http://viningsnaturalhealthcentre.co.uk/2016/01/ A picture of me at the place where J.R.R. Tolkien was born. Just to establish nerd credentials for all time. It did amaze us that this is not a tourist spot at all, that there is no J.R.R. Tolkien Museum in the town where he was born, or anything similar. If he had been born […]
Monthly Archives: July 2015
Tolkien and South Africa.
17-Jul-15The Birthplace of J.R.R. Tolkien.
17-Jul-15http://vintagegoodness.com/new-goodness-at-auction-on-ebay-this-week-10/ June 27th. Bloomfontein. Bloomfontein is different from the other places we have seen; a large, sprawling city, with more middle-class homes than we have seen anywhere else. Much of it looks like the middle-class suburbs of Los Angeles: sundrenched gardens made leafy by ample water, gardens closed off by attractive walls of adobe and concrete, […]
Ellyphants.
17-Jul-15June 26th. We made it to Graaff-Reinett, a pretty little town in the Karoo. We are staying at a lovely bed and breakfast, where we were greeted with a glass of sherry and shown to our big four-poster bed. I’m in the tub now. As usual the place is empty, though it’s Friday night and […]
Leaving Addo.
16-Jul-15Leaving the park we quickly went into the town of Addo to get some gasoline. The gas station was swamped, with hundreds of people: they were all lined up at the two ATMs, chattering away. Stores in the small town were also open, past five p.m., which is not normal. Trying to bring the car […]
In the Peaceable Kingdom.
16-Jul-15June 26th. Well, we came to Addo for the Elephants, and we got them: they are everywhere here. Our guide pulled up right next to an elephant feeding beside the road, and we just sat there watching him, only fifteen feet away. He continued grazing undisturbed by our presence; I don’t know if I’ll ever […]
Beautiful Woman In Lion Country.
14-Jul-15June 26th. We came down to the water-hole after lunch at the lodge to look at the animals – the lodge is sited on a ridge above this water-hole – and found ourselves surrounded by birds, begging for a bit of our orange (I took a video of one particularly vocal cara avis, but my […]
Oliphants Stop the Traffic.
14-Jul-15June 26th. We are now awaiting our “game drive,” as it is called, when a safari guide will take us out into the veld animalia ad videnda; we spent the morning doing a game drive of our own, as the South African national parks allow people to go out into the wild themselves. Our resolution […]
Monkeys.
14-Jul-15June 26th. When we woke up this morning there were monkeys in the trees playing by our car, and playing seems to be the right word: they seemed to live perfectly unserious lives, wrestling with each other, pulling each other’s tails, running up the trees and then back down them again as if energy were […]
On Safari.
13-Jul-15It’s hard to hide behind a tree if you’re an elephant.
Under the Stars at Addo.
13-Jul-15June 25th. We drove in the declining evening from Jeffrey’s Bay to Addo Elephant National Park, getting a bit lost in the outskirts of Port Elizabeth, but eventually arriving. And now we are here, at the main camp, staying in a plastered mud hut with a thatched roof and nice detailing – safari chic, they […]