So the if you are traveling from Pretoria/Joburg you know that your travels could be between 8-9 hours. This is the most boring time you will have in your whole vacation period. We always consider traveling day as our first holiday day. We usually like to leave quite early in the morning to avoid adding time to our journey by getting stuck in traffic between Pretoria and Witbank.
Here are a few tips on how to prepare for your trip that will get you there sooner and make life so much easier:
First of all – Try make sure everything non-perishable is packed and ready to go the day/night before. What I mean by this is, if you have ever been in Sodwana you know most places are self catering, meaning you have to bring your own food water and drinks to the camp site. So stuff that can defrost and go off you would rather pack in the morning instead of letting it thaw out through the night and still have to stay in hot car or trailer all the way down to Sodwana Bay.
Quick Tip: What we always like to do planning our trips to Sodwana Bay is start saving frozen foods and vegetables before going down. We always like to start buying what we call “Sodwana food” months in advanced, when ever we see a special or a cheap piece of meat we will buy it chuck it in our freezer and forget about it. Once we start preparing to go to Sodwana Bay we go through our freezer and find we never have to buy extra meat when we go down and often times end up bringing more than half of the food back. Trust me you do not wanna buy anything in Sodwana. The town spar in Mbazwane is insanely busy all day long with nobody respecting each other and very little variety of meats to choose from and the little Town heading to the beach is way to expensive with very little to offer it is better just to prepare before hand.
Also never try buy Alcohol there, they will charge you nearly double to triple the amount you would pay here in the city.
Try pack all clothes and snacks (non-perishable) the day or even weekend before you travel (depending on when you plan to leave). We find trying to rest the day before you leave to be the best course of action, as it is a really long journey to go down.
Make what we in South Africa call Padkos (road food).
You really don’t wanna go on an 8-9 hour journey without having something to eat or drink. I guess you could just stop at a restaurant or gas station and getting something to eat there, but there are two (2) reasons I would not suggest that – (1) Its less spending money for when you are in Sodwana Bay. You wanna maximize your spending in Sodwana where your actual holiday is not use it on boring restaurants along the road. Why not save a few bucks by making some great home made food that is anyway in your very own kitchen. (2) The second reason is you can save alot of time, instead of spending an hour to 2 hours in a restaurant you could rather take a 5 minute toilet break every once in a while and eat whilst driving or just stop and take 10 min to eat rather than add hours to your journey.
Take a lot of Drinking water with you!
Sodwana Water is not the same as city water, most camp sites use borehole water and as a result can upset your stomach if you are not use to it. Rather just bring your own water from home, whether it be bottled or tap water and also make sure to bring enough to last your whole trip until you come back.
Keep cold and frozen things together.
I have found if keep cold (Fridge) stuff and frozen stuff in the same container it helps keep everything cold and for the most part frozen for longer.
So the last thing to do before traveling is to get a good nights rest.
Before any long journey you need to be well rested up, so I would suggest the night before your big trip try get an early night in.
It is the big day!
You are mostly packed early in the morning just got the last few things to pack before locking up your house and off on your exciting vacation.
One last check through your to do list and were off on our exciting journey.
GoSodwana!!!!!!!!!!!!
Once you arrive in Sodwana, you will be exhausted, but still have to pack out everything from the car, first thing is get all the food in the fridge and freezer. That’s done!
Next go dump all bedding, bags etc. in the chalet/tent/house.
After that jump back in the car and go claim that beach/sea once more. Maybe you don’t need to go swim that very first day but just to see the sea once more and to breath that clean air is just so amazing.
Makes me wanna go back there right now!
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