Category Archives: Travel tales

MY friend Sally and her sister, Dene recently travelled together from Johannesburg to Atlanta and on to Los Angeles. Dene was singled out and thoroughly searched, body and bag, in five different random airport checks during the trip. Sally was … Continue reading →

SOME of the best travel experiences happen barely a stone’s throw away from your own back door. Tucked against the icy Atlantic Ocean, between Hout Bay’s Karbonkelberg and, on the Llandudno side, Klein Leeukoppie, lies one of South Africa’s most … Continue reading →

PANTING heavily, two red-faced boys hurtled out of the forest as we approached the path that disappeared into the leafy shadows below the tall, swaying boughs of the birch trees ahead. The puffing pair galloped excitedly towards a woman who … Continue reading →

IT’S our last day and still no brag-worthy kabeljou (cob) on the end of the line. As I watch them row silently out of sight up the dark denim-blue water of the Duiwenhoks, I fear that my ever-hopeful fishermen are … Continue reading →

“WHAT colour are they now, thy quiet waters? The evening star has brought the evening light, and filled the river with the green hillside; the hilltops waver in the rippling water, trembles the absent vine and swells the grape in … Continue reading →

OF course size matters – the bigger, longer and wider the better. I like old and knobbly ones too. Rough or smooth, alien or indigenous, all are good for me. I am, of course, talking about trees. For sure, I … Continue reading →

“IN Ireland,” wrote 19th century scholar and author, Sir John Pentland Mahaffy, “the inevitable never happens and the unexpected constantly occurs.” I should not have been surprised then, when a life-worn old Irish dairyman – whose large and languid-looking herd … Continue reading →

ASIDE from a brief phase of folly in my unfettered youth, I am not a cruising kind of woman. That is not only due to my predisposition to claustrophobia and seasickness. It is also because the thought of being closeted … Continue reading →

IT is official. I lost my heart to a star in the Cederberg. The problem is, I am not sure exactly which of the many stars that I encountered on a recent four-day hike through the region laid claim to … Continue reading →