Archive for the ‘Travel’ Category
by Amanda on Jan 11th, 2012
Read an excerpt from Justin Fox‘s The Marginal Safari: Scouting the Edge of South Africa, in which Fox describes beginning his journey on a rather ominous note, having just learned that his father is ill. Despite the setback of this news, Fox says that the journey ahead is not just an “escape”, but a form of taking responsibility – “like getting married or buying a first home”.
Read the excerpt, courtesy Namibiana Buchdepot:
The foreshore traffic light is red. across the intersection stands the convention centre my father designed. Up the street is his office. Behind the convention centre an elevated freeway feeds out of the city. Beyond that lies the open road and my dream of travelling round the edge of the country Except my father is ill. And it weighs on me. I left my apartment beside the lighthouse a few minutes ago, turned onto Beach Road and drove past trawlers heading west into the murk. A 10000-kilometre, anticlockwise journey around my homeland lies in store. It’s chilly outside and a strong wind is blowing off the Atlantic, a good day to be leaving the Cape of Storms. Restless, anxious about an uneventful slide into my late thirties, hungry for adventure – or colourful change at least – I’ve been craving the road for some time. Cape Town, for me, has grown predictable. I, too, have grown predictable here. Although it is a kind of escape, this journey seems like a form of taking responsibility, like getting married or buying a first home.
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by Amanda on Jan 3rd, 2012
Justin Fox spoke to Bruce Dennill about his book, The Marginal Safari: Scouting The Edge of South Africa, which details his very long trip exploring the fringes of South Africa. Fox says he took the journey at a bad time in his life, when his father was diagnosed with cancer, and thus the tone of the book changed as his journey became not just a trip around the Fatherland, but his “Father’s land”, visiting places he had been with his father. Fox says that his travelling lifestyle has made it difficult to form lasting relationships with people, as most connections are “transient”, though “intense” while they last:
In his latest book, The Marginal Safari: Scouting The Edge Of South Africa, travel write Justin Fox literally takes his readers on a guilt trip.
His father, the architect Revel Fox, had been diagnosed with cancer, but lengthy preparations and scheduling problems meant the trip had to be done then or never.
“Those months became free for me to do a long trip, but at a bad time, with my dad coming towards the end of his life,” Fox admits.
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by Amanda on Dec 14th, 2011
Justin Fox, author of The Marginal Safari, has spent the past three months traversing South African terrain in a search for what he has dubbed the country’s “Impossible Five” – the Cape leopard, the Riverine rabbit, the White lion, the Aardvark, and the Pangolin. In an article on Getaway blog, Fox describes finding the most elusive of the pack, the Pangolin:
Over the past three months I’ve been searching for the Impossible Five, the five most elusive animals in South Africa. In the end I managed to find three and a half out of five (it’s a long story, for another time). Perhaps the hardest creature to nail was the pangolin. Here’s how we got him …
There is an enormous hunting ranch near Upington called Kalahari Oryx where a young scientist is researching pangolins. A barefoot Darren Pietersen met me in the driveway. I was to spend the coming days with his family at their home (Darren’s father is manager of the ranch).
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Photo courtesy Getaway blog
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by Amanda on Aug 31st, 2011
On his visit to Grahamstown for this year’s National Arts Festival, Leon de Kock, author of Bad Sex, took the time to survey the “settler country” of the Eastern Cape, embarking on a road trip from Grahamstown to Port Elizabeth.
De Kock’s visit was a literary one – he stayed at the Cock House in Grahamstown, once the home of André Brink, and visits Salem, the setting of part of JM Coetzee’s Disgrace. The weather-worn characters at Stanley’s Pub and Restaurant remind him of Athol Fugard’s play, A Lesson from Aloes:
Coming out of a bone-rattling chill at the National Arts Festival in Grahamstown, or at any other time of the year for that matter, you could do worse than explore the area between Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth.
In Grahamstown, stay at the Cock House if you can. Built in the early 19th century, it was once the home of writer André Brink. The main suite makes you feel like you’re the colonial governor. And the lamb shanks are absolutely the best I’ve had in a long time. I ate them five days in a row, for lunch and supper.
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Photo courtesy Kleinz1
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by Amanda on Jun 20th, 2011
Ivan Vladislavić, author of Double Negative, has written a satirical travel guide to the City of Johannesburg, which appears in the Sunday Times. Vladislavić advises travellers to visit Sandton Square, a place “steeped in history”, unlike Soweto, which he describes as having to make up for its lack of history with traditional African hot air balloon rides. He also recommends the True Crime Tour and Rea Skya Indigenous Treetop Safaris:
Nelson Mandela Square, Sandton
This atmospheric old square in the heart of the city is synonymous with the life and times of South Africa’s most famous son. The Mandela family lived for many years on the 11th floor of the nearby Michelangelo Hotel. (A cautionary note: the hotel borrows its style from the Renaissance man it is named after, but was not actually designed by him, as many people suppose.)
The young Nelson herded his father’s cattle on the open plains of Sunninghill to the north, and on certain nights, when the wind blows from just the right direction and the moonshine dusts the cobbles in the square with shimmering light, it is said that you can hear the coppery clang of ghostly cowbells above the tinkle of cocktail glasses.
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by Amanda on Mar 18th, 2011
In an article for the Sunday Times Accidental Tourist, Chris Harvie, describes how he unintentionally found himself involved in The Amazing Race – passing up a chance to see U2 live for a 70km detour.
