Flying Through the Air with the Greatest of Ease in Tsitsikamma

It isn’t everywhere that you can swing off of 600-year-old trees by day and have a drink in an old safari hunting lodge by night, but you can in Tsitsikamma, South Africa.

Tsitsikamma (pronounced sit-see-comma) is a little bump-in-the-road village (not city, not town, definitely village) nestled between the mountains and the sea on South Africa’s Garden Route.  We stayed at the historic Tsitsikamma Village Inn, a collection of little houses set around a pretty, flower-filled courtyard.  Sort of a village within a village.  Our room was in the old barn, renovated to look very minimalist and modern.

 

Our favorite part of the hotel, though, was the Hunter’s Pub.  A place where safari hunters would come a century ago to toast their exploits, this is the sort of place every “Old World” pub back home aspires to be.  Skulls and skins on the wall, whiskey behind the polished wood bar.  We ate dinner here by the fire on both chilly evenings of our stay, the perfect end to action-packed days.

 

So what did we do? Let me just say this:  an off-roading Segway tour in the forest is way cooler than it sounds.  It was my first time riding a Segway, but Jordan was an old pro from his Disney days.

 

The highlight, however, of our time in Tsitsikamma was our zip-line canopy tour in the forest outside Tsitsikamma.  We got hooked into our harness, given a safety briefing, and off we went!  We had a crew of three with us: one guy who went ahead of us and set up the safety brake, another who stayed behind us, and a photographer.  The crew handled all the carabiner work:  securing us to the two lines, “catching” us at the end if we needed it, and hooking our carabiners to the trees.  We were never just hanging loose; we were always hooked to something.  We didn’t have to do a thing beyond push off from the tree-top platforms and enjoy the ride.  This was seriously fun!

 

Disclaimer:  We were the sponsored guests of Tsitsikamma Village Inn and Stormsriver Adventures.  As always, our writings and opinions are our own.