Last week I took a group of students on a walking tour around the Donkin Reserve and Route 67 and just realised again how much history Port Elizabeth has. The Donkin Reserve is a combination of history and public art and lining up the mosaic with the pyramid and lighthouse like this shows how easily you can incorporate the two.
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…
I have driven between Port Elizabeth and East London so many times over the years yet the Great Fish Point Lighthouse has always just been a dot on the coastline some distance away. The reason? Word has always been that the track up to the lighthouse is terrible and my Polo isn't quite high clearance nor 4x4. A little while ago a fellow blogger posted about the lighthouse and I asked what the road was like. "Not a problem, you'll…
Everybody knows I like to explore and in South Africa we really have so much to discover. So when an invitation to visit Umhlanga and bring the Damselfly along came from the Holiday Inn Express Umhlanga, I jumped at the chance to see a new place and share it with my wife. With two nights in the hotel it meant that we had a whole day to explore the coast around Umhlanga Rocks on foot and really take in what…
I have finally had the opportunity to take the family to see Cape Agulhas. I got to visit it the first time when I was doing my tourist guide training for the Western Cape but as a family we have never been in the area. A day of exploring along the coast took us from Gansbaai past Danger Point to Struisbaai and Agulhas. It took us a lot longer to make the journey than initially expected and the family already…
The Danger Point and the Danger Point Lighthouse near Gansbaai in the Overberg has a descriptive name very apt to how dangerous the coast here can really be. It doesn't looks as dangerous though when you photograph it with little pink wildflowers in the foreground.
South Africa has some famous lighthouses. Cape Point, Green Point, Agulhas, Great Fish and Umhlanga just to name a few. There are close to 50 lighthouse along the South African coast though and some often receive very little publicity because they are very much off the beaten track or just don't get visited as often as the well known ones. During our camping holiday at Vloedbos in the Overberg we spent one day exploring the coast between Gansbaai and Agulhas and…
I wish I had more time to go and explore Cape Recife Nature Reserve more often with my camera. It offers so many photo opportunities, one of these being the Cape Recife Lighthouse. The lighthouse was built in 1851 on the western point of Algoa Bay. Cape Recife is one of the major turning points on the South African coastline and the lighthouse warns ships of Thunderbolt Reef and other hazards which they have to give a wide berth. The tower stands 24 metres…
The western point of Mossel Bay is named Cape St Blaze and long before the first Europeans arrived in South Africa this area was home to the Khoi people. The Khoi found shelter in the caves along this coastline, one which can be found directly below the lighthouse where archaeological digs have found that the early inhabitants lived on the abundance of shellfish available from the rocks below. The Cape St Blaze Lighthouse was erected in 1864 and up until recently…
Cape Point is a many historic tales and legends. In 1688 Bartolomeu Dias passed around the point in a storm without even knowing it and only got to see it for the first time on the return journey. He named it Cabo Tormentosa or the Cape of Storms. Its also off this point and coastline that the mythical Flying Dutchman under the command of Captain Hendrick van der Decken is doomed to sail into eternity. Cape Point is also one of the biggest tourist attractions…