Pat Hopkins, Willie Olivier, Denise Slabbert, with photographs by Jéan du Plessis

Struik Travel & Heritage; 256 pages, 297 full-colour photographs, 36 full-colour chapter maps; 46-page full-colour road guide. R 175.06

Beautifully produced (Struik just knows how to do it), lovely to look at, well bound - this is a great book for when you’re sitting by the fireside, and planning your next trip, or the next leg of your present one.

But…

I worry that it tries to be all things to all men, and, as we all know, that’s a recipe for disaster. It calls itself a “must-have travel companion,” but I found it a bit thin on information, and it’s not the kind of book I’d carry with me in the car, where things get messy, and a cheap road atlas becomes something you almost want to bin after a month or two (and I certainly wouldn’t want to bin ‘South Africa by Road’). And I say thin on information because it’s only 256 pages in length, so a town like Mossel Bay gets only four short paragraphs (about a hundred words) and two photographs - which is a bit like getting the smell, and not the coffee.

See, that’s the problem with South Africa: it’s so rich, and so diverse, that it’s impossible to distill in any really meaningful way - and if you try, you’re going to be left feeling like you’ve been short changed.

Nevertheless, I’d definitely recommend this book. My copy’s already taken up a happy residence next to my couch, and I’ve dipped into it again and again over the past few weeks, dreaming about where my next adventure.

Buy it here