Blyderiver Canyon

Panorama Route &  Blyderiver Panorama Route &  Blyderiver Canyon 

The biggest green Canyon in the World. 🌎

Third biggest canyon 🇿🇦 after Grand Canyon in USA 🇺🇸 & Fish River Canyon in Namibia 🇳🇦 

Timbavati Game Reserve

Greater Kruger, staying at Simbavati Hilltop Lodge, super lodge in Timbavati Private Game Reserve. Amazing🐘 Even surprised ice-cream in the bush 🍦🦓 Topped with great sightings 🐘🦒🐆🦏 Fantastic!🇿🇦

Watching animals from "own swimmpool" on the deck of one's room.

Whale Trail 👣 🐳

 Whale Trail, just finished this wonderful trail with a lovely group of people 👣🐳 🪷

https://www.timeout.com/cape-town/news/one-of-the-worlds-best-trails-three-hours-from-cape-town-050625

The Whale Trail is a must-do if you love hiking and appreciate the outdoors. The trail is suitable for medium-fitness hikers. It is a five day, 56-kilometre slack-packing trail through the De Hoop Nature Reserve that introduces you to some of the most beautiful scenes along the Western Cape

And a Whale Trail 👣 Wedding 💕 💍 👰‍♂ 

Cape Town & Peninsula

 Cape Town and the Cape Peninsula - beautiful  🇿🇦 🐧🦍

Table Mountain Cable Car, St James Tidal Pool, Chakma Baboon at Cape of Good Hope, African Penguin on Boulders Beach, Dassie (Rock hyrax)

Bo-Kaap / Malay Quarters,  Mandela on Balcony at City Hall,  The Sentinel Houtbay, Recyvlong artwork 🦒

Tea Tasting ceremony

Lovely Tea Tasting ceremony.☕️💐 Nigiro Tea offers tea tastings features a selection of 180 unique tea blends. 🍵 ☕️ Very enjoyable. 😀

Nigiro Tea Tasting can be enjoyed at Spice Route in Paarl. Enjoy!☕️ Let me know how it was.

Cango Caves

The beautiful Cango Caves, close to Oudtshoorn, are known for their spectacular rock formations, including stalactites, stalagmites, and other dripstone formations.  

The caves were  formed by the dissolution of Precambrian limestone over millions of years, creating a system of tunnels and chambers, and resulting in the spectacular rock formations.

The primary rock type in the Cango cave is limestone (CaCO3) from the Cango cave group. 

The caves have been discovered to extend naturally for well over 5km, but visitors can only explore about one-quarter of the entire system. 🇿🇦

Swartberg pass

 Swartberg Pass:

SWARTBERG PASS, a National Monument between Prince Albert and Oudtshoorn, is undoubtedly one of the most spectacular and best known mountain passes in South Africa. It is the masterpiece of the brilliant engineer and road builder, Thomas Charles Bain (1830 – 1893), and the last of the seventeen passes he built in the Cape Province.

Originally the routes through Meiring’s Poort and Seven Weeks’ Poort were the only links between the port of Mossel Bay and the towns and villages of the Great Karoo. The road through Meiring’s Poort was often closed due to flood damage and rockfalls. The heavy flooding during 1875 caused the closure of these gateways for weeks.

In 1879 Thomas Bain was commissioned to plan a new route over the Swartberg Mountain Range. The existing footpath over the mountain between Prince Albert and Oudtshoorn could only be negotiated on foot or on horseback. Due to the unavoidably steep gradients, Bain tried four different lines before he succeeded in finding a practical one. Bain’s original master plan was approved by the Government in 1880.

The building of the Swartberg Pass proved to be a mammoth task. As Bain was building the Tsitsikama road, John Tassie’s tender of £18120 was accepted. Employing 100 Mozambicans from Delagoa Bay he started construction from the Prince Albert side of the mountain in 1881, but after 13 months of toil he had advanced only 6 kilometres.

