It’s great to be back on the road again! After some time in Cape Town restocking and reconnecting with friends and family, we’re off again – between now and Christmas, Thandi and I will visit the southern Cape and Karoo areas of South Africa - Agulhas National Park, De Hoop Nature Reserve, Bontebok National Park, Karoo National Park, Gamkaberg Nature Reserve, and then Garden Route National Park (which is now an amalgamation of Tsitsikamma, Knysna and Wilderness) and finally Kogelberg near Cape
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I need to give marine ranger William Brink and field rangers Debbie Winterton and Andile Manana an extra mention...
They took me out yesterday on the SANParks law enforcement rubber duck to Malgas Island to see the Cape Gannets. Even though its not peak season for the birds, there must have been several thousand on the small island, which is probably about the size of two rugby fields. Malgas is a very important part of the Gannet's survival, as more than 60 000 birds breed here every year,
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What a way to spend the shortest day of the year! The West Coast National Park, just an hour's drive north of Cape Town was drenched in sunlight all day. I woke up at a cottage in Churchhaven on the lagoon, had a (cold!) swim at sunrise (about 8am), then spent the day taking photos of the park and avoiding all the tortoises (they're everywhere!), then had a swim at sunset (about 5:30pm) in the Atlantic Ocean on the eastern shores of the lagoon's peninsula.
The central focus of the park is
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Last night was the first night of Year in the Wild! I spent it at the beautifully-built and conceived Silvermine Tented Camp on top of Table Mountain. It was a cold, clear night, with a moon rising above the city of Cape Town. Even though we are in the middle of one of South Africa's biggest cities, we could hardly hear the city below. Instead, the only sounds that broke the silence were frogs, crickets (I think they were crickets?) and the odd brave francolin which called out during the
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Hi! And welcome! This is the first blog post for my Year in the Wild website. The wild, pristine places will work their magic on me for sure.
I’m writing this while sitting in Kalk Bay at the bottom of the African continent in Cape Town, South Africa, and the Atlantic Ocean is in front of me. I can see a huge pod of dolphins feeding on a school of fish in the middle of the bay, and thousands of seagulls are hovering above them, waiting to dive on a morsel. It’s made me think of all the
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