The Wanderers

We visited Prague for a few days in the middle of December. It was cold (-12C/10F) for wandering around the city, but the dusting of snow created some great photo opportunities. Have a look at some of the photo's from the trip on our gallery.

Switzerland ... they must have mountains there!

A few weeks ago we took a daytrip to the top of a nearby mountain, called Rigi. We took a train to Arth-Goldau (about 25 minutes from Zug) and took the blue mountain railway up to the top of Rigi.

After we explored the top and had some lunch, we came back down with the red mountain railway, which took us down to the other side of the mountain to a place called Vitznau.

From Vitznau, we took a beautiful boat ride on Vierwaldstättersee (Lake Lucerne) to Luzern (approx 30 minutes) where we took the train back to Zug.

The views from the top were beautiful. Click on the panorama below to see a full screen view of what we saw on the top:


And check out the other pictures of this trip in the gallery:

In our post of June 7, 2007, we mentioned the "Birds of Eden" bird park. Right nextdoor (same parkinglot) is another animalpark called "monkeyland". Monkeyland is a monkey sanctuary (who would have guessed) where different types of primates roam around in a section of forest.

When you visit monkeyland, you first end up in a visitor center with restaurant, where you can observe the monkeys around you and have something to eat or drink. If you are not paying close attention, the monkeys may steal some of your food though! Entrance to this area is free and is a great experience.

If you want to see some of the more shy monkeys and want to see monkeys in their natural habitat, you have to take a paid tour around the forest with a guide. The guide takes you along the different paths, including across a suspension bridge, and points out different monkeys along the way. As the monkeys are free roaming, you never know what you may end up seeing where.

We really enjoyed this sanctuary on the Garden Route and actually went there a couple of times. You can have a look at some of the photos we took during our visits there by clicking on the picture below.

During the long Easter weekend (4 days), we visited Nature's valley in the Garden Route, Western Cape, South Africa. Nature's valley is a small village which is a good base to explore the area from, including Elephant park, Monkeyland, Birds of Eden, Nature's valley and the Garden route area. We will post the pictures for Monkeyland and Birds of Eden separately. You can find pictures of the trip here or by clicking on the picture underneath.

Living in East London can sometimes be quite exciting. The other Sunday, we decided to go to the nearby Mpongo game reserve and stop at the nearby Lion Park on our way back. Mpongo park has a special 3 course Sunday lunch which is served in the restaurant right next to a lake with three hippos. They also feed the hippos (some kind of bread) at 1pm. Lunch was decent and observing the hippos, turtles and birds definitely made the exerperience very pleasant.

While we were leaving Mpongo park, we noticed a weaver (bird) who had just started a new nest and was in the process of building it. It was fascinating to see this and we got some lovely pictures of the busy weavers.

On our way back, we stopped at the lion park. Apart from the lions, they now have a young cheetah (about 7 months old or so) that you can pet. It was a bit shy at first but once Karl started talking to it and it had some food, it became much more alive. The cheetah, named Chinx, loves to chew on feet. Luckily we put on shoes before our visit, otherwise we may have had some very sore feet!

Although the trip was only a few hours, it was great fun and we ended up with some lovely pictures of hippos, weavers and cheetahs´s. Click here or on the picture to visit the gallery! As always, make sure to check out the captions for additional insights!

The last weekend of August we flew to Cape Town for a long weekend (3 days) and visited Hermanus, which claims to be "the best land-based whale watching" location in the world. A very tall claim that we needed to check out!

The trip was amazing! The weather was sunny with summery temperatures of 26C/61F, after it had been miserably cold and wet for a few days. Hermanus is a nice town where you can easily walk around the towncenter and next to the ocean. The accomodation was great - we stayed at a self-catering apartment right by the ocean that gave us great views over the bay (If you visit the website - select the left hand section for 45 marine drive, not the right hand section for the Esplanade). And Hermanus MUST be the best place to see whales - we saw many, including some close to shore, some breaching (this is where they jump out of the ocean), some sailing (this is where they stick their tale out of the water for an extended period of time), some waving (where they stick one of their fins up and seem to be waving) and we saw some mothers playing with their youngsters! We also heard the whales making noises as if they were calling to each other.

This must be one of the nicest experiences we had, yet, in South Africa. Definitely worth a visit during whale season (July-October)!

As always, we had our cameras with us and took some great pictures of Hermanus and surroundings as well as the whales. Click here or on the picture to go to the album.

What is the relationship between Bushman paintings, olives and Xhosa dancers?

.... We saw all of these things during our visit to Alicedale when we joined the "Alicedale Adventure" as part of the Grahamstown festival. The "Alicedale adventure" was a whole day activity which involved a bushwalk to the Bushman paintings, a visit to the town of Alicedale, a visit to an Olive farm, a look at a Mohair factorz and a demonstration of some traditional Xhosa dances.

We enjoyed our time in Alicedale and took some lovely pictures of this event, particularly of the Xhosa people. Click here or on the image to have a look.

Full moon ... warm weather ... low season .... and a desire to do something for the weekend. A perfect formula for a fabulous weekend at the nearby Mpekweni beach resort. The resort is about an hours drive from East London on the way to Port Alfred/Port Elizabeth on an area that is referred to as the "sunshine coast".

