What I get up to when I'm planning my next trip

Don't believe anyone who tells you I only drink decaf cappuccino!

This cappuccino and muffin were the last things I ate on my last trip to Cape Town. The trip where I had to stay an extra day because my husband forgot to book a ticket for my Cape Town to Johannesburg flight. As I was sitting at the restaurant (Bilboa), I was thinking about the many other places I still have on my bucket list. As far as South Africa goes, I still need to do the Garden route. I was horrified when the fires happened some time back, thinking I had missed my opportunity to see the Garden route, for good. I believe some good Samaritans donated money to bring that area back to life and I'm grateful because it means I still have the opportunity to experience it. The Garden route has been on the cards for a while! Actually, on our trip with the kids a couple of years ago, we drove from Johannesburg to Cape Town (the longest drive ever!) and our plan was to use this opportunity to explore the Garden route. The problem here was that we didn't plan properly. We didn't take time to understand the routes we would have to take to make our journey practical.  We didn't interrogate the dates to understand which days would be idea for us to do this etc. So, in the end, as we tried to fit in the idea of getting to the Garden route as we were driving to Cape Town and we realized we were working things backwards. It was going to take far more effort and time than we anticipated. And so, that opportunity was missed. I'm still hoping to make it happen within the next couple of years.

It's easy to point out the places to add to your bucket list when you've heard something about them but I'm pretty sure there are places out there, which are worth visiting but because they haven't been advertised or spoken of, we won't even know of their existence. After our discovery of Cathedral Cave in Clarens, Free State, earlier this year, I realized that South Africa has a lot of hidden gems. The best way to discover them is if you do the things that tourists do. It's not surprising to hear some tourists talk about places we as South Africans don't even know about our country and that's because they are here on a mission to discover all the beauty that South Africa has to offer. Something that a lot of us might take for granted because we tend to think 'we know our country.