I’ve written before about my experience using hop-on / hop-off buses — like Stray Bus in New Zealand and Greyhound in Australia — and how this sort of transportation is ideal for travelers who want to explore a country without the expense or responsibility (and occasional headache) that comes along with renting a car and charting your own route. Baz Bus is the go-to bus service in South Africa; they offer pick-ups and drop-offs at 180 hostels across 40 destinations (cities, towns, villages) in South Africa.

Baz Bus offers a few types of services. The first is Hop-on / Hop-off ticket — buy one ticket to your final destination (i.e. from Cape Town to Johannesburg) and then get off at as many stops as you like in between those cities. You can only travel in one direction (no backtracking) and there is NO time limit by which you must arrive at your final city. Take as long as you want to see the sights of South Africa along the way. Check out some popular routes and prices below — I’ve added the conversion to US Dollars in red to give you an idea of what it costs in that currency as of August 2015 (prices are subject to change so check the Baz Bus website for the most current numbers). There is also an option to book point-to-point tickets between any South African cities, i.e. you can customize your bus ticket to fit any itinerary.

The second kind of service offered by Baz Bus is a Travel Pass — you can travel in any direction (backtracking allowed) as often as you like for the duration of your ticket, which can be either 7 days, 14 days, or 21 days. Depending on the length of your time in South Africa, this may be more or less cost effective than the Hop-on / Hop-off option described above.

Baz Bus also offers wildlife safaris (at Kruger and Chobe parks) and various tours (like the day-long Cape Peninsula tour from Cape Town), so you may want to consider adding these to your itinerary. It’s possible to book all of your South Africa travel through Baz Bus. I used their services more for transportation (like the hop-on / hop off and travel pass described above) so that’s primarily what I’ll review in this post.

This is an example of the Baz Bus timetable below — note that it changes every few months so click that link to see the most current timetable. This is the key document to figuring out which days buses depart from which cities, as well as the time frame in which they pass through each area. You’ll notice that buses usually depart 4 or 5 days out of the week in any given city — just make sure those days of the week line up with when you’d like to travel. This may mean that you spend an extra night somewhere (as I did in Cintsa) or have to leave a day earlier than you’d like (as I did in Coffee Bay). But if your schedule is flexible enough, the buses are both frequent and reliable.

FYI — once you have a Baz Bus pass / ticket, you still need to book yourself onto the specific bus for whichever dates you want. To do this, you can either email or call Baz Bus to tell them your ticket number and which bus you’d like to be on (phone number = 0861 BAZ BUS / 0861 229 287 … email = info@bazbus.com). Or you can simply ask your hostel to book you onto the next bus and they’ll make the call. It’s really easy to do. If you are traveling in the high season you might want to schedule your next bus a day or two in advance just to guarantee there’s space, but I traveled between seasons (October) and had no trouble booking myself onto a bus the day before I traveled.

Now let me recap my experience with Baz Bus. I sign on for two point-to-point tickets — from Port Elizabeth to Durban, and then from Durban to Johannesburg. I stop a few times along each route (in Cintsa, Coffee Bay, and Amphitheater Backpackers in Drakensberg to visit Lesotho). This whole journey takes me 10 days.

Before I continue, allow me to take a brief moment to tell you about Port Elizabeth — I spend a mere 24 hours here, but it’s quite lovely and perhaps worth more of your time depending on what you want to see. Addo Elephant Park is nearby and if I hadn’t already seen so many of these impressive creatures elsewhere (like at the David Sheldrick Orphanage in Kenya) then I’d probably schedule a visit. Instead I take the day to relax at my hostel Hippo Backpackers where I run into two friends (Vanessa and Sandra from Germany) who I met at my favorite hostel in Cape Town 10 days earlier! What are the odds?

The hostel is located a two-minute walk from a whole block of fun bars and restaurants. We pick a spot to grab food (lunch and coffee for me, a mid-afternoon sweet treat for them) while catching up on our nearly identical Garden Route experiences (they bungee jumped too!).

