Aug/Sept 2024

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Your journey starts here...

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Behind The Scenes
How does Nieuwoudtville change during flower season? If you don’t visit during flower season, it’s so quiet it’s almost as if no one lives there. But I like that – you get to experience the small-town vibe. It’s the opposite in season, when there are
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Go!
EDITOR-IN-CHIEF (WEG & GO): PIERRE STEYN [email protected] DEPUTY EDITOR: ESMA MARNEWICK TRAVEL EDITOR: TOAST COETZER FOOD EDITOR: JOHANÉ NEILSON COPY EDITORS: MARIJCKE DODDS, MARTINETTE LOUW CONTRIBUTING EDITOR: JON MINSTER JOURNALISTS: SOPHIA VAN
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Waiting For The Flowers
Just before sunrise, it stops raining for the first time in two days. It’s the break in the weather I’ve been waiting for – my chance to fetch firewood from behind the house and carry it in a wicker basket to stack on the stoep, under the roof. It’s
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Letters
Where have you been? What have you seen? Write to [email protected] WINNING LETTER On Monday 8 April 2024, my wife Annette and I travelled to Gamkaskloof, also known as Die Hel. We’d booked a night’s stay at Fontein Guest Farm. The Swartberg Pass wa
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A Life On The Run
I’m more afraid of going to jail than I am of dying. I don’t know why I have this fear, which is called carcerophobia by the way, from the Latin phrase for prison: carcero in. I was an obedient child, a responsible teenager and now I’m a law-abiding
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For Your Calendar
Hessequa Harmonie is an annual festival celebrating South African art and culture, held in the town of Heidelberg in the Southern Cape, also known as the “gateway to the Garden Route”. This year’s programme features music, art exhibitions and worksho
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Q&A
Every month our experts answer your questions about birds, bugs and beasts. Send your photos and queries to [email protected] PHILNA DE VILLIERS from the Villiersdorp district writes: We saw this elephant calf without a trunk or tail in Moremi Game
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Otto du Plessis Pass, Eastern Cape
Is this the most scenic spot for a cement picnic table in the land? I think so! Just imagine sitting here on a clear autumn morning, with the Eastern Cape below you in greens and hazy blues. Out comes the Stanley flask, full of piping-hot coffee that
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Night Watch
In the early hours of Wednesday 18 September 2024, there will be a partial lunar eclipse visible from all over South Africa and Namibia. Many believe that eclipses are rare, but there can be up to seven (solar and lunar) in a year. However, in 2024,
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Leopard Lounge
Leopards are extremely elusive and prefer to remain unseen. So, how do you tell if one has been somewhere? Here are the signs to look out for. The first and probably most obvious sign is spoor. The imprint left behind when an animal steps on a soft s
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In Brief
In a significant development for avian conservation in South Africa, two Egyptian vultures have been transferred to conservation group VulPro’s facility at Shamwari Private Game Reserve in the Eastern Cape. “The vultures are joining the breeding prog
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Books And Music
by Tracks4Africa R595 in bookstores, at Outdoor Warehouse and tracks4africa.co.za If you want to tackle a long road trip through Namibia, Zambia or Botswana, you can’t go wrong with the maps, GPS software and comprehensive guides from Tracks4Africa –
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When The Desert Blooms
Miracles are rare these days. Us humans have grown too smart. You think you might have witnessed one until someone comes up with an explanation. Or you hear that it’s fake news In July last year, when my Facebook feed was suddenly filled with wildflo
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Check This
This sculpture, made from stone and metal, is one of more than 30 scattered across the Kaokoveld in Namibia. Some of the sculptures are seated under shepherd’s trees, some stare out over the landscape, and there is even one doing a yoga pose. Rumour
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Our Own Little Serengeti
The grassland is alive. In the distance I can see a few eland, zebra and wildebeest; closer, a pair of blesbok rams are playing hide-and-seek. Every time I try to stalk nearer for a better photo, they snort and trot further away. The sun is setting a
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Whispers On The Wind
Only rocks remember the Bushmen. The truth of their lives is etched into black dolerite and painted on sandstone. We can look at the art and try to understand, but we will never know the full meaning. These days, everyone wants to commune with nature
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Take Your Pic
This is the place where you get to show off! Send your best nature, travel and wildlife photos to Toast Coetzer and you might be featured: [email protected] Canon EOS 90D Sigma 150–600mm IG: @caroline_rowbottom CAROLINE WRITES: I took this phot
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Send Us Your Best Travel And Nature Photos!
