Eastern Cape

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The Owl House

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…

5 Comments
01/12/2008
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Ensuring the survival of the species

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…

5 Comments
29/11/2008
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VW AutoPavilion

I think I have said so before, but in case not here it is again. Port Elizabeth is part of the metropolitan area of Nelson Mandela Bay along with the towns of Uitenhage, Despatch and Colchester as well as all the surrounding country side. In the 1980's the area was known as the Detroit of South Africa due to all the motor industries in the city. Today we still have quite a lot of motor related industries in the metro.…

4 Comments
22/11/2008
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Arium Lily

By far one of my favourite flowers is the Arium Lily. The grow very much wild in the Tsitsikamma forest because of the high rainfall and lot of water there. Some of the are huge compared to those you see in people's gardens. When I used to be a tourist guide I got to visit the Tsitsikamma very often, but alas I haven't been for a while. This pic I took on the Mouth Trail in the Tsitsikamma National Park…

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20/11/2008
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Bloukrantz Bridge Bungy Jump

The Garden Route is not just a very scenic area but also an adventure junkie's playground with near countless activities to be done by thrill seekers of all shapes and sizes.The ultimate adventure activity can be done at the Bloukrantz River Bridge in the Tsitsikamma. The river is also the boundary between the provinces of the Eastern Cape and the Western Cape. Here you will find one of the highest commercial bungy jump sites in the world.Measured at 216 metres…

5 Comments
08/11/2008
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Cave drawings

The Khoisan people were the original inhabitants of much of southern Africa. Having had a relatively lighter skin color than most black Africans, evidence shows that they lived in the area long before the Black people moving down the east and west coasts of Africa arrived in the south or European colonization. The Khoisan people are divided into two cultures. The hunter gatherer San (commonly known as Bushmen) and the pastoral Khoi (sometimes known as Hottentots). The San was found…

3 Comments
03/11/2008
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Tsitsikamma

The area between Port Elizabeth and Cape Town is known as the Garden Route. It is one of the most popular tourist routes in South Africa. About 160km west of Port Elizabeth you enter the Tsitsikamma. The Tsitsikamma is the area wedged between the ocean and the Tsitsikamma Mountains and consist of indigenous forests, magnificent coastline, river gorges, streams and some of the most awesome scenery on the whole Garden Route. The indigenous forest consist of trees like the Yellowwood,…

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02/11/2008
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Elephants in Addo

Today I just wanted to post a couple of random elephant photos taken in the Addo Elephant National Park. Its been a while since I've been there and today I was kind of missing the park, so I decided to do a post on it. I have posted on the park before and you can read my first post explaining more about the park here. A family of elephants drinking water at the Domkrag waterhole. A mother elephant is leading…

8 Comments
29/10/2008
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Luxury Game Reserve Lodge

The area around Port Elizabeth is one of the prime game viewing areas in South Africa with a big amount of malaria free game reserves situated within one to one and a half hours away from the city. The biggest and best known one is the Addo Elephant National Park. As it is a National Park, it is affordable for South Africans to be able to visit it. The majority of the game reserves are private game reserves that offers…

5 Comments
27/10/2008
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Red Location Museum and Cottages

Red Location is one of the oldest settled Black Townships of Port Elizabeth. It derives its name from a series of corrugated iron barrack buildings, which are rusted a deep red colour. Building materials for these sheds stem from the First South African War (1899-1902) structures - the Boer concentration camp at Uitenhage as well as the Imperial Yeomanry Hospital at De Aar.Visitors to the Red Location Museum are not treated as consumers but active participants. The conventions of representing…

6 Comments
26/10/2008