After Tassie was declared insolvent, construction came to a halt for a year, until Thomas Bain took over the building of the pass in November 1883. Using 200 to 240 convicts he tackled the job with great enthusiasm.

The pass was built with the use of pickaxes, spades, sledgehammers, crowbars, wheelbarrows and gunpowder. Boulders were split by heating them with fire and then dousing them with cold water. Rocks were broken into smaller pieces with sledgehammers and then carefully dressed by the convicts. The dry-wall method of construction was used to build the impressive retaining walls that supported the road against the precipitous slopes. A century later, travellers still wonder at this feat.

Meat, dried beans, soup and other kinds of food were cooked in large pots for the convicts. Fresh bread was baked and an ox and sixteen sheep were slaughtered daily to provide meat for everybody on the project. The convicts were divided into teams and the ruins and remains of the convict stations can still be seen in the Swartberg Pass.

Conditions during the winter were very unfavourable. During May of 1885 heavy rain and mud slides almost destroyed the convicts’ camp. The nearly completed road was also badly damaged. The road through Meiring’s Poort was completely washed away by the same flood.

The official opening of the Swartberg Pass was 10th January 1888. All the shops and offices in Prince Albert were closed for the day to allow everyone to participate in the festivities. At 7am that Tuesday the procession, consisiting of about 100 vehicles (spiders, capecarts and mule wagons) started off from Haak’s Hotel on the 3 hour trek to the open terrain near the summit. It’s estimated there were about 500 people present, including reporters from six newspapers.

The Commissioner of Crown Lands and Public Works, colonel F.X Schermbrucker, officially opened the pass. Miss Gertrude Schermbrucker broke a bottle of champagne at the summit of the pass, 1 585m above sea level, and a twenty-one gun salute concluded the ceremony.

On 5th May, 1888 a toll was proclaimed on the summit of the pass. From the eight tenders received, John F. Mackay was appointed the first toll official with a salary of £45 a year. Besides collecting the toll fee(4 pennies per wheel and 1 penny per animal), the official was responsible for maintaining the road in good condition. The official was also allowed to use collected toll fees to his own advantage

Blyde River Canyon

The Blyde River Canyon is the third largest canyon in the world 26 946 ha, after the Grand Canyon in the United States and the Fish River Canyon in Namibia, and is the largest 'green canyon' due to its lush subtropical foliage, with the deepest precipitous cliffs of any canyon on the planet.

One of the most-visited attractions in South Africa, the Blyde River Canyon is 26 kilometres in length and is, on average, around 800m deep. The dam itself, when full, is at an altitude of 665m (2182 feet).

The Blyde River Canyon Reserve extends along the Blyde River Canyon's winding path, which at every turn offers more and more impressive views over sheer edges droper personing 800m into the riverbed. Blyde River Canyon Reserve is situated against the Greater Drakensberg escarpment and includes natural wonders such as the Bourke's Luck Potholes, the Three Rondavels, Pinnacle Rock and God's Window. Many visitors to this region enjoy the visual splendor of combining the Panorama Route with exceptional game viewing in the Kruger National Park to create a spectacular itinerary in Mpumalanga.

Cape Town Shopping with a twist.

 Cape Town Shopping with a twist.

Shopping for  Cape Town. Amazingly beautiful fabrics 

Visit: 

Da Gana Fabrics. Mnandi Fabrics, Jacksons, Lively Fabrics. And more...

Shopping for sport socks Cape Town. Loads of fun

Visit: Falke, AP Jones, Sportsmans Ware House and others.

Shopping with clients for products made from "waste". Amazingly creative artists!

Visit:Nathan Chikoto, Bo Kaap Bazaar, Recycled Flipflop or many street artsiist 🎨 

Sandybay Shipwreck Trail

Hiking the Sandybay Shipwreck Trail 👣 ending wirh a loceky swim 

The BOS 400 is a French crane barge that ran aground during a storm in 1994. It was being towed by a boat that was not up to the task of tugging such a massive vessel, and the tow rope broke loose, sending the barge into the rocks just south of Sandy Bay. Deemed too damaged and difficult to salvage, it was abandoned and has been rusting there ever since.

