St Augustine's Cathedral has some stunning and striking stained glass windows. Dating back to September 1875, the windows are part of the original design and are from F. Barnett of Leith.
Imagine my surprise when I found an Afrikaans inscription on a plaque behind the baptismal font in the St Augustine's Catholic Cathedral. Very unusual.
One of my absolute travel highlights during 2017 is the fact that I finally got to visit the Hole in the Wall near Coffee Bay on the Wild Coast. It was somewhat of an embarrassment to be somebody promoting and marketing the Eastern Cape but having to say that I have never been there. It's not the closest destination to where I live in Port Elizabeth though so it's not like I could just pop up to go and see…
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IFafsAvdCQ&w=500&h=400]I have always wanted to make travel videos. When I started working as a tourist guide in 1998 I had a little video camera which I filmed my tours with. Back then I didn't know anything about editing. The video was basically what I shot and I had to make sure the video was rewound just far enough for the next shot to start where I wanted it to. All those videos are somewhere on VHS tapes in a cupboard at…
I got to see the inside of St Augustine's Cathedral for the first time a few weeks ago while on a tour of Route 67. The church isn't generally open like St Mary's on the other side of the Public Library, so if you want to see it you need to make special arrangements or alternatively just attend a service.
When the first Catholic priest, Father George Corcoran, set foot in Port Elizabeth in 1840 it wasn't just a case of getting off the boat and taking up his position. No, he was shipwrecked in Cape St Francis and had to travel the last 100km to town on horseback. Once he arrived here he found that there were only 42 Catholics in the town. But the show had to go on and in the ensuing years the Catholic community in…
Port Elizabeth has two cathedrals, both located in the city centre. St Mary's Anglican Cathedral, where the foundation stone was laid in 1825, and St. Augustine's Catholic Cathedral where the first stone was laid in 1861. Standing in front of St Mary's and looking up at the tower, I was wondering if it is referred to as a church tower or a cathedral tower.
A month or two ago I was down in the city centre on a Sunday morning to take some photos and I noticed a guy with a funny thing on his back come walking up the road towards me. As I passed I realised that it was the Google Street View camera. Cool! There may be photos of me taking photos of the Street View Guy on the net soon.Fast forward to last week and Google launched 170 trails, all…
One of the very popular activities to do when young international backpackers visit Coffee Bay is to learn to surf. Most of the backpacker lodges in the area offer surf lessons and there is always somebody walking around with a surfboard either heading for the waves or out of it. This young lady just finished her surf and was making her way back to where her friends were waiting for her. Now surfing is something I have never tried and…
Today is the 10th birthday of Port Elizabeth Daily Photo. Yes, exactly 10 years ago to the day PE Daily Photo was started by SAM (Sue and Max Hoppe) with a post featuring some generic facts about Nelson Mandela Bay. Two days later they were off and running, doing 500 posts before passing the baton on to me. I did my first post on the 15th of March 2009 which means I have been at it for about 8 1/2…