. Archie and Tom were keen to take the bikes out, so we also hired a double-cab Hilux to give us space to shove all the kit in.
The Cederberg Vineyard is a stunning place, where they have a camping site called ‘Sanddrif’. Archie had reserved us a perfect plot of land to camp on, and after 5 hours of driving, we quickly set up and headed up to the nearest rock to watch the sun go down with have a well deserved beer .
But, sat an hour and a half above Sanddrif, is the Wolfberg Cracks; a set of stunning rock formations which you can hike through. At 5am we set off, taking the main climb in the early morning light.
Typically, Archie took us through the advanced route and after a few sketchy rock climbs and shimmies through tight spaces, we emerged into a giant cavern.
Every turn you see a new angle to the place and it increases it’s beauty. Like children we climbed every part of it to see it from every angle — all of us with our cameras out trying (and failing) to perfectly capture the incredible surroundings.
Even the way down, through the wider 2nd crack was stunning. The bright red rock creating amazing shadows.
Back at the camp site, there was no time to hang about as we set off for an hours wakeboarding. The drive was absolutely stunning with vast open spaces painted yellow with corn, contrasted with tight windy roads in mountainous areas. The change in scenery was phenomenal.
Everyone had a raucous time wakeboarding on an old Mastercraft boat. All the equipment looked like it could break at any moment and with local South African music blasting over the speakers we all managed to successfully wakeboard, with only a few tumbles.
It was then a race against time to get over the Beaverlac before sunset — our last stop, where we had 2 nights planned near the Nature Reserve’s rock pools.
With a little less rushing, Beaverlac was truly a highlight of our time in South Africa. Imagine a natural Disney world. Hiking up a river, you find secluded rock pools with raised rocks to jump off. The more you explore, the more you find.
The 3 hour river scramble ends at a phenomenal waterfall which looks like a scene from ‘Tomb Raider’. We had a few (warmish) beers and everyone jumped in.
The afternoon was spent sat on cooler boxes watching the wildlife go by. It’s amazing what you see when you sit still; mongoose, bee-eaters, zebra, and a tonne of LBJs (little brown jobs, my dad would call them). The sun dipped and faded out, so the wildlife was replaced by a billion stars; a magical end to a magical weekend.