Check out my activity on Strava: https://strava.app.link/T4eF30LPtQb

Table Mountain Circuit Adventure

Table Mountain Circuit:

A Five-Day Four-Night Adventure by Easy Travel & Tours

Walk around Table Mountain, approximately 100km of pure delight! The route and the direction clock or anti-clockwise vary depending on the accommodation, the group, and the weather etc.

Only carry daypack. 

Breakfast,  lunch, dinner included

Exclusive of drinks and snacks.

Transport arranged during the tour.

Exclusive of  return transport to trail at beginning and end of trail.

Day 1

Fishhoek to Constantia along coastal road. 

https://anniestour includeds.blogspot.com/p/scenic-coastal-walkway-from-muizenberg.html

Day 2 & 3

Constantia to Cape Town along the Greenbelts 

https://anniestours.blogspot.com/p/constantia-green-belts-tokai.html

Day 3 

Cape Town to Houtbay via Atlantic strip. 

https://anniestours.blogspot.com/p/favorite-hiking-trails-around-cape-town.html

Day 4

Houtbay over Chapmanspeak to Fishoek. 

Regenerative farming

Regenerative Farming on Bucklands Guest Farm 

On our recent visit  to Bucklands Guest Farm, we learned more about regenerative farming in the Karoo. We highly respect the farmer for the amazing work they do. We helped for a few days to move the kraal (enclosure) every day and to collect the livestock at night to bring them back in the kraal/ enclosure. It is hard work! 

The livestock (on Bucklands - sheep and goat) are put into a temporary enclosure, made with interlocking gates every night. The temporary enclosure is moved to a different location the next morning.  Each morning, the sheep and goat leave the enclosure (kraal) to walk "free" and graze in the surrounding areas. At night, they have to be fetched and brought back into the enclosure (kraal). This protect the livestock from predators, but this is also where their "night work" starts. 🌙 🐐 🐑 

Livestock, in this case Angora goats 🐐 and  sheep 🐑 is is used to restore the veld.  The veld needs to get brief, intense grazing on it, and then be left to recover for many months. That is why the enclosure is moved every morning to a new location.

Livestock has the following impacts : grazing, trampling, hooves cutting soil, and fertility (dung & urine). 

Grasses grow moribund and die when not consumed. Many seeds need to be distributed and fertilised by animals.

As the livestock walk and nibble fresh shoots, their hooves flatten moribund grass tussocks into mulch, exposing the growth points to sunlight again. They break up the crusted earth with their sharp hooves. Wherever they go, they leave their dung as a gift to the land and its seeds. When the rains come again, green grasses will spring up here.

The belief is that most farm areas were overgrazed, not because there were too many animals, but because they were left in one place too long. It was a function of time, not numbers.

Records show that there were sporadic but enormous springbok migrations across the dry plains. Many are reliably estimated to have numbered in the many millions. Some even say the migrations would have contained more animals than there are livestock present on Karoo farms today. (Before the current drought, there were around 7 million sheep and goats in the Little and Great Karoo.)

One particular trekbok migration in 1849 took three days to pass through Beaufort West. Writer Lawrence Green reports that they left the veld looking as if it had been consumed by fire.

The theory is that the buck, following the scent of rain and fresh forage, travelled mostly bunched together by predators. They would eat almost any living plant before them – there was no time or space to pick and choose the most palatable ones. All the while they would be churning up the crusted soil with their hooves, depositing their dung on the waiting seeds. Then they would move on, leaving the plants to recover and grow over months or years.

The veld thrived on this rough and irregular treatment. Explorers and hunters in the mid 1800s reported how the tall grass reached their booted shins while travelling through on horseback near Richmond in the Northern Cape, something almost unimaginable today.