We had a great time. The hotel is very nice with lovely rooms, good food and a sandy beach. When we were there, the beach was pretty much deserted making for some great walks and beautiful pictures. Click here or on the image to see pictures of ghosts in the moonlight, stairs that go up at night and down during the day and other interesting sights at the resort.

What an experience! On a recent trip to Mpekweni beach resort (pictures to be posted separately). We had a Chameleon visit us on the patio of our hotel room. It is the first time we ever saw a chameleon around here, so we had to investigate closer. We discovered the chameleon was very slow, so we managed to take some fabulous pictures and have it climb onto our hands. Click on the image or here to have a look at those wonderful pictures in the gallery.

Last week, I made a business trip to the US for a training session. There are direct flights from South Africa, but in this case, the timing of these flights was such that I would have ended up back in South Africa after the last fligth to East London would have left. With other words, I would have been stuck for a night at Johannesburg, which was not a very nice prospect. I therefore opted to fly over London and make a sidetrip to Belgium for a couple of days, visiting family and friends.

The trip was long, covering 4 countries in 10 days. The first night I flew to London and then from there to Belgium. You find some of the pictures of people and places I visited in Belgium in the gallery.

On Saturday, I flew back to London and from there to the US. Sunday was my birthday AND Easter, so a good occasion for doing something special. I went into New York and went to the Easter Parade. At this parade, people wear fancy hats, anything from a nice sunday hat to extreme hats made from real plants. Have a look at the pictures and see!

In the afternoon, I saw the Lion King show on broadway. The show was great: the music was wonderful, the costumes innovative and fascinating and the whole experience amazing. Highly recommended, although very expensive ($120 per seat!). After the show, I visited central park, which was also a wonderful experience as the weather was fantastic.

The following Wednesday, I flew back to the UK (overnight), visited the UK office (during the day) and then flew on to South Africa (overnight).

What a trip ... You can have a look at the pictures by clicking here or on the picture on top.

We went to Nahoon beach in East London over the weekend and had our cameras with us. This album contains the resulting pictures with people and animals on the beach, including some great pictures of kite flying.

The best news of all is that I managed to get around the beach with my ankle, which means it must be getting much better. I don´t wear my cast anymore, nor do I use crutches. I still go to the Physio, though!

As always, click on the image, or here to go to the album.

As mentioned in my whale post from December 19th, we made a wonderful trip to Knysna and visited nearby Tsitsikama national park and Robberg Peninsula in December 2005 (middle of winter!). This album contains a series of pictures from that trip. All three of these locations were very nice and definitely worth visiting!

Click on the image or here to see the album.

In July we went to Knysna with as primary goal to go on a whale trip. The Whale season is between June and September as the Whales migrate during that period from Antarctica to South Africa and beyond to mate.

We went on a trip on the Indian Ocean where we were lucky enough to see Southern Right Whales, Humpback Whales as well as dolphins and Jackass Penguins. Seeing the whales is quite an experience: they are huge and come very close to the boat. Impressive!

Unfortnately, it is quite difficult to get good pictures from the whales as they tend to be underwater for long periods of time and even when they come up you only see a fraction of their huge body. We managed to get some lovely shots though, and by clicking here or on the image above you can have a look at some of our favorite pictures!

We will post the pictures of the rest of the trip, where we visited places such as Robberg, Tsitsikama and, of course, Knysna, in a separate album. Coming up soon!

We made a trip to Port Elizabeth last weekend. Port Elizabeth is the closest city to East London and is always a pleasant change from being in East london. It takes about 3 hours to get there over some uncomfortable roads so we don´t make the trip too often. We decided to go for an extended weekend last weekend (3 nights), but unfortunately we both got sick on the second day from something we ate wrong, so the trip was not very successful.

Click here to see photos from our various trips to Port Elizabeth. Port Elizabeth has some good shopping, some pleasant beaches and just more people than East London.

A couple of weekends ago we visited the Wild Coast. We drove up on Saturday to hotel Seagulls, crossing the river at Kei Mouth and driving a bit around in the Transkei, one of the poorer parts of South Africa. Hotel Seagulls was very disappointing. The hotel was nicely located at the beach and we had a lovely beachwalk, but the food, including their "seafood extravaganza", was poor, the rooms very basic and we didn´t appreciate the Karaoke during the night until well after 11pm. We wouldn´t recommend staying there, especially since it wasn´t that inexpensive (704R for both of us Dinner Bed and Breakfast).

The next day we drove back, stopping over at Morgan Bay which was stunningly beautiful. Particularly nice was the Double Mouth Nature reserve right by Morgan Bay. Very worthwile a visit.

Click here or on the picture above to see the pictures from this trip and another trip I did a few months earlier to the same area.

The Wild coast is Wild, but incredibly beautiful. Although only 70km or so from East London, it is a completely different world with a high degree of poverty, more traditional houses and a very different coastline. The Wild Coast is in the Transkei which is seen as a more dangerous area of South Africa, so you do have to look out where you go although it would appear Umtata and Port St. Johns are the main areas to avoid.