Ambur We stopped in Jeffrey’s Bay, a surfing town. We saw our first white waitresses here – all others had been black. Afterwards we went down to the Indian Ocean – a cool day, and not ideal for swimming, but we just stood there on the beach, letting the water wash over our feet, and looked […]
Category Archives: Travels
Down to the Indian Ocean.
09-Jul-15The Big Tree of Tsitsikamma.
08-Jul-15The area around Knysna on the African coast is unusual, because it supports true forest: the majority of South Africa is savannah, whether grassy savannah in the interior or the bushy savannah they call fynbos at the Cape. But this was real forest, and even where the original forest has been cut down, there are […]
Meditations on the Leo-pardus.
07-Jul-15While here in South Africa we have been wondering how to name the things we see here, in Latin; and one of the difficulties has been cheetah. We did not know, offhand, the Latin for cheetah. The scientific name, right now, is acinonyx, from the Greek: onyx is nail or claw, -kin- is move or […]
Walking With Cheetahs.
07-Jul-15June 25th. Another long, full day of incredible experiences. We arrived at Tanikwa, and after a little waiting but very little to-do (signing an indemnity form releasing them from all responsibility if we get maimed by the animals), we were led to the cheetah enclosure. As we approached it, walking along a long fence, a […]
Knysna.
06-Jul-15June 24h. We arrived late, coming from Cape Town, and are now in Knysna (pronounced “nize-nuh”), a holiday town on the Indian Ocean. As usual, there is no one here; winter in a seaside town. What is more, the South Africans seem to shut down at night: for sure in the hotel industry it is […]
In the Garden of God.
01-Jul-15June 24th. Today is the feast of St. John, and we spent it in the center of one of the oddest parts of the natural world, Kirstenbosch, the great botanical garden of the Cape. The whole world is divided into six “floristic provinces,” where general distinctions in flora can be observed, and for the most […]
Chapman’s Peak Drive.
29-Jun-15Driving along the Atlantic to Cape Town we had to take Chapman’s Peak Road, an incredible road blasted into the sea-cliffs. The cliffs are sheer and the road shows the greatest engineering ingenuity, its route climbing up several hundred feet above the sea to exploit the seam between two rock formations, being hacked into a […]
Native Plant Nurseries in Africa.
29-Jun-15June 24th. Following the Cape up to Cape Town, we came across Good Hope Nursery, “specialist in indigenous plants.” I screeched to a halt and backed up. Though we were arriving almost exactly at closing time, I got one of the workers there to give me a brief tour of the place, as I wanted […]
Pride and The Idea of God.
12-Jul-15buy generic Lyrica online “The neighborhood of the Game Reserve and the presence, outside our boundary, of the big game, gave a particular character to the farm, as if we had been the neighbors of a great king. Very proud things were about, and made their nearness felt. The barbarian loves his own pride, and hates, or disbelieves in, […]