A few months ago we spent a weekend on a friend's farm near Darlington Dam and he took us for a quick drive to see what the dam looked like. Unfortunately we didn't get to go to the dam wall itself, so my picture is of the runoff below the wall. Darlington Dam, also referred to as Lake Mentz is located off the main road between Kirkwood and Jansenville and was completed in 1922. The primary reason for the dam being…
One of the things I realised during lockdown that I was missing out on was seeing the aloes in bloom while driving through the Eastern Cape's Karoo Heartland. It's definitely one of my favorite things to see on a road trip and the thought of missing out on it this year kinda depressed me. Business travel opened a little while ago and suddenly I had the opportunity to make a quick trip up to Nieu-Bethesda for work. Yay, yay, yay!…
One of my favorite things about driving through the Karoo Heartland during the winter is seeing the aloes in bloom. But there is another Karoo succulent that grows between the aloes that most people don't really notice called Noors. The Noors is a type of euphorbia and found especially around the town of Jansenville. They are smallish, thorny plants with milky sap and the reason that the region is called the Noorsveld. The origin of the name noors is…
The Tsitsikamma and the Langkloof is linked by a short pass over the mountain between Oudebosch and Kareedouw on the eastern side. The pass only has 7 bends, all of them are minor. It does offer sweeping views of the Tsitsikamma mountains to the left (west) with the green valley on the right dotted with dams. The vegetation changes very suddenly as one crosses over the top and you enter the Langkloof. After a day in the Tsitsikamma I decided…
There is nothing as beautiful as a Karoo sunset. Combine that with a late afternoon game drive that includes sundowners with a beautiful view. Jackpot. Wide open spaces, a slight breeze, the sound of the veld, the last light as the sun disappears and colours the clouds shades of red, orange and yellow as the sky turns different hues of blue.
One of the protea species that you see quite often in the Van Stadens Wildflower Reserve is the Pincushion Protea. Pincushion Proteas normally have lots of flowers on each plant with the flower heads lasting for quite some time. You get them in yellows, oranges and reds and always make for the most beautiful photographs.
We decided to break away to the Tsitsikamma for the day and rather than just driving in and out on the N2, we took the scenic R102. The three biggest industries in the area are forestry, tourism and dairy so everywhere along the way you pass plantations, dairy farms and accommodation and activity establishments. What we didn't expect to encounter was a roadblock made up of cattle. As we crested a little hill I realised that there was something in…
Depicting an open bible, the monument faces the direction the Voortrekkers departed in Grahamstown has some very well known monuments and historic buildings. The 1820 Settlers Monument on the hill, the Cathedral of St Michael and St George, the Angel Statue, Observatory Museum with it's camera obscura and many more. One I didn't know about was the Bible Monument on the outskirts of town and I would never have known of it if it wasn't that I went in search…
I am way behind on my blogging. Like in "get Dr Strange in here with the Time Stone and send me back 6 months so I can try to start and catch up" behind. Life is getting in the way and life is made up of work, family, kids, sport, etc, etc, etc... That plus having a teenager in the house that occupies my laptop all evening, which have now conked out for the third time in a year. The laptop,…
The Wild Coast isn't called the Wild Coast for nothing. It may be paradise but it can get rough out there if it wants. So with that in mind, it's nogal strange that there are only three lighthouses (some websites say four but I'm not sure which the 4th one is) along this whole piece of coastline, Cape Morgan in the South, M'bashe roughly in the middle and Cape Hermes at Port St Johns in the North. Out of the three…