Cherokee Village has a nice waterfall near its community center.
Category: Travel
A weekday off and (some) warm sunshine usually means you will find on two wheels, hopefully off-road. I’m enjoying all of those things today…
We visited a crocodile farm near Victoria Falls, which was actually pretty boring, but I did get to simulate what it would be like on the business end of one of these things.
In short, I didn’t even like putting my head in the mouth of a stuffed one of these monsters.
We got a chance to spend some quality time with a few of these in the wild a few years later, and my appreciation had increased by that time.
Taken on the Zimbabwe side of Victoria Falls, this is a photo of an elephant preparing to charge us while we are on a horse riding tour of a park near the river.
We got a little too close to the elephant, who turned toward us and started to act aggressively. Thankfully, our guide was there to help us slowly back away from the situation.
Kath and I took a “tour” of Soweto, in an effort to learn more about this famous slum in Johannesburg. The place was a complete maze of ramshackle tin structures. If not for the cell tower in the middle of it all, I would have been completely lost.
This look means, “What have we gotten ourselves into?”
We went to an elephant sanctuary near Knysna, South Africa, in 1999 and got up close with a few of them. Most of the elephants we saw were only babies. Sweet, pushy, 1-ton babies…
Kath took this photo of me while we were kayaking around a bay in the Southern Ocean, off the coast of Cintsa, South Africa, in 1999.
This was before I watched the various great white shark specials on the Discovery Channel. This area has around the highest number of reported attacks in the world, per capita. Shark Week might have me thinking twice about this these days…
Along the southern coast of South Africa, many of the hostels have this great tradition, called a sundowner. Basically, it involves buying a few boxes of wine, taking out the bags from the boxes, tying a rope to two corners of the wine bag (making it easier to sling over your shoulder), grabbing some cups and a dozen or so of the total strangers hanging around the hostel, marching up the highest sand dune you can find, and downing a few cups of wine while watching the sunset.
The only person from this photo that I remember is the guy with the stormtrooper shirt behind us.
Another photo from our South Africa trip in 1999. (I’m really seeing these for the first time in over 10 years, as I’ve just scanned them in from negatives as a part of converting all of my photos to a digital format for long-term preservation.)
We took every chance we could to ride horses on this trip. I think this picture was taken while on a sunrise ride near the town of Cintsa, along a coastal region called the Garden Route.
I’m wrapping up a personal project of digitizing all of my photos, mostly going back to scanning the negatives, and in these dark days of winter, I thought I would share a few of the better ones that I’ve come across.
The photo above was taken on our honeymoon in August 1997, while we were in Istanbul. I think it is the Ayasofya Mosque behind us, and beyond that, the Bosphorus Strait. (Click on the photo for a higher resolution version.)
The Benziger Family Winery
Kath and I are waiting for our tractor tour to start at the beautiful Benziger Family Winery, located just outside Glen Ellen, California.
The winery focuses on growing grapes and fermenting them in a biodiverse way, and the entire farm is constructed so that the sum of the flora and fauna is greater than its parts.
I’d bet the wine is pretty tasty, too. We will get to sample some after the tour.
Walking the Coast at East Bay
Happy New Year!
Along the east side of San Francisco Bay, artists make large art pieces out of the trash that washes up.
Kath and Alex
Alex is so cute!