{"id":761,"date":"2015-04-25T22:01:56","date_gmt":"2015-04-25T20:01:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/?p=761"},"modified":"2015-11-04T00:49:39","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T23:49:39","slug":"western-cape-on-bicycle-eastern-cape-on-bakkie-and-taxi-natal-on-train","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/2015\/04\/25\/western-cape-on-bicycle-eastern-cape-on-bakkie-and-taxi-natal-on-train\/","title":{"rendered":"Western Cape on bicycle, Eastern Cape on bakkie and taxi, Natal on train"},"content":{"rendered":"

[travelmap-map height=510 first=2015-02-27 last=2015-04-21 markers=false]<\/p>\n

Cape Town to Cape Agulhas on the coastal road, then the Route 62 and then the garden route up to Tsitsikamma made my cycling journey in the Western Cape: 20days of cycling (plus some more days hiking), mountain biking or commuting with my bike made around 1500km together!
\nSouth Africa is too vast to be done completely on bicycle within a 3 months tourist visa. In Eastern Cape, I get faster with motorized vehicles: a 160 km lift from Storms River to PE and then a 300 km one to East London. Both for free by asking people with 4×4 SUV directly on petrol stations to put the bicycle in the back of the SUV. From EL to Mthatha and then up to the Drankensberg, I take taxis, these mini bus full of local people. The one from EL has a trailer, so can put my bike there. The others don\u2019t but the bike just fit inside. A big advantage as a solo traveler, a 2nd bike would not have fit.
\n

\"Bicycle<\/a>

Bicycle in mini-bus<\/p><\/div>
\nCycling up and down from Underberg to Sani lodge, I take a last taxi between Underberg and Pietermaritzburg. This one is a big VW 22 seats bus, we wait 2hours before it gets full!
\nTime is running out, I skip Northern Drakensberg, Durban, and go directly to Johannesburg with the nice night train. On Sunday evening, two trains are running now between Durban and Jo\u2019burg. Everybody seems to take the late one which runs every day. I take the earlier one, a line only opened 2 weeks ago , which have only sleepers coaches, but the first to mix normal \u2018tourist\u2019 coach and \u2018first class\u2019 coach. So it is quite empty. I stay in the \u2018tourist\u2019 class: alone is a 2 berths cabin, this is very nice, maybe the most comfortable night train I take so far (better than French, Indian or Egyptian trains, similar to the CityNightLine in Germany). And it\u2019s quite cheap; R290 (under US $30) for 8 hours \/ 500km (so very slow!)
\n

\"Tourist<\/a>

Tourist cabin in South African Train<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My route in South Africa: Western Cape on bicycle, Eastern Cape on bakkie and taxi, Natal on train<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":917,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[84,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-761","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-map","category-south-africa"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/files\/2015\/11\/SouthAfricaRoute.png?fit=478%2C291&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p31eG3-ch","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=761"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/761\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eric-creation.com\/wordpress\/travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}