Eat, drink and be cherry!
Satiate your sweet tooth and spoeg a few cherry stones at one of South Africa's most popular fruity festivals. Join the Eastern Free State town of Ficksburg to celebrate 41 years of the Cherry Festival. It’s the oldest crop festival in South Africa and it’s going to be cherry delicious.
The star attraction is the tiny ruby-red fruit just ripe for the picking. Most popular are tours of the picturesque cherry farms that take folk into the orchards to pick and guzzle the fruit to their heart’s content. Cheery festinos will find plenty of satisfying entertainment and things to do. You could spoeg your name away at a cherry pip-spitting contest where contestants compete to spit the cherry stone the furthest.
Are you charming and gorgeous? Strut your stuff at the Mr Cherry Pip and Miss Cherry Blossom competition. Watch the ‘Ready, Steady, Bake’ contenders vie against each other for the wildest cherry dish. A truly South African festival wouldn’t be complete without something sporty going on. Marathon runners and mountain bikers will be sweating it out along with more elegant equestrian events.
Oh, and of course there’ll be no shortage of beer at the beer fests. Don’t miss witnessing the making of cherry mampoer, a delicious cherry liqueur which is the local ‘moonshine’. Mmmmm.
