Evening clouds

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

The story behind the lion photo

So after doing some Google research, I finally found what looks like the story behind the “Camping in the Kalahari” photo. It is far more scary than I initially imagined. The story first appeared in Afrikaans in Die Burger on the 19 March 2011, with an English translation posted online on The Witness site. You […]

If you thought I was kidding . . .

In yesterday’s post I wrote about hyenas sniffing and pawing at my canvas “cabin”, and I’ve previously told stories of predators wandering through the other wilderness camps we have stayed in. If you thought I was kidding, you need to take a look at the photograph in this post (see Camping in the Kalahari). As […]

Kalahari: Wilderness Camps III – Urikaruus & KTC (via Notes from Africa | photoblog)

If you’ve been following the Kalahari Series and have read the other two posts on the Wilderness Camps (Wilderness Camps I – Kielie Krankie and Groot Kolk and Wilderness Camps II – Gharagab and Bitterpan), you’re probably thinking to yourself: Not another wilderness camp! Well, for the sake of completeness, I’ve decided to write about […]

Nature never got the memo that it’s Autumn down South

While everybody in the Northern Hemisphere is noticing the early signs of Spring, here in the Southern Hemisphere, I am trying hard to recognize any signs of Autumn being here. Although the calendar says it is now officially Autumn, Nature never got the memo. Though maybe after the long drought we had, Nature is making […]

A rare visitor

For days now I have been hearing this bird in our garden, but just could never catch sight of it. My bird guide* says that it is “easily overlooked as it keeps to dense vegetation“. Because of the good rains we’ve had since November last year, and the fact that our gardener has not been […]

Under an African moon

Last night, as you may be aware, was a Supermoon full moon. According to Wikipedia “In astrology, a supermoon is a full or new moon that coincides with a close approach by the Moon to the Earth.” Every fisherman I know (including Willie) was at the seaside, because as every fisherman knows the full moon […]

Podcast: The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded

As regular readers of this blog will know, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Most are interesting and/or educational, a few really resonate with me. This podcast from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s All In The Mind programme is one of the latter. It’s called The Day My Mother’s Head Exploded and is about Nikki Palin […]

Witsand II: Dwellings

In following up the previous Witsand post (Witsand I: Breede River and Coastline), I was looking for information about the stone used to build the early houses in Witsand. Piet*, a friend of Willie’s whose family has had property in Witsand for generations, not only answered my question, but gave me some material to read […]

Shift in Earth’s axis has little effect, experts say

Since Friday I have been watching events in Japan unfold with great sadness for the Japanese people. Devastation and loss of life on that scale is absolutely heartbreaking. And scary – and not just for the Japanese people. As has been reported in the media, the earthquake has not only shifted the main island of […]