A route with roots

For their sixth annual big SA adventure, 5FM’s 5 Drive team used themes of water, earth, wind and fire to inspire their wanderings. By Sanet Oberholzer

It’s official: December has arrived, ushering in holiday season across the country. Many Gautengers are gearing up for their annual migration to the coast, while the bush-loving types are dusting off their game-drive outfits, and Joburgers who are staying put are looking forward to that strange time of the year when the streets reverberate with an unfamiliar hush.

For others, this is a time of adventure: of taking to the open road and exploring the small towns in hidden nooks and crannies, the unusual tourist attractions and the passes with bends and turns that lull like a lullaby.

If there’s one group of people who know a thing or two about road trips, it’s 5FM’s 5 Drive team. For the past six years, host Nick Hamman has embarked on the radio station’s annual heritage tour over September. Joined for the third year by 5 Drive news presenter Nadia Romanos, sports presenter Jude van Wyk and traffic presenter Bibi Mbangula, Hamman and his team set out to traverse all nine provinces in just under four weeks during Heritage Month.

BACK TO THEIR ROOTS

“History is not stagnant, it’s something that’s moving. It’s something that’s not only about the past but very much about the present,” Hamman told me over a Zoom call as the tour was wrapping up. “In a lot of ways that informed many of the decisions that we took about where we went this year on the tour.”

They decided to employ a clever homophone in selecting a theme for this year’s tour: “routes” in the literal sense of the paths they would take and “roots” in the sense of where we come from, celebrating the four elements of wind, water, fire and earth.

They made stops along the way at some of the country’s universities to find out what it’s like to be a student in 2022 while they set out to once again discover some of the corners of SA filled with inspirational places and people.

According to Mbangula, “There are provinces that have some really dope things to do and see that we don’t hear enough about in December. December is the: ‘OK where are we going? Are we in Durban, Cape Town, are we in J-Bay?’ Yet provinces like Mpumalanga will always give you a good experience and in the North West you always find such gems and things to do.”

WIND

The team kicked off their tour in Johannesburg with a week exploring the winds of change. They headed to the Cradle of Humankind where their first stop was the Maropeng Visitor Centre where they learnt how humanity has evolved and changed over the years.

“We went on this boat ride which couldn’t be more appropriate because we went through the four elements: wind, water, fire and earth. And you see through these elements how the earth was formed,” Ramanos remarked in their road-trip video.

“We thought that one should start off a roots tour at the roots of the Earth,” Hamman said. “We thought some of the oldest remnants of civilisation and humanity and our ancestors that lie there were worth exploring.”

From here they headed south through the belly of the Karoo, stopping at places like the Oliewenhuis Art Museum in Bloemfontein; the Duggan-Cronin Gallery in Kimberley; the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) radio telescope project in Carnarvon, an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope; and the world’s largest post box the Flower Post Box in Calvinia.

Mbangula’s advice to road trippers is to

follow a similar route. “If anybody wants to try to do their own heritage tour and you live in Gauteng, always start with the Northern Cape. If you start [in places] like Mpumalanga, Limpopo or Durban and end off in Cape Town, that drive on the N1 is brutal. My recommendation is to finish the brutal drive to Cape Town first and then go everywhere else.

“Once you go off the N1 or the N3 you’re like: ‘Oh my word! We have this in the country?’”

WATER

At the start of the second week, the team did a broadcast from the clock tower at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town before setting off along the Western Cape coastline, stopping over in Arniston and Hermanus, where they visited the Old Harbour Museum.

“My favourite part was Hermanus because we got to see so many whales. It was incredible to be able to look out at the ocean and every single time we did, there was a whale,” said Romanos.

Their journey along the coast saw them complete the longest over-the-ocean zipline in the world in Mossel Bay spanning approximately 1,100m in length and led them in search of the juiciest strawberries at the Redberry Farm in George. Next they took on the Montagu Pass and headed over to Jeffrey’s Bay for a surf lesson.

FIRE

The week-long route of fire drew from SA’s history of conflict. “We wanted to explore the idea that SA is a country born of conflict. The reason the country is the way that it is, is because of what happened in the past,”

Hamman explained.

“KZN and the Eastern Cape have a particular deep connection to the country’s struggle history a struggle history as is told by the Nelson Mandela Museum in Mthatha, on the various battle grounds scattered across KZN and in the KwaZulu-Natal Museum in Pietermaritzburg.

In Port Shepstone the trip took on an adventurous twist with a visit to the Oribi Gorge Nature Reserve and a walk across its suspension bridge. “There’s this thing where you see people take really dope photos on Instagram and Oribi Gorge has been one of those places,” Mbangula said. “It’s absolutely frightful!”

The week ended on a poetic note with a braai at the Drakensberg Amphitheatre Backpackers on Heritage Day. “We got to braai and be around different South Africans who were travelling for different reasons and we all got to debate how to cook the best steak and how people like their chops done, how much lemon needs to go on the chicken.” For Hamman, it’s the fraternity of the backpackers that makes it a special place.

EARTH

For their final week of the tour the team passed through Mbombela, which warranted a stop at the Sudwala Caves. Formed about 240-million years ago, they are the oldest caves in the world.

They then travelled from Mpumalanga into Limpopo, starting off in the tropical northeastern area, well known for its bountiful avocados and citrus fruit, and traversing the Magoebaskloof Pass before encountering the arid climate of Limpopo, a testament to the plentiful climates and landscapes that make up the richness of SA.

Before returning to Gauteng, their last stop in Limpopo was the Bakone Malapa Open-Air Museum, which offers insight into Northern Sotho history.

As Van Wyk summed up, “We did a lot of awesome things, we visited a lot of awesome places and heard a lot of awesome stories. It’s incredible how there is so much to do in SA; we can do this for years to come and still get different stories.”