Before a drive to Siena, a skip, hop and jump from where our apartment is, a mandatory run in the countryside … testing our bursting lungs (the altitude!) and burning legs (those relentless hills!) but the scenery is priceless. Green-gold wheatfields, serried cypresses commanding the skyline, rough honey-stone buildings with crusty clay roof tiles,…
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So, I sit on an open terrace guarded by giant terracotta pots of trees and herbs, with 180-degree views of dips and rises unspooling to the skyline. Over here, silvery-green olive trees and rolled hay bales, there neat regimented vineyards and a horizon marked by long thin cypresses. It’s a Tuscan cliché. But an eternally…
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Contrast. Striking. Abstract. Moody. Powerful. Non-distraction of colour . . . All words to describe black-and-white photography.         (Full disclosure: wildlife images are by my partner-in-crime, Hirsh Aronowitz)  
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  On the gnarled magnolia, in the fog, the blossoms and buds were like all the moons in one night — full, gibbous, crescent. — Sharon Olds in “Stag’s Leap” collection of poems To accompany my pictures, I share some beautifully evocative text from a wonderful Man Booker Prize winner, Tan Twan Eng, in her…
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The term ‘graffiti’ — the singular is ‘graffito’ — has evolved from the Italian word graffiato, which means ‘scratched’, and its original use was in discussing historical art when describing works created by scratching designs into a surface. Such practices go way back in time, from Mayans and Vikings to Greeks and Romans (so we’re…
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It took 39 curators to research, commission and put together the collection of art on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Africa, known better as Zeitz MOCAA, in Cape Town’s Silo District at the V&A Waterfront. And what a diversity the art entails. Rich, saturated photography; paintings and posters; multi-textured hangings; sculptures in imaginative…
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Look, I’m not going to give you the gushing tourism prose about the attractions of Kimberley as a city. Gravel Road Adventures is about Truth and Authenticity. The real experience. So, I’m sorry … Kimberley is a dump. There. I’ve said it. But if, as a traveller, you just happen to be passing through, what…
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The name De Hoop was not inspired, as you would think, by the Cape of Good Hope further along south. Believe it or not, it was named after a stud farm called Hope where Spanish, or Andalusian, horses were bred. The farm was eventually bought by the Cape Administration to create a conservation area. And…
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Just imagine … after more than two centuries of having been blitzed out of the Karoo by the likes of explorer Robert Jacob Gordon and Governer Joachim van Plettenberg, hippo snouts can be detected rising and submerging in the waters of the Seekoei River. This is happening on a farm, about to become an official…
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Three nature reserves, reasonably close together, and all with tongue-twister names … Gamkaberg, Anysberg, Grootvadersbosch. Lion, anise, grandfather … that’s how the foreign-sounding bits translate from Khoi, Afrikaans and Dutch. When you mention these places to anyone, most look at you with head cocked and ask: “Really? Where are they?” Um, the Little Karoo and…
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