I think it might be going a bit far to call this the ultimate guide to Cape Town and the Western Cape, but I like to think it might be up there. I didn’t choose the name – that was Wesgro. And kudos to them for taking seriously their mandate to market the Western Cape – not that it’s a hard sell.

I mean, hey, what’s not to love! Stunning beaches, more flowers than you could ever imagine, wine, food, crazy adventures, weird museum, cute little dorpies, funny old shops, funky art galleries and studios, and more.

For me the Western Cape – and Cape Town specifically – is home, so researching and writing this was a real joy, and I hope it encourages you to come and visit. But not until we have some water in the dams, OK. Pretty Please!

Look, writing travel books isn’t all romance and glamour you know. It’s hard work, and sometimes it can be quite stressful. But, when I was commissioned to tart up Map Studio’s Kruger Park visitor’s guide, I gave it some serious thought – for about 25 seconds – and then I packed my car and headed straight up there.

Oh shame, poor me. A month in Kruger. I really had fun with this one. Even when you’re working to tight deadlines, there is something about being in the bush that just lowers your blood pressure – and possibly rewires your brain. In fact, the weird thing was that, when I left the park I almost had a panic attack. I had not driven over 50km/h for weeks, and most of that time I’d stuck to 40km/h or less. But once out the park all these maniacs were overtaking me, and in self-defence I had to speed up to a terrifying 80km/h. Seriously, it took days for me to get used to driving at 120km/h again.

What with the rising cost of travel, the scary exchange rate, the cost of visas, traffic congestion on the roads to the coast, the environmental cost of air travel and – generally – a lack of time, I thought perhaps it was time to revisit the concept of holidays. So – and the irony is not lost on me – I drove up to Joburg to do a book about staycations. OK, I wanted to actually do it about Cape Town but the publishers figured Joburg was a better sell, and publishing is a business.

And you know what? I had fun – and that’s a hard thing for a Cape Town girl to say about Jozi. But there really is a lot more out there than I thought there would be. And, OK, I did have to look a bit further afield so I enhanced the staycation concept with one-tank-cations.

Staycations are a win-win game. No long queuing and interviews for visas, no long queues at the airport, no long flights, and no long thousand-yard-stare endless drives through the Karoo. By choosing a staycation, you minimise the boring, long bits of holidays, and maximise the fun, interesting bits that make for treasured memories. And, hey, you save money, save fuel, and pile up carbon credits at the same time. What’s not to love.