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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It’s a real tussle, isn’t it? Should you visit the Falls during high-water season (April/May) when the bongo-drum thunder penetrates to your bones but the spray is so drenching you can see absolutely nothing? Or should you be there in September when water still tumbles over but a lot of the gorge is dry —…
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Gravel Road Adventures sometimes strays beyond the boundaries of the Southern African continent to explore ‘wish list’ places across the seas. And that’s what happened this year with the Iberian Peninsula ꟷ a hire car collected in Madrid, a month to play with, and a 3,500-kilometre road trip, to be exact. Spain? Love, love, love….
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Is the Okavango Delta on the upper rungs of your bucket-list ladder? The catch, though, is that accommodation comes at a premium and for Southern African visitors, particularly, it’s becoming prohibitively expensive. Well … serendipitously we’ve recently discovered that the Panhandle — the long straight passage of the Kavango River before it fragments into the…
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