Vanessa and Sandra leave mid-afternoon to drive to Addo Elephant Park where they will camp for a few nights. Later that evening I return to another restaurant called The Two Olives that serves pizza. My waiter is a young guy named Joshua Terry who is really big on the Instagram scene in Port Elizabeth — he sees that I am editing photos on my laptop and we chat about photography, social media, and Port Liz. How neat to connect with another photographer like that.

Oh, and there’s a dessert platter on the menu at Two Olives that I can’t resist trying — it’s got deep friend Lindt chocolate balls (!) along with ice cream, chocolate sauce, a mini brownie, and cheesecake. My Garden Route road trip may be officially over but my No Dessert Refused motto is still going strong.

Okay, from here on I’ll keep the city recaps to a minimum while detailing my Baz Bus route. I’ll delve further into each stop in future blog posts, but I only snapped a few photos in Port Elizabeth so it made sense to share all of them here.

I wake up bright and early to depart Port Elizabeth and head to Cintsa.

Meet Jay, my first Baz Bus driver. He picks me up promptly at the appointed time (around 7am) at Hippo Backpackers. We drive to a few other nearby hostels to pick up more passengers and then begin the drive to Cintsa, stopping in three cities along the way to drop off and pick up more people.

Jay is my favorite driver on the Baz Bus circuit — he has worked for this company for over a decade and he’s a remarkably charitable human being. Jay drops off food (some donated, some purchased out of his own pocket) to poor communities along his bus route. See those trash bags on the seat in the photo below? Those are full of leftover bread from a bakery. There are other bags under the seat with canned goods.

Jay communicates with someone at each village to alert them of his impending drop-off. We pull over two or three times just for a minute or two, and at each stop there are women waiting to receive the bread and perishables in gratitude.

More members of the community are waiting as the women bring over Jay’s donated goods to be divided up amongst the village families. This feels so good and I’m merely a witness to Jay’s kindness. As citizens of planet Earth we are all lucky to call Jay our brother; he is a shining example for the rest of us.

We stop every 60-90 minutes for a bathroom and snack break. Here is the first stop not too far outside of Port Elizabeth:

The breakfast options may be unhealthy but they sure are tasty…

We reach Cintsa by noon. This is my first glimpse of the Wild Coast, a region of South Africa along the Eastern Cape marked by rivers and lush coastal forests. Jay drops us off at Buccaneers Backpackers, a sprawling property with this incredible view from the main deck:

A few words about this accommodation — it’s a very relaxing place to stay. There isn’t much to do OTHER than relax, so it’s great for people like me who have trouble unplugging (the extremely weak wifi signal forces me to take a break). The beach is unbelievably scenic and I’m content to sit out and read or edit photos for a few hours on the main deck. This can be somewhat of a party hostel and upon being assigned a dorm inside a free-standing house with evidence of party-goers I ask to be moved; the front desk kindly switches me to a much quieter dorm room with no fuss. They serve group dinners nightly for a small charge and there’s a bar on-site; a glass of wine costs less than $1. To visit a store, cafe with wifi, and bar, you can walk across the tidal river out front to reach the “main” road in town. Beware that during high tide the stream of water that runs from the ocean to the lagoon rises to hip-level and becomes difficult to cross. During low tide it barely reaches my ankles; if you check the tidal schedule you’ll be fine. Also be sure to look for the kite surfers who frequent this area; they do all sorts of tricks over the water.

Originally I plan to spend just one night in Cintsa but Baz Bus does not run consecutive days during my visit so I book two nights instead. I’m glad it plays out that way because it’s so relaxing and I dig the views.

My next stop is Coffee Bay, also along the Wild Coast. From Cintsa it’s about a 3-hour bus drive to a rest stop in Mthatha, at which point we have a 45-minute or so layover (enough time to order a burger and a sundae at a diner). Then a different Baz Bus picks us up for the final hour-long ride to Coffee Bay. While Cintsa and Coffee Bay look relatively close on the map, this area is remote and it takes awhile to get from A to B.

