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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Seventeen
On our first visit to South Africa in 1996, we had very briefly skirted the Drankesberg ranges and had promised ourselves that we would return some day. The Drakensberg is located mostly in South...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Eighteen
Being in Southern Africa we did however see lots of Baboons. Let me rephrase that we actually heard them first as they went from rubbish bin to rubbish bin, in the early hours of the morning,...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Nineteen
The most popular walk in the park is the Gorge walk. Talk to any South African who has been here and they will have almost certainly hiked the Gorge track. About a year later we worked with a South...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty
The accommodation at Royal Natal was more than we wanted to pay so we took our chances on the road. Peering through the gloom we knocked on several doors of motels and B & B’s all of which were...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-one
What Giant’s castle is really known for is its 5000 Bushmen Rock Paintings and the twelve species of Antelope and from our experience it’s a lot easier to see the former than the latter. With one of...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-two
In the middle to the end of nineteenth century a large group of Afrikaners, (descendants of the original, mainly Dutch, French and German settlers) trekked their way their way from the Cape after the...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-three
We found the Isandlwana battlefield quite eerie and moving. Monuments and unmarked graves in the form of stone cairns (piles of small rocks and stones for anyone that doesn’t know what a cairn is) dot...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-four
It was as the guy from Budget was driving away that a rather worrying thought crossed my mind. What if he wasn’t a Budget employee and had just easily hoisted a car from two unsuspecting and naïve...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-five
The hostel itself was an old large rambling single storey house with hand me down furniture spread haphazardly around the place,………… lounge chairs, torn dining chairs and card tables that had all seen...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-six
The main reason that we had elected to stay in J’burg the extra night was to see Soweto. Soweto you say! Why would anyone want to see such a notoriously dangerous place? Well, most tourists visiting...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-seven
Our first stop was the “poor end of town” which in size is the smallest part of Soweto but also by far the most densely populated. We were taken into a small two room “house”. I say house loosely...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-eight
Next stop was the first of two shebeens. A shebeen is basically a township bar that until recently were illegal and like the rest of the world there are shebeens and there are shebeens. This first one...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-nine
We left J’burg for Cape Town the next day via a domestic South African airways flight. We had been to Cape Town before but we had felt that hadn’t done it justice, so this visit was to ‘see’ the place...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty – Cape Town
What was in regular service were the minibus taxis. If you have being paying attention you’d remember that I’ve mentioned these before. These are generally run by black or more often or not in Cape...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-one – Cape Muslim quarter Cape...
You know Cape Town is really a very beautiful place. It’s up there with the likes of Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco as places of natural beauty. With the Atlantic Ocean on its western and...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-two – Cape Town
Back in the guest house we learned what we had suspected that morning, Andre was a ‘know it all’ who liked to give you the benefit of his wisdom and experience in as many words as possible regardless...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-three – Robben Island Cape Town
Another pretty interesting guy whom unfortunately we didn’t get around to meet was Nelson Mandela. We did however get to meet someone who served time with him on Robben island a small former prison...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-four – Cape Town
Table Mountain was next on our agenda but that was tomorrow’s challenge in the meantime we had to get back and eat! Largely because of its multiculturalism Cape Town is considered the gastronomic...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-five – Table Mountain Cape Town
In our previous visit to Cape Town we had taken the cable car to the top of the 1000 metre Table Mountain (and back down again). This time, we promised ourselves, we would walk to the top and catch the...
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African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-six – Cape of Good Hope
We got an even closer look at the Cape the next day after picking up a cheap hire car from the unknown (to us anyway) Atlantic Car Hire. The plan was to explore the peninsula for the day and drop off...
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