CAPE TOWN CAPERS

Our holiday just keeps getting better. Cape Town has put on it's best to stun us again: whales wallowing in the waves below us, mountains decked out in spring finery and the most lovely weather.

Cape Point - Miles of beach

Death by chocolate - Grace, Francis, Stuart, Sara and Alec

We've stayed in Constantia with Alec & Sara in their lovely Cape Georgian home and have taken their Toby for walks along the Alphen trail. We also went to a packed opera house to see La Traviata where I bumped into many familiar faces. It's fantastic seeing the new South Africa in action: the chorus was almost exclusively made up of large African women dressed in unusual costumes with the most lovely voices and it certainly made for a very different and refreshingly African La Traviata.

Conal has as usual managed to fill our social calendar with his usual energy and we've been busy dashing around at a steady rate catching up with family and friends this time we've been at a more leisurely pace.

Symphony in white - flowers in Cape Point

Alec & Sara invited us to Betty's Bay where we celebrated Sara's birthday – Kate, Francis, Grace and Stuart, Leon and some of the neighbours joined us for tea and the most decadent Black Forest cake. Death by chocolate!

NORTH TO SOUTH in 3 Days

Dinner with Glen & Andre - and Nicholas in Johannesburg

 We drove from Punda Maria to Cape Town in three days - the northern border of South Africa to Cape Town - through the most lovely countryside spending the night in Johannesburg and on a marvellous farm in the Karoo near Colesberg.

Kuilfontein, Colesberg

The journey took slightly longer because we chose to do a detour through Graaff-Reinet where Alec, Leon and I were born, to avoid the road works on the national road driving through the Karoo where space seems infinite.

You can see forever

KRUGER NATIONAL PARK - Punda Maria and Pafuri

We drove from Johannesburg to Punda Maria in the north of the Kruger Park on Tuesday arriving mid afternoon in time for a late afternoon drive. The northern part of the park is great for bird watching and usually not as good for game as further south, but we saw lots probably because it's the end of the dry season and the game hasn't  dispersed yet.

Guess who has come for coffee?

World Cup supporters

We drove from Punda to Pafuri the next day to Wenela Camp perched on top of a hill and stayed in a house belonging to the Chamber of Mines - a house straight out of colonial Africa.

 Pafuri Camp was built in 1918 on a low rise surrounded by mopane scrub overlooking the KNP to the west, Zimbabwe to the North and Mozambique to the east.  Harold Mockford spent 47 years (1937 - 1985) at Pafuri as recruiter, “temporary” customs and immigration officer and Special Constable of the SA Police. He was a dedicated conservationist. 

In the middle and late 1890's the supply to the Wits mines could not meet demand resulting in high wages, illicit recruitment and poaching of labour between the different gold mines. The illicit recruitment was carried out by unscrupulous individuals who “sold” the labour on to other traders before the recruit reached the mines all of which added to the already high costs.

By 1900 the RNLA was formed and Wits Native Labour Assoc (Wenela) was set up. Recruitment was done by runners from Mozambique – from 80 bases – recruits marched or travelled by ox/donkey wagon to the nearest rail head connecting to Jo'burg. Pafuri was one of the staging posts.

The area was favoured by opportunists, mainly diamond smugglers,  and our favourite view site on the banks of the river is named Crook's Corner where the infamous Barnard nicknamed "The Swaggerer" slipped across the border to evade the law. The banks of the river is lined with huge yellow evil crocodiles so it must have been a difficult choice - crocs or cops!

Zebra crossing