For me (and for many others), 2025 was a strange and sporadically horrible year. I spent much of 2025 feeling anxious and depressed for various reasons, and I blogged less than I have in any year since I started 2Summers. This is a shame because I traveled to a lot of really amazing places in 2025, many of which I never got around to blogging about.

My mom, Jeanie, walking around the Natural Bridge of Arkansas during our spectacular summer road trip across the American South. Arkansas was one of two new U.S. states that I visited in 2025.

One cool thing I just realized is that all of my best travel experiences of 2025, which were divided between Southern Africa and the United States, were road trips. I only flew once this year (round-trip), to get from South Africa to America and back — the rest of my travel was by road and rail. Also, quite a lot of my trips were solo travel — just Greylene, my trusty Suzuki, and me.

So to celebrate the end of this tumultuous year, here is a rundown of my top 10 favorite road trip experiences of 2025 — some of which you’ve already read about and some of which you haven’t — presented in chronological order.

1) Kokiville (Mpumalanga, S.A.)

Thorsten and I started the year in a teepee on a charming Mpumalanga homestead called Kokiville, just outside Mbombela. Looking back, this idyllic New Years holiday was the calm before the storm. We stayed at Kokiville for three nights and did virtually nothing except eat and stare out at the emerald-green hills of the Lowveld.

Thorsten relaxing on our verandah at Kokiville.

My best travel influencer shot of the year.

I’ve already blogged about Kokiville so I won’t repeat myself. I highly recommend it for a weekend away from Joburg.

2) Oribi Gorge (KwaZulu Natal, S.A.)

By late February I was in the midst of an emotional freakout, reeling from the figurative bomb explosion of Donald Trump’s inauguration. I decided to try to escape reality by taking a solo road trip to the Oribi Gorge, a natural wonder in the wilds of KwaZulu Natal. I stayed in a quaint chalet in the Lake Eland Game Reserve, which is known for its suspension bridge that stretches out over the gorge.

Chalets on the dam at the Lake Eland Game Reserve.

The famous suspension bridge, which reaches across two cliffs at the edge of the gorge. I walked across it alone, in pouring rain, which felt like a big accomplishment.

My visit to the Oribi Gorge didn’t turn out as planned. I only stayed for two nights, it rained most of the time, and I felt distracted and depressed. I didn’t come away with enough of a feel for the place to write a proper blog post, which is a real bummer because the Oribi Gorge is a show-stopper of an attraction and I would have loved to do it justice, especially because it doesn’t get the attention it deserves in the tourism world.

This unnamed cat moved in with me during my two nights at Lake Eland and became my emotional support animal.

All that said, the Oribi Gorge is a stunning place and it would surely be even more stunning with a bit more sunshine and a less depressed tourist. I seriously hope to visit again; it’s about eight hours’ drive from Joburg and two hours south of Durban, inland from Port Shepstone.

3) Lesotho

In April, Thorsten and I did a road trip to the Sani Pass and Maletsunyane Falls in Lesotho, passing through Underberg, KZN, and Rosendal in the Free State. This trip was an epic South African adventure and the blog posts (linked above) speak for themselves.

Greylene navigates the Sani Pass, one of South Africa’s craziest roads, between South Africa and Lesotho.

The majestic Maletsunyane Falls in Semonkong, Lesotho.

4) The Great Karoo (Free State and Eastern Cape, S.A.)

In May, before and after my Inventure, I drove solo through the Great Karoo with stops in Philippolis and Nieu-Bethesda. I was in a better frame of mind for this solo road trip than I was for the previous one; I loved driving alone through that empty desert landscape just before winter descended.

Crossing the Orange River, which separates the Free State from the Eastern Cape, after sunrise.

Statues in the garden of the famous Owl House in Nieu-Bethesda.

I fell seriously in love with the Great Karoo on this trip and I look forward to many more future road trips there.

5) The Comrades Marathon (KwaZulu Natal, S.A.)

In June, I drove to KZN to watch South Africa’s most famous running race, the Comrades Marathon. Covering the Comrades as a journalist had been a dream of mine for years and it didn’t disappoint. I managed to get right inside the gate for the start of the race, which was one of the coolest things I’ve done during my 15 years in South Africa. I wrote a detailed post about how I experienced the Comrades as a spectator — I hope you enjoy reading it.

My view as the first group of runners crossed the Comrades starting line. This moment was so cool — I have goosebumps remembering it.

6) Van Reenan’s Pass (KwaZulu Natal, S.A.)

On my way home from the Comrades, I fulfilled another long-held goal of spending the night at the historic Green Lantern Inn at the top of Van Reenan’s Pass, on the border of KZN and the Free State. Van Reenan, a high mountain pass on the N3 Highway that sits right on the edge of the Great Escarpment, has really crazy weather; motorists regularly get caught in freak blizzards in Van Reenan, only three hours from tropical Durban.

Looking out over the hills of the Van Reenan’s Pass, which was predictably freezing when I was there in June.

Greylene parked in front of the Green Lantern Inn.

The Green Lantern Inn, besides being very old (built in 1892), is famous for its resident donkey, Mrs. Bo Jangles, who is said to visit the Inn’s bar every evening at happy hour. I stayed at the Green Lantern specifically because I wanted to take a photo of a donkey in a bar, but I’m very disappointed to report that Mrs. Bo Jangles did not attend happy hour on that night. (It was drizzling, and apparently Bojangles isn’t allowed to visit the bar when it rains due to her enhanced donkey smell.)