It was all very sudden, between Nelspruit and Machadodorp on the way to Soccer City for that concert. As the Bambi Hotel loomed up ahead in half-derelict glory, a maniacal, spiky-haired backpacker leapt into the road in a manner that would have severely dinged the bakkie had I not swerved to a tyre-screeching stop.
He wrung his hands and bowed – in supplication, not appreciation – making his way to the window, which I gingerly opened.
“‘Allo! I ‘ave zees problème … I ‘ave to get to Caroleena in a beeg ‘urry,” he said. I pointed out that we were not going to “Caroleena” but to Johannesburg. He didn’t seem to find this important.
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by Amanda on Feb 25th, 2011
Chris Harvie, author of Do NOT Take this Road to El-Karama, took a trip to the iPhika Camp in the Spioenkop Reserve, which he calls one of the most peaceful places he’s ever been to (if you ignore the crashing rhinos). In another trip he ventures with a “nerdy” friend to Mashishing, supposedly home to the ruins of an ancient civilization:
IF you’ve ever wondered why the collective noun for rhino is a crash, you haven’t been for a walk in the Spioenkop Nature Reserve.
The word doesn’t begin to cover the explosions that emanate as these near-dinosaurs hurtle blindly towards you through the scrub, kicking up dust and breaking everything in their path. They may be unsure of your exact location but they’re coming to get you regardless.
A FRIEND of mine is a Google Earth nerd. He doesn’t (as far as I know) use it to spy on the people he knows but he has recently taken to observing people who have been dead for hundreds – if not thousands – of years.
Around Lydenburg (now renamed Mashishing), according to the nerd, are hills-full of stone circles lying around unnoticed – or maybe ignored – on farms.
He has nerdily marked and numbered them on his laptop. Would I like to pop over the Long Tom Pass and have a squiz? You know, like Stonehenge, Machu Picchu and all that?
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Photos courtesy SundayTimes
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by Amanda on Feb 11th, 2011
Travel writer Justin Fox, author of The Marginal Safari, lists his top 10 sites to visit in Barcelona – a city brimming with art, architecture, culture and cuisine:
Barcelona is one of Europe’s most seductive cities. Visitors come for its art and architecture, round-the-clock street culture and excellent cuisine. The nightlife is reason alone to visit this Mediterranean port city. If you’re downtown during a fiesta or after an FC Barcelona soccer victory, expect to party until dawn.
Parts of the city are undergoing continual and innovative renewal; others bask in the glories of a prosperous past. Barcelona’s medieval period saw massive growth that left the city with a beautiful Gothic quarter. Much later the Modernistas, led by Antoni Gaudí, bequeathed Barcelona a swathe of remarkable Art Nouveau buildings. Today, a new guard of modern architects is trying to outdo the masters who came before.
For art buffs there’s the early period of Picasso, Dali’s Triangle and the grand-scale works of Joan Miró to keep them trawling the galleries and museums for days. Others head for the beaches, or sleep the day away to be ready for a night of dining and clubbing. Whatever your inclination, the following list should offer reason enough to put Barcelona on your next European itinerary.
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Image courtesy Getaway
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by Amanda on Feb 2nd, 2011
Chris Harvie, author of Do NOT Take this Road to El-Karama, spent five days in Mozambique where he experienced the buzz of the city and the thrill of the waves:
Maputo was washing away under a deluge of rain. Rivers poured through the streets, running with litter and all manner of floating debris. The lines of new cars in the Toyota depot lay in a vast temporary lake at the bottom of Avenida 24 de Julho; the bulls of yore could never have kept up with the flood rushing past Matadoro, their now-defunct bullring.
Suddenly, the downpour stopped, the skies cleared and the city was fresh, sprightly and bathed in sunlight.
Splashing through the treacherous water-filled potholes, we drove gingerly into the Baixa, the business heart of the city, to visit the market and Eiffel’s station before heading for lunch at the eternally delicious Costa do Sol restaurant. As the menu proudly boasts, they have “hosted such dignitaries as singer Tom Jones and the Swazi Royal Family”. I am fairly sure Leonardo went there too (Di Caprio not Da Vinci), but they don’t mention that. Quite right too.
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by Amanda on Feb 2nd, 2011
Imraan Coovadia, author of High Low In-between, writes in the Telegraph, that South Africa is a true paradise for tourists. Cape Town, Coovadia says, is the ideal spot for writers and poets because of its many perspectives, wide variety of people and historical links to India, Indonesia, Holland and the United Kingdom.
I live in Cape Town. Because of its geometry, Cape Town is a great city for writers and poets. Writers love perspectives, seeing things from more than one angle, and finding out that all things are relative and related to each other. If there was an Einstein of human relationships, which there couldn’t be, he would have told us that everything about human beings is related, and relative, and Cape Town would have been his observatory.
A 10-minute drive through the city (from Gardens, say, where I live, through Zonnebloem and Woodstock and Rondebosch and Plumstead and, eventually, Athlone) includes a crazy number of angles, a wide variety of people – from the bergies, the drifters, the students and the refugees from Congo and Zimbabwe to office workers and European tourists – Lamborghinis on display, and, perhaps, the president’s convoy which passes me on the M3 because we go to work in different directions. He goes to parliament and I go to the university.
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