Warm up for National Braai Day

The third annual National Braai Tour is the perfect prologue to National Braai Day.

Epic scenery, road tripping adventure, early-morning cups of coffee in the great outdoors, breathtaking campsites and a few braais per day; there can be nothing more South African at heart than the National Braai Tour in the build-up to National Braai Day.

Now into its third year, the National Braai Tour continues to go from strength to strength and from iconic location to iconic location. It’s growing like a wildfire and is the ultimate build-up – a perfect prologue – to the now widely celebrated National Braai Day, which takes place on 24 September every year.

The 2016 edition of the National Braai Tour will take participants from Cape Town along the world-famous Klein Karoo and Garden Route before ending at Addo Elephant National Park. It will once again deliver an insightful journey of sightseeing splendour, campfire cordon bleu and essential learnings into the wide and varied heritage of South Africa. Once it’s over, participants and the rest of the country will be well prepared for 24 September.

“The National Braai Tour is about showcasing our vision of nation-building around a fire. A blueprint of sorts of our take on how to best celebrate heritage month and Heritage Day. It’s about bringing diverse people together to enjoy the one thing that unites us all, cooking and celebrating around an open fire,” says the man behind the tour and the National Braai Day initiative, Jan Braai. “It’s also an opportunity to build public excitement and momentum towards 24 September in a way that gets South Africans thinking about and celebrating their own heritage, our shared heritage, and how great it is to be a South African.”

As always, the route has been selected to take in the diversity of the South African countryside and to showcase historically significant spots along the way. “The aim of the National Braai Tour is for participants to enjoy themselves, but also to learn more about this great country,” says Braai.

This year the National Braai Tour will start in Cape Town with a convoy heading out of the Mother City and onto the N2. Once over Sir Lowry’s Pass, the Tour will head to Napier and Struisbaai before calling it a night at the Southern Tip of Africa at Cape Agulhas. As the journey to Addo Elephant National Park continues, the National Braai Tour will visit locations like Calitzdorp (yes, there will be a special port tasting), Oudtshoorn, Wilderness, Keurbooms and Port Elizabeth.

Before setting off every morning, participants will be treated to freshly braaied roosterkoek and barista-made coffee. That should provide the strength and stamina required for a solid day of ‘educational tourism’.

Among the many heritage sights en route, the National Braai Tour will visit the Bredasdorp Shipwreck Museum (home to a fascinating collection of shipwreck artefacts from ships that went down off the wild Western Cape coast), the Drostdy Museum in Swellendam (housed in the Drostdy, built in 1747), the ‘every South African needs to climb through once’ Cango Caves, the Garden Route Botanical Garden and take in a game drive at Addo.

In the evening it will be live music and braaing – with recipes and food provided – while uniting around a campfire will round off the day. At registration each participant is issued with a full size South African flag on an individual sized pole. These flags are carried by participants at all times. “It’s a rainbow wave of a tour”, says Braai.

“We have much to celebrate as a nation and as diverse people,” says Braai. “What better way to do that than with a tour that teaches you about our collective heritage, your fellow South African and a day that encourages you to celebrate around a fire.”