Free travel home page with storage for your pictures and travel reports! login GLOBOsapiens - Travel Community GLOBOsapiens - Travel Community GLOBOsapiens - Travel Community
 You are here: Member pages
Login
 Forgot password?
sign up


Top 3 members
wojtekd 65
Member snaps
anna_moon Bathurst - A travel report by Polly
about me      | my friends      | pictures      | albums      | reports      | travel log      | travel tips      | guestbook      | activities      | contact      |

Bathurst,  South Africa - flag South Africa
7004 readers

anna_moon's travel reports

Lions, and elephants, and pineapples, oh my!

  8 votes
Page: 1 2

After performing several puppet shows in Grahamstown, we stopped on the road between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth to visit the Shamwari Game Reserve. After a fun day on safari, we spent the night at the Summerhill pineapple plantation in nearby Bathurst.

Favourite spots:
Bathurst travelogue picture
It was interesting to stop at a private reserve as later we would visit the famous Kruger Park. Shamwari was different from Kruger in several ways – it was much smaller, and the vehicles we were able to go off-path, so we saw many more animals in a shorter period of time. Our guide told us that he had led a tour for the stars of ‘The Ghost and the Darkness’, such as Val Kilmer, when the cast had visited. Fun name-dropping aside, he was extremely knowledgeable and made the trip exciting. He taught us about the ‘Big Five’, how to find elephants (sights, sounds, and smells), and the correct pronunciation of zebra (it rhymes with “Debra” – zed, not zee, you silly Americans). We tracked down a herd of elephants, a mother rhino and her frolicking baby, giraffes, and various antelopes. On this reserve, the lions are kept in a separate, fenced-in area. I wish I had had a camera with a zoom lens, but some of the animals got so close, I didn’t need one.

What's really great:
Bathurst travelogue picture
Also included in our tour of Shamwari was a stop at ‘Kaya Lendaba’, which the reserve bills as a ‘traditional African Healing village’. Though I wondered how authentic it would be, the three ladies who lived there swept us in with a “Makos!” and told us how such a village works. The architecture was interesting – the clay huts doorways were mouths, and the eyes served as windows. Large bones and pieces of gnarled wood were set up as fences (to keep the monkeys out, they told us).

Sights:
Bathurst travelogue picture
The giant pineapple on the plantation at Bathurst rivals the tacky cement tee-pees and other similar tourist traps found in the American west, but it’s still good fun. Climb to the top of the world’s largest pineapple, and be educated on pineapple production along the way!

Accommodations:
Bathurst travelogue picture
We stayed at Summerhill plantation, in clean, nicely decorated rooms set up for a family – four or five of us stayed in one room. It came decorated in raspberry and white stripes and plaids, complete with large, comfortable armchairs surrounding a fireplace.

Restaurants:
We had a delicious lunch at Shamwari before our safari, and were given hot cocoa afterwards (it was a bit rainy that day). We also ate dinner at Summerhill, and had the best hamburgers in all of South Africa (for some reason, we kept getting fed burgers). The dining room was a large and warm wooden lodge-type setting. And of course we sampled slices of pineapple.

Published on Wednesday January 21th, 2004


send travelogue via e-mail    Publish on Facebook  



Information:
Login if you are a member, or sign up for a free membership to rate this report and to earn globo points!

 Canada
   Quebec average user rating for this report
 France
   Paris average user rating for this report
 Germany
   Munich average user rating for this report
 Italy
   Castiglione del Lago average user rating for this report
   Pistoia average user rating for this report
   Riomaggiore average user rating for this report
   Rome average user rating for this report
   Venezia average user rating for this report
   Vinci average user rating for this report
 Puerto Rico
   San Juan average user rating for this report
 South Africa
   Bathurst average user rating for this report
   Cape Town average user rating for this report
 Switzerland
   Lucerne average user rating for this report
 United Kingdom
   Brighton average user rating for this report
   London average user rating for this report

 
Publish your own story!
 More on South Africa

   Addo Elephant Nati. average user rating for this report
   Johannesburg average user rating for this report
   Grahamstown - delfster average user rating for this report
   Johannesburg average user rating for this report
   Table Mountain average user rating for this report




  Terms and Conditions    Privacy Policy    Press    Contact    Impressum
  © 2002 - 2024 Findix Technologies GmbH Germany    Travel Portal Version: 5.0.1