Summer holidays

Just like last year, we had a mix between camping and staying in cottages during the last December/January holidays.

We started with camping in Greyton at Twin Rivers. This camp site is completely off the grid, but has amazingly large sites. We loved staying there as the river is toddler-friendly and just a short walk away. The biggest downside was that the sites weren’t as absent of music as they advertised. Granted, we did go in the busiest time of the year (between Christmas and New Year’s), but if I’m expecting to only hear sounds of nature, I prefer not to hear someone’s music blasting the whole day.

For New Year’s Eve, we rented a house in the Wolfkop Nature Reserve. It was one of my favourite New Year’s Eve celebrations to date. The weather was stunning (and we were glad to have aircon), and the company was great.

We then continued to a luxurious camp site in Montague: Glen Eden. The camp sites were massive as well, but because of the fencing setup, we ended up having our tent right next to the dinner table of our neighbour, which isn’t great if your sleeping rhythms are vastly different (they were). The ablutions were probably the best we’ve seen at any camp site. However, both the wind and the rain ruined the last part of our trip. For me, the site was also a bit too curated. I prefer the more natural feel of the first site.

While we were going to go straight to Wilderness after this, last-minute we decided to stay a night at a hotel in Knysna as the weather forecast continued to be bad. This turned out to be a good decision; we had a relaxed time there before pitching our tent in the SANParks Ebb & Flow camp, a place we’d been on three other occasions. Wilderness’ weather is unreliable, but if the weather is good, it’s probably one of the best places to camp. The weather during the last days of our trip was outstanding: sunny, almost no wind, nice water.

We deliberately moved around a few times during this trip, some of it was because we booked too late, but we also wanted to find some good camping spots. We learnt a few things along the way: weather is the all-defining factor for camping with a toddler, it’s horrible when it’s raining but the best thing when not. Furthermore, we also learnt that if you’re wondering if your tent can bare another summer holiday, it probably can’t. I had to use duct tape to keep it together towards the end, as the wind in South Africa can get vicious.

Here are some pics of our trip: