South Africa African Outdoors
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Boomer Travel In South Africa
Continuing the theme of debunking the bad press that has plagued South Africa in recent years, and highlighting in fact how safe it is to travel in SA, let’s have a look at the Boomer market, and why South Africa and surrounding region is the perfect destination for comfort loving oldies with a hankering to touch the wild.
Ease of Travel
African travel in general can be a multi-layered experience with the roughest of rough travel rubbing shoulders with displays of ridiculous opulence and splendor. Tour packages are usually insulated from the seething poverty of the outside, and tourists rarely touch the quintessence of Africa. In South Africa this is also true, but the contrast does not seem so striking here.
On the surface South Africa is one of the most sophisticated societies in the world, with an industrial and communications infrastructure that is comparable with anywhere in the developed world. In keeping with this the tourist industry is highly developed, efficient and sophisticated. Not only are the most obvious sights and sounds of Africa showcased and made easily available to the visitor, but the entire spectrum of a nation that enjoys incredible cultural, social and ecological diversity is in some way or another packaged in a manner that is both accessible and affordable.
Date: October 8th, 2008 |
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‘09 Kilimanjaro New Years Eve Summit
Join me this year for a personally guided New Year’s Eve Summit of Kilimanjaro. We have a total of twelve spaces offered for this unique trip to watch the sun rise over Africa from its highest point. If you have had some memorable New Years Eve experiences in the past I can personally guarantee that this one will exceed them all.
Boots N’all New Year ‘09
Boots N’all travel network is bearing down on its own millennial milestone with …
Date: August 16th, 2008 |
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Leopard savaging a crocodile caught on camera
This amazing phographic sequence was recently captured at Kruger National Park by American Wildlife Photographer Hal Brindley while he was concentrating on a unrelated subject. According to wildlife experts this is the first recorded or witnessed incident of its type. The incident astonished park rangers who had no explaination as to why the leopard would choose such a potentially hazardous meal.
Date: July 26th, 2008 |
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The Sardines Arrive
Another great contribution from South African industry pro and travel writer Sean Ross.
KNZ Sardine Fever
It’s a real gamble setting a festival date to celebrate the expected arrival of a natural phenomenon, in this case the greatest shoal of fish on earth, many months in advance of their arrival. And even more so when this incredible mass of millions of sardines failed even to arrive at all in 2007 and 2006. So it was with great relief to the KwaZulu-Natal tourism authorities when the first shoals were spotted off the South Coast a day ahead of the June 13 launch of this increasingly popular Sardine Festival.
Annual Phenomenan
This migratory phenomenon is set in motion when millions and millions of small fish, a pilchard-type species, embark on a northwards journey along the country’s coast from their home base in the cold waters of the south-eastern Cape to as far north as the province’s capital of Durban, before peeling off seawards and into deeper waters. Why they travel this route still unclear, except probably that new territory is created as the cold winter waters from the Arctic pushes upwards into the warmer Indian Ocean waters.
Date: June 17th, 2008 |
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The Surfing Hippo of KwaZulu/Natal
A curious story of a surfing hippo has been doing the rounds in South Africa recently. First spotted in the KNZ coastal resort town of Ballito, situated about 40km north of Durban, the vagrant hippo has been steadily making its way south from the area of the St Lucia wetlands in Maputaland, where the species is very common. Reminiscent of the early 20th century odyssey of Huberta, this travelling hippo has generated enormous local sympathy and interest.
Huberta
Huberta was born in the St Lucia wetland system in 1927, and a year later was on the move, migrating south on an epic 1600km journey that would take her all the way to the Eastern Cape. She was initially thought to be male, and was named Hubert, which was later changed when it was discovered she was female. Her journey took her three years during which time she became something of a local and international celebrity. She successfully evaded many attempts at capture before eventually making her way as far south as East London. There, although having been declared en-route to be Royal Game, and thus protected by the Crown, she was shot and killed by hunters. Her body was then reverently shipped to a taxidermist in London, after which she was returned to South Africa where she can still be seen at the Amathole Museum in King William’s Town.
Date: June 2nd, 2008 |
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Tours In South Africa
Rarely does a country suffer and enjoy such striking contrasts as South Africa. On the surface it is barely recognizable as a developing country, with such iconic international cities as Cape Town, and with the mighty economic machine of Johannesburg and Gauteng. At the same time South Africa is burdened with poverty and underdevelopment on a grotesque scale, and with the forty-something generation of blacks dealing with the reality of living without educations that were sacrificed for the struggle, levels of crime and violence in the country are astronomical.
Developed World Standards
The layers do not end there. The preservation and conservation of nature and wildlife in South Africa is on a level that exceeds many countries in the west. The influence of this is widespread, effective, highly sophisticated and largely corruption free. South African standards of conservation affect the entire region, and it is thanks to efforts in South Africa that many vulnerable species, such as the Black Rhino, have survived at all. The South African parks system is extremely well maintained and serviced, and is accessible to locals and foreigners alike at very reasonable prices.
