Ganzekraal - Near to home.

With the rising costs of petrol there days I have been looking for quick weekend getaway's that are close to home.

A few months ago, Colleen and I took a drive down to Ganzekraal one Sunday morning to go and check it out. The friendly security guard at the gate let us in when we said we wanted to go and look at the campsite. They have a lot of self catering cottages and a conference centre/event venue there as well but the 2 campsites are quite far away from these. They consist of Campsite A and Campsite B, about 300 meteres apart. We looked at both and decided we liked site A more as there were more sites with good sea view's.

The ablutions blocks are quite old and the showers quite small but had recently been re-tiled and were spotlessly clean. We found that they do have cleaning staff on both Saturday and Sunday mornings and as a result, they are acceptable.

We have now been there twice and will definitely be going again. The first time we chose a site on the upper level of Campsite A with a lovely view and the second time we camped on the lower level right on the seafront.

The only negative thing I can think of is that being a municipal campsite there is the possibility of noisy neighbours. The first time was fine. The neighbours played a bit of music but not too loud and not too long into the night. The second occasion there was a young group who started with heavy bass (Doef doef!) music out of one of their cars but I went and politely asked them to turn it off, which they promptly did, after apologising.

Another problem could be the Souther Easterly wind in the summer months as there is not much protection from this. One needs to just look at the long range weather forecast before booking.

You are most welcome to contact me by commenting below and I can give you their contact details and a list of the nicer site numbers. They will book a specific site for you.

Ganzekraal Sunset.

CampsiteA upper level

Campsite A lower level

Waterval - Porterville.

For quite some time I had been thinking about going to stay over at Waterval Campsite, near Porterville. Several friends said that they had heard it was lovely and I was also very curious to see the hike there that apparantly went up alongside a series of spectacular waterfalls.

Our friend, Toni came around for supper one night and suggested that we go there for a weekend, so we jumped at the idea. 

We set off around 4.00pm on a Friday afternoon and needed to get there fairly early at it was now the end of April and starting to get dark soon after 6.00pm. It was quite a quick and easy ride to Porterville until we encountered the last few kilometers of gravel road to the campsite. The last stretch was fairly horrendous and we had to take it slow.

We checked in at the reception and found our allocated site near the river that flows through the place. It was a lovely setting but fairly far from the nearest ablution block. I also noticed that there was not a tap to be seen anywhere. Toni and her boyfriend, Freddie arrived a bit later and we got the fire started and had an enjoyable evening.

Early on Saturday morning I set off for my early morning shower as is usual for me, before anyone else was awake and it was my first chance to really check out the ablutions. I can only say they were designed by an idiot. There were 2 toilets opposite 2 showers with a narrow gap of less than 1 metre between them. The showers were extremely cramped and no space whatsover for changing in. The was not a hook in sight to hang your stuff on and you had to leave your clothes, towel etc on the floor in the gap between the showers and the toilets. There was one tiny wash basin for brushing your teeth, also with nothing to even put your toiletries bag down on while you did this. Good job I had the place to myself is all I can say. Later in the day I subsequently saw that there were 2 other ablution facilities but on checking them out, saw they were identical to the one I had used that morning.

The hike up to the waterfalls was indeed lovely and they are really spectacular. It is also pretty easy.

Here are a couple of photo's. The kloof with the waterfalls can be seen in the first and in the second is Colleen, Toni, Freddie and his daughter, Emma.

Waterval Porterville.

Skipper Tent Trailer