Thorny Bush Game Reserve is a subtropical savannah lowveld bushveld ecosystem, spanning some 14,000 hectares of open rolling grass plains to thick dense acacia woodlands – excellent camouflage for the big cats (spot the Leopard!) and the large grazing herbivores that roam this land. The distant Drakensberg escarpment looms on the horizon, emerging from the…
Warthogs and All – A Thorny Bush Safari
We’re on a Safari in the remarkable Thorny Bush Game Reserve in South Africa, fenceless to the enormous Kruger National Park, South Africa’s premier flagship park spanning some 20,000 square kilometres, whilst Thorny Bush is a mere 140 square kilometres of open savannah and lowveld bushveld (as it’s called) – but boy does it pull…
Escape From The City – Safari Bound
The drive north-east out of Johannesburg is a seemingly endless corridor of freeways, through a messy urban and industrial sprawl, giving way to flat semi-rural farmland dotted with massive coal fire power plants such as the Kelvin Power Station, supplying 15% of Johannesburg’s electricity requirements. Plus the other 12 power plants clustered just east of…
Dawn Over Madagascar – Africa Ahead
It was just before dawn 39,000 feet above the Indian Ocean on our flight from Singapore to Johannesburg, that we awoke to first light breaking over the island of Madagascar, far below in the pre-dawn haze. It’s our first trip to Africa (for me) and our first visit to South Africa, so plenty of adventures…
Life’s A Beach!
“At the beach – time you enjoyed wasting, is not wasted.” – T.S. Eliot There’s always been a cool buzzy vibe about Byron Bay – though possibly a tad too ‘influencer’ these days as the ‘bright young things’ of our times take over from the hippie surfer laid-back Byron of yesteryear. And of course, there’s…
Ironman Palm Cove – Endurance in the Tropics!
It’s a cracking mid-June winter dawn in Clifton Beach, 22 degrees at 6.30am with the chance of coastal showers. It’s Ironman Cairns today – a bracing dawn 3.8-kilometre swim to kick off the day at Palm Cove, just up the beach from us. And it’s crowded…I mean, I’ve never seen so many people here. There…
Koufonisia – The Hidden Gem in the Cyclades
It’s just a short 30-minute hop across from Naxos to the beautiful tiny islands of Koufonisia, the main island of Ano Koufonisi, the sparsley populated island of Kato Koufonisi and the mysterious archaeologically rich island of Keros. It’s our second visit here to see our dear friends N&H, spending four days unwinding on this unpretentious…
Into The Heart Of The Cyclades – Naxos
“Where Zeus himself was said to live. Where his son Dionysus frolicked and presumably drank and threw orgies and danced all night…” – Anthony Bourdain Naxos, the largest of the Cyclades islands, is one of those places where you can just forget about the pressures of life, where time slows down and relaxation is the…
Athens – People, People, Everywhere
“The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognise you has a tourist.” Athens and, in particular, the Acropolis, is one of those ‘must see, bucket list’ icons. You feel you’ve seen it even without ever having been there. The Parthenon, with its instantly recognisable columns has to be one of the…
It’s Bath Time!
Bath has to be one of England’s most beautiful cities and perhaps one of its most unique, for this stunningly amazing place is not just famous for its ancient Roman Baths (Aquae Sulis), dating back to 60AD, but for its stunning Georgian Regency architecture and, of course a certain Jane Austen, who brought regency Bath…