Date: September 9th, 2008 |
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The History and Culture of Lesotho
Thanks to K. Limakatso Kendall, traveller and writer, for this piece on Lesotho
Geography and Dinosaurs
First there was the land. Fifty million years before the Alps thrust skyward, sheets of golden yellow sandstone were heaved, tossed, and capped by volcanic spew that hardened into basalt. Dinosaurs slapped their tails in the muck and left footprints in hardening rock. (Looking for the plentiful three-toed dinosaur footprints is a great excuse to explore the hillsides now.) Lesotho had its own cute little vegetarian dinosaur called Lesothosaurus. Forests rose and fell. Great beasts competed, and a few survived.
The First People and Livestock
Around 8000 BCE the Baroa, or San—a small-bodied hunter-gatherer people with golden skin like the sandstone around them, traveled the lowlands in winter and the peaks in summer, and named the land in a language of many clicks. A few thousand years after the San, the Khoi, another nomadic group with a language based on click-sounds, arrived from the north. Some of the San and Khoi people mingled, apparently with relatively few conflicts, in a time when Britons prayed to be delivered from the fury of the Norsemen. The Khoi brought goats and sheep to Southern Africa around 600 CE, and in about 1000 CE, cattle.
Then darker-skinned peoples from the north and the south moved into the fertile valleys on both sides of the Maluti and established agriculture next to the Khoi and the San. The concept of land ownership was unknown, and the Khoi and San continued walking, herding, hunting and gathering while the newcomers planted millet and hemp. There was room for everyone, and the people who came to be called the Basotho lived in harmony with the land from the south banks of what is now called the Vaal river to the peaks of the Maluti Mountains, across the other side, into the valleys of Zululand that tilt down toward the Indian Ocean.
The complex societies that developed were probably decentralized, communal, and relatively egalitarian. Despite the considerable cultural diversity of the people on the land, there seems to have been little or no “tribal strife” among southern African peoples. Yet this land was no primordial paradise. Droughts or floods could be devastating; plagues of insects appeared and disappeared; wind storms, lightning, and hail troubled hunters and gatherers as well as farmers; wild animals and snakes terrorized small holdings.
Date: August 4th, 2008 |
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Surfing hippo shot dead
By Sean Ross
Nonkululeko, KwaZulu-Natal’s surfing hippo, has been shot dead by authorities this week.
The wandering hippo, whose curious behavior of taking to the surf was reported on earlier on SouthAfricaLogue, was apparently posing an increased risk to human life. Her death follows suspicions that she was responsible for the fatal attack this weekend past on 60-year old man, although wildlife authorities seem to think the wounds are not consistent with a hippo attack. Forensic authorities said the autopsy report on the man would only be available for inspection towards the end of the year.
Wandering Hippo
Nonkululeko meanwhile had been wandering freely for months, apparently starting her journey from the St Lucia wetlands in Maputaland some 250 kilometers north of Durban. It was only towards the end of June when she started nearing the populated coastal resort towns which lie about 50 kilometers north of Durban that Nonkululeko started attracting public and media attention. From then on her future lay in the balance, even although authorities repeatedly warned the public to keep clear of the animal.
Date: July 22nd, 2008 |
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Shootout at Sodwana Bay
Sodwana Shootout
You will be forgiven for thinking that the Shootout at Sodwana Bay is yet another cowboy style cash-in-transit heist gone wrong in this country with its voracious appetite for exotic crime. In fact it is nothing of the sort. The Shootout is an annual gathering of national and international SCUBA diver photographers and videographers at one of Southern Africa’s finest coral reef sites, Sodwana Bay in the Maputaland region. This beautiful, sweeping bay on the northern borders of the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Area, itself a World Heritage Site, is home to one of the most exquisite stretches of coastal waters north of the country’s shipping capital of Durban.
Date: June 3rd, 2008 |
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Pigs, Warthog, Monkeys and Elephant
Not You Again!
Some things change, and some things don’t. Robert Mugabe, after almost five weeks of political hiatus, remains in power, while galloping inflation – touted now at about 355 000% – necessitated the issue of another new banknote, the third issue in a year. This time it was a Z$500 million bill, up 400 million from the last. Currently the rate of exchange is Z$52 million to £1 sterling. A letter I recently received from a friend in Harare told me that a brief trip to the supermarket to purchase 2 onions, 4 bread rolls, 1 packet of coffee, 2 litres of milk and a cucumber came to a total of Z$1.25 billion, which would have been Z$1.25 trillion had the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe not recently removed several zeros from the local currency. You may ask me how does a man who presides over such unimaginable economic lunacy survive in power, and the truth is I haven’t got a clue.
Warthog’s Revenge
While on the subject of swine species, warthogs have been creating a bit of a stir in the industry recently, contributing their share to the regular, but admittedly infrequent incidences of bitings, maulings, stingings and occasional deaths. These often result from the too-close commerce encouraged by wilderness guides between soft skinned urban tourists and wild animals. In this case it was a Canadian tourist, Brunhilde Galke, 69, visiting Huntershill private game park in the Eastern Cape, who ran foul of a ‘tame’ warthog in the dining room of the lodge. It was probably neither her fault nor the warthog’s, but a waiter who should have known better than kick the animal after it upset a dustbin in the bar area. The warthog rushed the waiter, but then vented it’s spleen more effectively against Brunhilde as she left the dining room and was making her way across the yard to her accommodations.
Date: May 15th, 2008 |
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