I have high hopes for Coffee Bay but it turns out to be sort of a bust. I’m here to visit the Hole in the Wall, an impressive rock formation just off the coast with a tunnel cutting through it. But when I inquire at the the front desk of the Coffee Shack hostel (they offer a day-long hike to Hole in the Wall), they tell me there’s no way I can hike there and back the next morning before the Baz Bus departs at 2pm. And since there’s no bus scheduled for the following day, my options are to either stay one night and skip the hike entirely, or stay three nights and do the hike. I can’t justify padding my itinerary by two extra nights (and there isn’t much else to do in the area except surf) so I have to forfeit the hike. Bummer! But if you plan a trip here I hope that your visit falls when there is a two-day break between scheduled buses so that you have one full day to enjoy the hike and scenery.

(image via)

At least the breakfast and coffee are good… as its name suggests, the java is excellent in Coffee Bay.

The next day around 2pm I hop on a Baz Bus back to Mthatha and eat a meal at the same diner as the day before while waiting for the long-haul bus to Durban. It’s a schlep and we don’t arrive in Durban until 10:30pm.

I have to admit I have low expectations for Durban and am SO pleasantly surprised by the city and other travelers I meet here. The foundation is laid at Happy Hippo Hostel — the front desk is helpful, the owner offers us a ride to a restaurant that’s too far away to easily walk to at night, and I meet three friendly fellow travelers from the States (Andrew, Kate, and Brittany). Here we are enjoying dinner at Taco Zulu, a restaurant that has tacos, pizza, and sushi. All of my favorite foods in one place!

The next day Brittany and I uncover a true gem of a coffee / lunch spot called Freedom Cafe. We never would have found it ourselves (it’s tucked away off a main street) but a nearby used bookstore owner tips us off.

Two days after arriving in Durban, I reluctantly say good-bye to my new friends and hop back on the Baz Bus for round two — this time heading to Amphitheatre Backpackers in the Drakensberg region of South Africa.

Check out the smiling faces of my fellow Baz Bus passengers below. Also note that the bus is not full — on each leg of my journey there were always empty seats scattered throughout so that we didn’t have to sit on top of each other.

Amphitheatre Backpackers is a chill oasis in the mountains. I’m here because they offer day trips to the magnificent Amphitheatre hiking trail and nearby Lesotho.

View of the Drakensberg region from the bus window:

It’s an easy decision to sign up for a day trip to Lesotho. After crossing the border, roads disappear and we find ourselves driving over mud and rocks. Our group is split into two vans — we are the only vehicles in sight — and yet one accidentally backs into the other while trying to climb up slick terrain. Our guide handles the predicament SO well and our tour continues as scheduled (we are only a half-mile from the village). The landscape is breathtaking.

We hike to a historic cave dwelling way above the village:

The locals are really welcoming. The tour company (run by Amphitheatre Backpackers) does charity work for the village so the people here have a nice rapport with tours that pass through.

The next day I do the Amphitheatre hike, a trail I’ve long anticipated. I can’t wait to describe this experience in a longer post because it’s unlike anywhere I’ve been before. I’ll keep mum for now and let these photos preview what’s to come.

After two very full days in Drakensberg, I hop on my final Baz Bus trip to Johannesburg.

I spend my time in Joburg taking a city tour, visiting Lion Park, and exploring the Apartheid Museum.

It’s been a whirlwind trip — from the day I departed Port Elizabeth to the day I arrived in Johannesburg, ten days have passed. I’ve seen and done so much. Major thanks to Baz Bus for providing easy and reliable transportation throughout South Africa — it’s been a really nice break from the responsibility of renting a car and planning my own routes. Instead of planning, I just hopped on a bus! This company is a great option for budget backpackers looking to travel all over South Africa.

Thanks to Baz Bus for hosting my travel from Port Elizabeth to Durban and then Durban to Johannesburg. Opinions are my own.