TRAVEL DIARIES- Our family road trip to Cape Town via N2 in March 2019

It is now exactly a year after our trip to Cape Town. This was our second trip to Cape Town, the first one was during Easter of 2012. I had always wanted to do the N2 trip to Cape Town. We initially wanted to do the trip in December 2014 and we postponed.

On the 16th of March 2019, we left Pretoria just before 5am, we filled up petrol at the Engen garage. I normally prefer to fill-up at Shell garages, however due to the fact that only fuel purchased at Engen garages was the only one that qualified to earn E-Bucks through FNB card, I had no option but to use Engen garages throughout our trip.

From Pretoria we drove along N4 passed Witbank and Middelburg and turned right towards Emerlo. We stopped a bit at the McDonalds in Ermelo and after eating breakfast we got onto N2. Along the way we saw the huge Eskom power stations. We stopped a bit in Piet Retief and continued driving along N2 towards Pongola. We drove about 100kms closer to Swaziland border.

After Pongola we started seeing massive sugarcane plantations. We continued driving towards Richards Bay. I saw game parks on our left. We arrived in Richards Bay in the afternoon and we went to see my brother for only two hours and started braaing as I wanted to get to Durban before 5pm so that I could collect my race number and shirt for the KZN Deloitte Challenge Marathon that was being held the following morning.

After the braai we hit the N2 again. I needed to put on more petrol but there was no Engen garage closer by along the N2, we stopped at a Shell garage. We got to Durban around 4pm and I rushed to the Ampitheatre to collect my race pack. We went to check into a family room at Hilton Hotel. Hilton Hotel is one of the most comfortable hotel we have stayed in followed closely by Radison Blue Hotels.

The following morning I woke up around 3am took a bus organized but the race organizers to Ballito. The race started around 5:30am and we ran 42.2kms along the Indian Ocean back to Durban. The weather was hot and very humid and not very good conditions for running fast. I managed to finish in about 4hours 10 minutes. I walked to the hotel to rest.

On Monday we checked out from the hotel around 9am and looked for an Engen garage next to the harbor, we filled up. We got onto N3 and then took the left off ramp to N2. We drove along for a few hours. I disobeyed the car’s gps and we drove about 50kms towards Port Edward and we had to make a U Turn and stopped a bit at the mall. We then followed N2 for hours. We drove past Kokstad and later on stopped in Mthatha.

Having worked in the motor insurance claims call centre for over 10 years I had an idea of the facilities in Mthatha. What I had in mind was exactly what I saw. Mthatha reminded me of rural towns like Murewa and Mutoko although it was a much bigger town. The town is more crowded and is different from other towns of almost similar size such as Mokopane etc.

Having read Nelson Mandela’s autobiography Long Walk to Freedom three times since 1996 some of the names I saw on N2 were familiar to me. Almost every rural house I saw along the road had a water tank. After passing a huge river I was stopped by a traffic cop and he asked for my driver’s licence in Xhosa, I showed him my Zim licence and he wished us a safe journey. We arrived in East London around 6pm and checked into our rooms at Road lodge and I went out to look for dinner. In the morning we drove into the city center. East London reminded me of downtown Harare in the mid 90s.

We drove to the beach and I was not pleased when I saw sewerage flowing in the road about 300 meters from the beach. We looked for an Engen garage and filled up petrol. We then hit the N2 again for more than 100kms and stopped at a Spar store in a small town. When we got to Grahamstown we debated about stopping and seeing the town including Rhodes University and the consensus was no.

We hit the N2 again and about 80kms from Port Elizabeth we joined a familiar road. In November 2018 we had driven along N1 past Bloemfontein and Colesburg turned left towards Port Elizabeth for MaNyoni’s birthday. We drove into PE and stopped at the massive Super Spar closer time the beach and bought lunch. We then hit the N2 again. Along the way we saw these massive wind turbines and I stopped to marvel at these turbines.

We continued driving and went past Knysna. Throughout my existence, I had never seen a town as beautiful as Knysna👌🏿. We got to George around 5pm and we checked into family room at French International Lodge. We really enjoyed our stay at the lodge. The following morning after breakfast we drove the final leg to Cape Town past Mossel Bay. As we descended from the mountain, traffic was at a standstill before Paarl. We stopped for about 3 hours and we later saw burnt out tyres. Community members had been protesting for municipal services and they had blocked the N2.

We got to Cape Town around 4pm and drove to Century City. We had booked a 2 bedroom self-catering luxurious fully furnished unit at Axis Luxury Apartments. We were only about 1km from the magnificent Canal Walk Mall. We stayed there for 4 nights and our boys really liked this place. We toured Cape Town, this was our second trip in Cape Town. Cape Town is a beautiful city. We visited Sea Point and all surrounding places. We also visited University of Cape Town and the Table Mountain.

On the 5th day we left Cape Town around 5am and took the N1 stopped in Beaufort West filled up at Engen Garage, Colesburg and Bloemfontein and filled up again at Engen arriving in Pretoria after 7pm. The following day I took a bus to Harare. The following month FNB only awarded me around R100😳E-Bucks points after filling up petrol of over R10 000 and all the purchases we made during our holiday. I did query with the bank and after a week they said those were the correct points. Anyway I have since stopped using Engen Garage and I am almost done closing all my FNB linked accounts.