Category Archives: Art & Photography

Etosha & its Wildlife

Etosha & its Wildlife

Posted on: 3rd November 2021| By: Marielle

So … here is the promised sequel to our recent Namibian trip. Etosha, and Okaukuejo’s much-loved waterhole, always always deliver. It is such a thrill to spend time there. If you were a lazy traveller, all you’d need to do is book into Okaukuejo Camp for several days and hang out on a bench with…
Read More

Into the Namib Desert

Into the Namib Desert

Posted on: 27th September 2021| By: Marielle

Eighteen months of forced seclusion meant that immensely itchy feet, and a Land Rover and Toyota Prado panting for the sensation of gravel under their tyres, was Priority Numero Uno. So, doubly-vaccinated, it was time to remedy this matter. An unspooling of 3 1/2 weeks and a rough and tumble, corrugated, stony/shalely journey of 6,175…
Read More

Escape into the Wild

Escape into the Wild

Posted on: 24th July 2021| By: Marielle

Covid-19 mutations. Delta variant. All sorts of other variants. Renewed lockdowns. First and second vaccinations. Astra-Zeneca, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson. Suffice to say, it’s been a helluva year. As truly horrible as last year, in fact. We just had to get ourselves out of there. So we did. Into the wide open spaces that are…
Read More

Knysna Lockdown Day 22

Knysna Lockdown Day 22

Posted on: 17th April 2020| By: Marielle

When you wake at 3:00 in the morning (as I regularly do), the silence is so absolute it’s unnerving. I can hear the heating element in the geyser percolating, roiling the water, modifying thermal subtleties. Dew dripping from a neighbour’s gutter is like the rhythmic beating of a metronome. In this profound absence of sound,…
Read More

Braaivleis & Kgalagadi Dreaming

Braaivleis & Kgalagadi Dreaming

Posted on: 10th April 2020| By: Marielle

It’s the end of Lent (when, theoretically, one has been thoroughly abstemious and earnestly reflective), and the beginning of Easter (which Covid-19 has just roundly cancelled). Today our South African Lockdown has been extended to the end of April. Five Weeks. We’ve only just managed to gasp our way through two. So … Reflection, yes,…
Read More

Knysna’s Urban Geometry

Knysna’s Urban Geometry

Posted on: 27th March 2020| By: Marielle

If you don’t look closely enough, you’d never believe that a small tourism-based village such as Knysna in fact followed some highly fashionable trends in its earlier building styles. I’m talking specifically here the period between the 1920s and 1930s. I’m talking Art Deco. It’s an architectural trend that was coined after an international exhibition…
Read More

Signs of history in Knysna’s architecture

Signs of history in Knysna’s architecture

Posted on: 22nd March 2020| By: Marielle

It struck me one day that if, while wandering through Knysna, you look upwards at the gables and lintels and parapets, there is still so much history, so many stories, bound up in the curves and columns and straight lines. I was so intrigued that early one morning, armed with my camera, I set off to…
Read More

Spirit of Toronto

Spirit of Toronto

Posted on: 5th March 2020| By: Marielle

With a new adventure happening in Toronto, we’ve just spent some time getting to know the city. It’s been great fun, and so far we like what we see. Here is a brief sense of our first impressions, and a little flavour of the city. (No snow in this particular Blog Post, but there was…
Read More

Toronto’s Unique Architecture

Toronto’s Unique Architecture

Posted on: 24th February 2020| By: Marielle

We’re in the middle of a new adventure, visiting Toronto, Canada, in spite of it being entirely the wrong season to venture into this icy northern territory! Canadians we meet are constantly joking that we must have come for the weather. (Minus 15 degrees C some days …) And yet, there is still magic to…
Read More

Thinking of a White Christmas …

Thinking of a White Christmas …

Posted on: 23rd December 2019| By: Marielle

Somehow hippos have made their way into a Central Park playground. In spite of our December African blue skies, burning sun … and the blasted Southeasters! … my thoughts have been wandering to colder climes, considering that new adventure prowling stealthily in the wings, ready to pounce like a snow leopard, in 2020. When we…
Read More