WHY? We publish a selection of reader pictures in every issue. Don’t be shy, haul out those shots you’ve been hoarding on your computer and send them to us! We like just about anything: wildlife, landscapes, portraits, holiday snaps or bugs in your g
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New Gear
What do we have here? The X-T5 takes the place of the X-T4, making it the fifth generation of Fujifilm’s X-series of cameras. It continues the company’s exploration of a very particular niche in the mirrorless camera sector – a niche that Fujifilm ha
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Raptor-rific!
Over the years, Pietman Muller hassent us dozens of amazing photos for Take Your Pic. He’s a farmer and amateur photographer who livesin subtropical Levubu in Limpopo, less than 100km from the Kruger Park’s Punda Maria gate. His photos of birds, in p
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Treat Yourself!
Serves 10 Preparation time 30 minutes Baking time 40 minutes • ½ cup butter, melted • 10 sheets of phyllo pastry • 2 eggs • 1 tin (385g) condensed milk • full-cream milk (1 condensed milk tin full) • 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon • 1ml almond essence (o
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Bling Your Braai
There are few things as delicious as warm bread made on the coals. In fact, any warm bread spread with farm butter, even straight out of the oven, is a treat. When the children were still living at home, I always used my Dutch oven to bake bread, but
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Stay Here
Have you ever wanted to sleep on a cliff like a Verreaux’s eagle? Here’s your chance. At first glance, the location of King’s View Cave seems like pure madness. The sturdy stone walls of this self-catering unit are built into sandstone cliffs that to
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Off-road Eye Candy
There are few vehicles in this bakkie-crazy country of ours that will turn as many heads as the new Ineos Grenadier Quartermaster. The Grenadier station wagon has been available locally for a few months now; the bakkie is the latest addition to a fam
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Take A Hike
Climbing the Amphitheatre is already one of South Africa’s most spectacular hikes, now you can dial up the adrenaline and summit Beacon Buttress via a thrilling new via ferrata called Dragon’s Tale. Via ferrata means “iron way” in Italian and refers
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Birds
They say if you can build a house together as husband and wife, your marriage will last. I don’t know how true that is, but building your dream house is indeed a massive undertaking. It’s fun drawing up plans and talking about decor, but the reality
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Secrets In The Soil
Just after Vanrhyns Pass, on the Bokkeveld Plateau, the R27 cuts away towards Calvinia and the Great Karoo. But tap the brakes before the plains swallow you whole – you don’t want to miss Nieuwoudtville. You can count the number of streets on two han
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With My Own Eyes
Seeing a pennant-winged nightjar is any birdwatcher’s dream. To see one in South Africa requires detailed planning, a November booking for a night drive from Punda Maria rest camp in the Kruger Park (the north of the park is the best place to see one
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Brilliant Bats!
To be able to fly, an animal’s body needs to be as lightweight as possible. This is why the biggest bones in a bird’s skeleton are hollow. Bats have solid but very thin bones – they would break if the bat had to stand on them! So, they rather hang up
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Win!
Send your series of photos and a short description of the sighting to [email protected] could win a Thule Subterra PowerShuttle bag! The Thule Subterra PowerShuttle bag is ideal for people who travel with a lot of tech. It’s a sturdy carrier made
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Good Vibes In Colombia
The border official flipped through our passports, pushed them back and said, “You have 30 days left.” What? Two weeks before, after a complicated and frustrating process, we’d received Colombian visas that were valid for 56 days. (Standard visas are
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Back In The Day
HENNIE VAN DEVENTER from Melkbosstrand writes: In 1976, I took a sabbatical and I travelled to the USA with my family for a year. We wanted to explore the country as cheaply as possible. We bought a 1972 Toyota Corona Mark II station wagon for US$150
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LETTER FROM Nata
It’s already 13 korhaan calls after seven, but I was up before sunrise at Nata Bird Sanctuary in Botswana to pack my tent in the campsite. From the campsite, it’s about 7 km to where I am now – under a thatched roof at a picnic site overlooking Sowa
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Crossword Puzzle
SOLUTION ON PAGE 104 go! Puzzles 14 is still available! Buy a copy at your local shop (R85) or order from our online store media24shop.com. LAWRETTE MCFARLANE; TOAST COETZER; RONEL STEYN; GALLO/GETTYIMAGES.COM■
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Africa At Its Best
go! West Coast (R135) is available in shops or online from media24shop.com. Looking for a quick weekend away within two hours’ drive from Cape Town? The seaside village of Paternoster is the place! It offers plenty of self-catering accommodation, and

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