ASA4x4Safaris

30/08/2020

Our recent trip to Namakwaland and the Richterveld with Pillansii Tours was truly amazing. We would like to invite you to the Homegrown SA Tours Face Book page to share some of the views.

16/08/2020

Well deserved!

We are finally allowed to travel, and weekend getaways are once again becoming something to look forward to. We still need to maintain social distancing though so heading off to a packed resort is a thing...

03/08/2020

Our roadtrip today - a pass and then some stunning backroads

25/07/2020

Safari on foot today - coastal walk. Perfect!

22/07/2020

We urgently need to get to the reset button. Thanks Brett.

We are so proud of our CEO - Brett Gehren who has written this heartfelt letter to the South African President Cyril Ramaphosa.

15 July 2020
Dear Mr President

I voted for you. I also quietly encouraged others to follow. When you put us into the first three week lock down, my heart filled at your decisive leadership and commanding vision. Today we are marching towards our fourth month of lockdown. I'm not going to give airtime to the nonsensical rules that have left our nation astonished.

Walk me through this Mr President. We have the largest tourism economy in Africa, a few hundred billion rand. 10% of all people employed in this country are employed in tourism. Tourism has deep roots; I have seen again and again how it can have an immediate and substantial effect on a rural community which doesn't have many other options. This is not to be sneezed at by a country with the highest Gini coefficient in the world. And yet, I can jump into a taxi with 16 other people (a light load where I come from) and sit in skin to skin contact with strangers for half an hour, hop out at a restaurant and enjoy a long lunch - as long it's under 50 people - and then onto the casino for a night of games. But heaven forbid you try visit a wilderness game or beach lodge and enjoy outside activities, heaps of fresh air and sleep in your private room, all the time enjoying world class health and safety protocols. Traversing in open air game viewers is expressly not permitted. You can, however, drive yourselves around game reserves all squashed in a car. Our taxi industry is a fraction in size of your tourism industry Mr President. Perhaps you can explain why Promise one of our chefs, or Sthembiso, one of our guides, is not accorded the same recognition and respect? These skilled and valuable people now sit at home with hungry families, not earning a cent.

I have a few hundred employees who support a few thousand people, they are currently earning zero income. We didn't rest on our laurels when we were shut down. Thuma Mina - send me - we made the rallying call to all the people of Isibindi and they stepped forward and without hesitation gave of their time; game rangers, chefs, dive instructors, housekeepers, pool cleaners, marketeers, walking guides, barmen, laundry attendants they all stepped up. Our Isibindi Foundation raised over half a million rand for food parcels and are still distributing over and over again. I was arrested on one of these food drops because the Disaster Management officials said we were breaking the Act as they personally had to es**rt each and every one of our food parcels over vast areas. Using two 4-wheel drives (with nine officials and traffic police) to follow our game viewers who were handing out potatoes, meal and sugar beans to our starving rural communities. They drove for an hour every day just to reach the point from whence they would meet and "es**rt" our vehicles. The community saw right through this parody. They would have been better off with more beans. But that's another story for another day.

You've had some of the best brains in the country available to you for 4 months to come up with a considered rescue plan for tourism. Our bewildered tourism minister - when asked of her plans for tourism in a plenary session - said she has plans to open an online platform for promoting clothing, handcraft and art. The timeline of capricious promises, presidential website commitments and then hurried retractions and poorly drafted and misleading gazettes, are safely stored on google. You addressed our nation on Sunday night, yet declined to speak of or to the tourism industry and yet you gazetted, hours later, a very clear instruction that leisure tourism was not to be opened, indefinitely. The callousness you have shown to our industry and it's employees is staggering. This huge industry, which was to be our country's honeypot, with mining and construction tanking in recent years, has been broken in half. This will not only affect me and my staff and colleagues and friends in the industry. it will affect each and every South African.

Please reconsider the plight of our tourism sector. If intra-provincial tourism was allowed now it would help keep the industry partially intact. This would provide much needed salaries and a starting platform for when provincial and international borders open and South Africa can stand proud, once again, as a world class destination.

Vuka, Ubone. Ikati lilele eziko!

Yours sincerely
Brett Gehren
CEO Isibindi Africa Lodges

19/07/2020

A safari of a different kind. A horse trail starting in the Heaven and Earth Valley to the top of the world . Perfect winter days.

12/07/2020

Kleinmond.
The window between two storms.
The 4x4 routes are muddy after extensive rain so a beach day today.

05/07/2020

On our birdwatching tour yesterday we also came across the wild horses of Kleinmond. How special!

03/07/2020

01/06/2020

Stunning days! Are you planning that local safari yet?

In Level 3 Lockdown from today [1st June] people will flock to the cliff path to see the whales and dolphins playing in Walkerbay, Hermanus
Enjoy your first day back at work
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26/05/2020

Beautifully different from last week. Can you imagine the great trip into those mountains

The chilly bite in the air in the Cape is not just due to the rainy weather but rather to the snow that has settled on some peaks along the province.

23/05/2020

The trip to the Overberg will get you these views

WAAR DIE FYNBOS EN BLOUBERGE TROON |
Kleinmond by die blou blou see
foto Pieter van Reenen

22/05/2020

The wild horses of Kleinmond . This is so worth adding to your wish list!

04/05/2020

A different kind of safari. Have you been to Kleinmond?

01/05/2020

BLOUDAG SE BRANDERS | Kleinmond

27/04/2020

This short trail offers satisfying adventure ending off with magnificent views of the area.
After the trail we were off to a local wine farm for a tasting and a lunch.

27/04/2020

27/04/2020

25/04/2020

Local fun! (This was taken pre lockdown)

25/04/2020

If we cannot cross borders then we need to satisfy our wander “list” with local post lockdown trips. This is the Kogelberg area on the R44.
Worth a visit don’t you think?
Contact us to take you on amazing 4x4 adventures paired with wine tasting, exquisite lunches and even exciting horse trails

29/06/2018

It’s a migration that’s only recently been rediscovered. Ancient wildlife paths from Chobe to the vast Mkgadikgadi Salt Pans in Botswana were blocked by cattle fences in the 1960s and a massive migration of zebras and wildebeest was lost. Recently however, a fence was dropped and despite the fact that no zebra currently alive would have previously walked this route, the migration has revived. Researchers think that these important migratory routes are somehow genetically encoded and are working to discover the mechanisms behind it. But this does show us how much we don’t know and how important historical migratory routes are. While we watch this mass of life arriving back in lands where the sky melts into the land, it is certainly worthwhile assessing other fences and the impact (positive or negative) that they may be having.

05/03/2018

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A few for the birders

20/02/2018

Long lazy days along the Boteti River in Botswana

20/02/2018

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Long warm days along the river

04/02/2018

Making memories using a cell phone to capture the event :) - lots of water to navigate before we get to the Moremi in Botswana. The rainy season adds its own unique challenges and beauty.

28/01/2018

Excitement in the Kgalagadi

11/09/2017

Mabuasehube in the Kgalagadi never fails to surprise. Six beauties stayed in our camp from about 3pm till dawn. Great excitement