Travel to Grahamstown

an historic town with a British colonial atmosphere

Grahamstown is situated on the N2 highway around 175 km northeast of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape region of South Africa.

Perhaps more than anywhere else in the country, Grahamstown presents an orderly English facade to the world, with a distinctly protestant cathedral, streets of Georgian and Victorian buildings, pretty garden suburbs and a substantial university.

But this genteel image conceals a turbulent past, the town having been the main outpost on a frontier much disputed between European settlers and local Xhosa tribes in the early nineteenth century. The descendants of both sides now inhabit the various areas of the town.

These days the town makes for an interesting stop on a self-drive trip, with several historical diversions and much lower cost accommodation than on the surrounding wildlife reserves.

We are very rarely asked to include Grahamstown in trips. Our guests tend to much more commonly base themselves at the lodges in the various wildlife reserves in the area, notably in the Shamwari and Kwandwe areas.

not usually a place to deploy nights