Seriously guys, I was DEVASTATED. But it was a fun experience anyway and I did get to visit Mrs. Bo Jangles and her donkey friend, Papa Joe, at their paddock outside the inn.

The quirky pub at the Green Lantern, minus Bo Jangles (sniff).

Mrs. Bo Jangles herself (or possibly Papa Joe).

The Green Lantern receptionist.

While in Van Reenan, I also stopped in at the Little Church across the road from the Green Lantern. The adorable Little Church is 100 years old and considered by many to be the smallest church in the Southern Hemisphere.

Outside the Little Church. There were donkeys there too!

The church is open to the public, it’s so quaint inside, and there is a lovely little restaurant/tea garden/antique shop next door. There’s also some very nice-looking accommodation on the property, where I would totally love to stay on my next drive between Joburg and Durban. The Little Church is one of my favorite discoveries of 2025.

7) Memphis (Tennessee, U.S.A)

Last summer my mother and I did an epic road trip across the American South, passing through seven states between South Carolina (where Mom lives) and Oklahoma. The original purpose of the trip was to visit Arkansas, a state I had never been to, because I try to visit a new U.S. state every year. Then we realized that Memphis, Tennessee — former home of Elvis Presley, birthplace of the American Blues, and the city where civil rights icon Martin Luther King was shot — was right on the way, and neither of us had been before. So of course we had to make a stop.

Graceland, Elivs’ former home, which I really enjoyed visiting. I found it quite modest by the standards of celebrity homes today.

Obsessed with this peacock stained glass in the Graceland living room.

Outside the historic Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated in 1968. The motel is now the site of the National Civil Rights Museum, which I highly recommend visiting.

My mom and I both love barbecue, and eating barbecue (which is particularly good in the South) was a major focus of this road trip. Here I am about to tuck into a plate of ribs at Central Barbecue in downtown Memphis.

Memphis is an amazing city and there is so much more I could say about it — especially about visiting the insane Graceland industrial complex, which is an experience like no other. But this post is getting really long so this will have to do for now.

8) Arkansas, U.S.A.

Yes, that’s right: My mom drove me to Arkansas so I could see a new U.S. state. And Arkansas — which I knew next to nothing about before this trip, other than it being the home state of President Bill Clinton — turned out to be a really cool place to visit.

The best pulled pork of this entire road trip (trust me, we ate a lot of it) came from Betty B’s Smoke House, a tiny take-out barbecue joint in Forrest City, Arkansas.

The flat, seemingly endless corn fields in the eastern half of Arkansas gave way to the rolling hills of the Ozarks, where we settled into our main Arkansas destination: the quirky town of Eureka Springs.

One of my favorite buildings in Eureka Springs: a former bath house and brothel (now a hotel, I believe), with a delightfully suggestive neon sign.

The town’s famous flatiron building.

Eureka Springs was founded in the mid-19th century when word started getting around that the water from its many natural springs could cure all kinds of ailments and people started flocking there from all over the country to heal themselves. It’s a weird way for a town to spring up (pardon the pun), and 150 years later the town is still weird. Eureka Springs is also touristy, but in the most delightful way, and I wish we’d had more time there.

The Thorncrown Chapel, designed by acclaimed architect E. Fay Jones, is just outside of Eureka Springs.

9) Oklahoma, U.S.A.

When we realized that Eureka Springs, Arkansas, was less than two hours from the Oklahoma border, and Oklahoma was another U.S. state I had yet to visit, we figured we might as well extend the road trip just a little further. So we drove to Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the capital of the Cherokee Nation, in the northeastern corner of the state.

Like most of the businesses in Tahlequah, this bakery has its signs in both English and Cherokee. Incidentally, we bought a delicious chocolate fritter here.

Visiting Tahlequah was an incredible experience but it’s hard to convey in photos; we spent the majority of our time there in museums, learning about the history and culture of the Cherokee people and the terrible experience of the Cherokee (and other indigenous tribes) under colonialism in the United States. Even though I studied the Trail of Tears in school, like every other Gen-X American, I was appalled at how terrible this history was (and continues to be).

A Cherokee printing press on display at the Cherokee National Supreme Court Museum in Tahlequah. Originally the printing press for a major Cherokee newspaper, the Cherokee Advocate, the U.S. government seized the press in 1906 (for obvious reasons) and only returned it to the Cherokee in 2024.

We needed something a bit lighter to finish off our experience in Oklahoma. So we spent our last evening at an RV park called Cookson Village, where we ate fried catfish with hushpuppies, drank pink cocktails with flamingo swizzle sticks, and listened to a local Red Dirt band sing rock and country covers.

I enjoyed this but I had a hangover the next day.

I can’t overstate how fun and interesting this southern road trip was. While my feelings about America are currently…complicated (to put it mildly), I have to admit that traveling in the United States — especially by car, away from major cities and interstate highways — is still awesome in 2025.

10) Botswana

My epic Botswana road trip — from Joburg to the Okavango Delta and back — was my last trip of the year and most of you read about it in October. If not, please do, because this was a good one (see here and here and here).

Standing in middle-of-nowhere, Botswana, with our rented 5-door Jimny, Taylene. (There were four people on the trip so Greylene was too small.)

Thanks to all of you for following along on my adventures this year. I probably won’t travel as much in 2026 — Thorsten and I just bought a house and are now renovating it, which is using up all of our disposable income (and more). But I’ll definitely be going on lots of local adventures and blogging about them much more than I did in 2025. In the meantime, happy new year!