The 2018 IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship is around the corner and tens of thousands of top international triathletes and their families are about to flock into Port Elizabeth for a week. Most will never have visited our beautiful city and will have no idea of what to do while they are here. And there is just so much choice – Nelson Mandela Bay is a traveller’s smorgasbord of memorable experiences just waiting to be tasted.
Whatever direction you decide to head, there is something to see and do, and there is so much variety – beaches, forests and mountains for nature lovers, vibey hangouts for city slickers, waves, wind and bumpy tracks for sporty types and history and creativity everywhere for the arty folk. Whether it involves beachcombing, hiking, surfing, eating, culturing, adventuring, chilling or socialising, our lovely little coastal city has it all.
All this choice can be a little overwhelming, so to help make your travel planning a breeze – for the Iron-men, Iron-women and their families and friends, and for everyone travelling to Port Elizabeth for the first time – here is our guide to Nelson Mandela Bay’s Top 5 must-see tourist attractions.
One of my favourite childhood books was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Besides the deliciously fantastic storyline, the ending always fascinated me – when Willie Wonka took Charlie into his glass elevator and headed upward into the unknown.
This is exactly how I felt when we entered Graskop’s brand new glass elevator. The shiny modern structure clinging to the vertical side of a naturally stunning deep gorge is a sight to behold. Instead of up, it transported us deep down into the unknown caverns of the enormous gorge, below the canopy of tall trees and into a hidden world entirely magical and full of sweet and surreal surprises.
We are led silently in single file down a dark corridor and ushered into a small office. The door clicks shut behind us, locking our family into the room. We stand in a quiet huddle, staring at the ominous chalk outline in the shape of a fallen human body on the middle of the floor. My heart is pounding and my first instinct is to pat my pocket for my phone, but it’s not there – they took everything from us before locking us in.
We look around – besides the body outline, it looks like a normal office. Suddenly, a raspy voice crackles over a loud speaker telling us about the murder that happened here. He explains that our only chance of escape is to solve the heinous crime in under one hour. There is a large blank TV screen on the wall that suddenly flashes with a white number 60:00….59.59…..59.58…..the countdown has started!
Where do we even begin?
Guest post by Tracy Wynter.
There are some things that money simply can’t buy: the ticking of your vehicle’s engine right after you’ve switched it off after reaching your holiday destination, just before you start unpacking, in that happy moment knowing that you’ve finally arrived; the deafening silence of a Karoo afternoon, holding its breath as the clouds gather, teasing with the promise of rain; the deliciously grassy fragrance of a horse’s breath, tickling your nose as your lean your head against its face; the reflection of the flickering fire on a half empty glass, when everyone is fed, tummies are full and all the problems of the world have been solved around that very fire ….
This is one of those moments. A moment when all is still, save the occasional call of an unidentified drab little bird, and the persistent buzzing of a hopeful fly. The Tankwa Karoo provokes reflection and introspection – this is not a place for the restless and easily bored, those who need to keep moving and ticking boxes in order to have their holiday dreams fulfilled. It may lack the drama and flamboyance of the Tsitsikamma, the showiness and overabundance of Addo and the gentleness of the grassy plains of Cradock. This is a place that somehow seems a little reluctant to share its magic; until you’re still, that is, and start to appreciate it for its spartan, rugged beauty.
One year ago, we published an open letter to the universe, putting our travel dreams out there in the hope that they would morph from happy imaginings into something a bit more tangible.
According to Rhonda Byrne, The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction. The law of attraction says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source – you.
This year, we put Rhonda’s theory to the test and the Universe delivered tenfold. Perhaps not always in the exact form we had imagined, but pretty darn close. So, on a scale of 1 to 17, how did we do?
