29/04/2025
A Pretoria Destination Wedding: When Donkerhoek is further than expected
by David R. Walker
Freelance Travel Writer for Travel and Show Magazine
10th April 2024
After a lengthy period of non-travel where I was pretty much within the province of KwaZulu-Natal where my home is, my cousin decided to get married in February 2024 and I was lucky enough to be invited to the destination wedding at the gorgeous Rosemary Hill wedding venue in Donkerhoek, East of Pretoria, South Africa. I happily accepted and six months prior to the wedding started investigating the logistics of travelling from Durban to Pretoria for a long weekend.
The first step was securing the accommodation. Being completely unfamiliar with Pretoria east and the wedding venue, I settled on a guest house which was seemingly close to Rosemary Hill, but as it turned out, not as near to it as expected. I had called the guest house and asked how close they were to the wedding venue. The guesthouse manager said 900 metres…So it was with complete shock when I arrived at my accommodation in Donkerhoek, Pretoria East to discover that what I had booked into was several kilometers away from the Rosemary Hill wedding venue!
Luckily I quickly made arrangements to get to and from the wedding venue: one of my cousin’s groomsman from Johannesburg was very obliging and offered to lift me for the rest of the weekend. I found the initial bit of misinformation about my guesthouse quite disconcerting, because not only was where I stayed much further away than expected, there was absolutely no food available at the guesthouse, not a morsel to be had! Now something to bare in mind is that this guesthouse was off a gravel road which actually needed a 4x4 SUV to travel on. The manager I had spoken to from Durban when booking the accommodation had not told me any of this vital information and the guesthouse website was sparse to say the least.
In a way, that’s half the ‘excitement’ of travelling, in that sometimes you don’t always get what you imagined. Just at the dawn of South Africa’s democracy in 1994, I was a youngster lucky enough to be travelling around America and I remember booking into a youth hostel in San Francisco, California where I’d thought I was staying in quite a reasonably posh area, but when I got there it was really in one of the dodgy parts of the city, called the Mission District – definitely not a tourist area! Well, I was young and that was 30 years ago. The only real scare I got was at Fisherman’s Wharf, ironically one of the most visited tourist attractions in San Francisco with the exception of the Golden Gate Bridge, and a story for another time…
A lot has changed in 30 years including the tourism industry especially with the exponential advancement of digital innovation and one would expect South African tourism establishments to have the correct information on their website. Guesthouses need to have all their up-to-date info on their website, so as to avoid disappointing their visitors, who are the lifeblood of their revenue.
So besides Donkerhoek being much further than expected, the rest of that amazing weekend in Gauteng was brilliant, from the return flights on Flysafair – an airline which I had never flown with – complete with up to date security and professionally trained cabin crew, to the effortless airport transfers that I had carefully arranged both in Johannesburg and Durban.
The traffic was of course, another story!Sometimes it’s invigorating to explore another city in your own country and see how that place survives and thrives. Johannesburg is a beast of a city, a sprawling megacity which is awe-inspiring to behold especially if you are a passenger. That unrivalled feeling of patriotism I felt when my brother fetched me from a friend’s house in Westcliff and driving across the city of Gold on the way to Bryanston in the north, passing a massive South African flag flying triumphantly, rivalling the major skyscraper in the area with the luxury Leonardo hotel in Sandton.
Well, needless to say, the Kenyan-South African wedding and reception was an amazing experience not to be forgotten. We do live in a unique country and when the Kenyan father of the bride stated in his wedding speech that him and his family immigrated to Johannesburg from Nairobi in the early 2000’s for a better life, my perspective on the concepts of travel and migration were enlightened. Sometimes immigration can be across the same continent and not always to different hemispheres.
Although Donkerhoek is not Bali or Cancun when it comes to destination weddings, the entire weekend experience at Rosemary Hill was amazing in a vibrant African setting. Next time I will be sure to book at the venue of the wedding. Guarding Durban’s Tourism Assetsby David R. WalkerFreelance Travel Writer for Travel and Show Magazine17th April 2023As a city, Durban cannot just rely on our marketing strategies or the beautiful warm weather to lure international and local tourists to our shores.
As a city, we have guard and maintain Durban’s biggest tourism assets whether it’s a local attraction or simply the ocean, who let’s face it, has gone through hell since the April 2022 floods a year ago. The warm and usually alluring Indian Ocean is one of Durban’s biggest Tourism assets merely by the fact that ocean swimmers can take a dip in the sea all year round and unlike the Atlantic, the Indian Ocean is inviting, warm and hospitable.
Besides the Ocean, our city of Durban must be the same. The city must have a welcoming and sunny disposition. With the massive new infrastructure development in Umhlanga, the Oceans Mall is a huge attraction to visitors to Durban and to the Umhlanga village developmental node. If visitors want to venture further South there is an array of interesting tourist attractions or hotspots that will entice people to return. From the fancy restaurants and the vibe of Florida Road, to the pristine beaches and management of the premiere entertainment complex on Durban’s beachfront: Suncoast Casino.
From the fascinating jewels of information hidden in our city, from the Holocaust Centre at the Durban Jewish Centre on K. E. Masinga Road to the colourful and diverse KZN Society of Arts Gallery and coffee shop in the leafy and vibrant suburb of Glenwood. From the enticing views of ships entering Durban harbour at the Point Waterfront to the extended promenade offering tourists a view of the Golden Mile from the Point to Blue Lagoon.
A major tourist attraction is Ushaka Marine World situated on South Beach which has a world class aquarium and should be attracting visitors all year round. All these great tourism assets need to be maintained and guarded against urban grime, crime and basic negligence. From the grand Moses Mabhida Stadium with its defunct sky car which would have made a superb tourist attraction if marketed correctly, all stakeholders including tourism marketing bodies, the municipality, SA Tourism need to make a concerted effort to not just market these products of Durban, but get the word out to international tourists that Durban can be just as enticing as Cape Town. Besides Durban has the best winter in the world and coupled with the beautiful weather, we have one of Africa’s great horseracing events The Durban July.
It is critical that all these Durban tourism assets which are primary infrastructure need to be guarded, maintained and marketed correctly to assure maximum visibility and increase return on investment. Let’s put the bad negativity that Durban received in the last two years behind us and focus on the next seven years of this decade until 2030 and make Durban a city with shining, exotic and fascinating tourism attractions that cater for everyone as we are indeed a rich, multicultural city that needs to be promoted.
Did I mention that Durban has a world class award winning convention centre?
