At the Eastern edge of Port Elizabeth runs the Swartkops River, and there is a delightful little village on the bank of the river, overlooking the city. This part of it has changed little over the years, as you can see from this photo of our French friend, Gaston, fishing there back in 1959. But over the hill, it has grown a lot, and stretches out towards the East, with shops and garages etc.
For the last couple of nights we had a bit of a lunar spectacle in the early evening sky. Looking to the west the moon was flanked by two bright stars. To the left and slightly above the moon was Venus, the evening star, and below to the right was Jupiter.
Albany road seems to be an interesting road, recently we featured floods there, from a burst pipe... Yesterday, as I often do when I am wandering around the house, I looked up to check the view through the front window, and there wasn't one! I checked the side window to see if a mist was coming in but it was bright and clear... so I realised I was looking at a fire in the valley.Luckily the fire department were already…
Very few people would have heard of the little dusty Karoo village of Nieu-Bethesda if it wasn't for The Owl House. Nieu-Bethesda is situated about 3 1/2 hours north of Port Elizabeth close to the town of Graaff Reinet. The house belonged to a woman named Helen Martins. Martins became bored with her "dull" life and resolved to transform the environment around her. She began an obsessive project around 1945 to decorate her home and garden and used cement, glass…
One of the things we were determined to find on this trip to Addo were the lions. We checked in regularly at the reception to see where they were being spotted, and drove those roads, scanning carefully. All in vain. But then, travelling along a section of road we were not really supposed to be on, because our car is not a high clearance vehicle, we got to see a cousin of theirs, and were absolutley ecstatic.... You can spend…
These busy little creatures are dung beetles, and are synonymous with Addo Park. It is cute to see road signs all over the place warning motorists not to drive through elephant dung, and stating that dung beetles have right of way on all roads!
I noticed that this is my 100th post. I didn't realise that I've done so many. So how do I celebrate my "blog century". I went scratching around my photo stock and decided to post a one in a hundred (or probably more one in a hundred thousand) photo. This pic was taken in the Addo Elephant National Park. They released lions into Addo about 6 years ago and at first people struggled to even find them. Since then the…
Addo Elephant Nationl Park is only 40 minutes from home, so it is the ideal spot for a short weekend getaway.
There are many different varieties of frogs in Southern Africa, some of them big and others small. Today I have two pics of some of the smaller frogs we have in this part of the world. Now I've never pretended to be some frog expert, so I went to look up their names in one of my animal books. If I'm not 100% on target, well bad luck then. I tried my bestest.This little guy is a Clicking Stream Frog.…
Yay Yippee Yay!! It is appropriate to feature a photo from Central today, because last night saw the inaugural meeting of the Central Sector Crime Forum. It was well organised and a strong and committed committee was chosen, with the aim of eradicating crime and grime in the area. The Chairperson is Ken Denton, who owns the majority of the buildings in the area. We are really optimistic about this initiative, and wish them all the best in their endeavours…