Sharing my passions with the KidZ

I'm very fortunate that both the KidZ adore the outdoors.  They're mad about camping, they're addicted to geocaching, they love travelling and exploring and are slowly starting to show an interest in photography.  All this means that I can share my passions with them and we can always find something new to do or somewhere different to go.  I'm just not sure I want them to start blogging any time soon cause then I'd never get to use my laptop.

Aloes on the Swartkops River

Clan Firefly is heading over the Zuurberg into the southern Karoo tomorrow for a couple of nights at Kuzuko Lodge and Ann's Villa.  We're starting out at Kuzuko Lodge for the first night before moving on to Ann's Villa for the next two.  Kuzuko Lodge is a 5 star lodge and lies in a private concession in the northern part of the Addo Elephant National Park while Ann's Villa started out in 1864 as an inn on the Zuurberg Pass when it was the main road north.  The whole idea behind the weekend is to get away from the city to the Karoo with its uninterrupted views and flowering aloes, where the evening silence is only broken by the howl of the black-backed jackal and sunrise is accompanied by the melody of bird song.

 

The aloes in the picture are next to the Swartkops River at Redhouse outside Port Elizabeth and seeing them just got me more excited about our trip with aloes in full bloom at the moment. 

New shoots of life

Nature is a wonderful thing.  It can be destroyed so easily through natural causes or human doing, but it is resilient and will always fight back.  Sometimes immediately and sometimes only much later.  We as humans don't always give nature the respect it deserves, destroying and polluting as far as we go.  At least many are waking up to the fact and is trying to do something about it.  Some people are trying hard to distroy this world we live in either through their greed or ignorence.  But Mother Earth will persist and with our help will (hopefully) be around for a long time to come. 

 

Sorry, didn't mean to be so deep this morning.  Just didn't want to write something like "A new shoot appearing after a fire" or something like that.

The old Cape Point Lighthouse

Cape Point is a many historic tales and legends.  In 1688 Bartolomeu Dias passed around the point in a storm without even knowing it and only got to see it for the first time on the return journey.  He named it Cabo Tormentosa or the Cape of Storms.  Its also off this point and coastline that the mythical Flying Dutchman under the command of  Captain Hendrick van der Decken is doomed to sail into eternity.  Cape Point is also one of the biggest tourist attractions in Cape Town with thousands of tourists flocking there to admire its scenic beauty and sheer cliffs.  Visitors to the point usually take the path (or funicular for those not in the mood to walk) up to the old Lighthouse at the top from where the point itself can be seen.

The old Cape Point Lighthouse was built in 1860 and could be seen out to sea from a distance of 36 miles.  The problem was that when misty and cloudy conditions moved in the lighthouse was invisible to ships.  After the Portuguese liner Lusitania wrecked just south of Cape Point in 1911 it was decided to have a new lighthouse built close to the point itself at a much lower elevation.  The old lighthouse is still around and truth be told, probably gets photographed a lot more by tourists than the new lighthouse does.

Queen Victoria in the Gamtoos Valley

 

One of the well known landmarks in the Gamtoos River Valley in the Eastern Cape is the Queen Victoria Profile on the road between Patensie and the Baviaanskloof.  The profile is the result of erosion of the sheer cliff and can be seen when driving towards Patensie.  

 

About 140 million years ago the Cape Mountains were roughly three times higher than today.  A period of high rainfall then eroded them and the Enon Conglomerate, of which much of the Gamtoos valley is composed of this, was the result.  A conglomerate is a rock consisting of individual clasts within a finer-grained matrix that have become cemented together.  The geological strata of this area known as the Enon Formation is the result of boulders, pebbles, sand and clay which were deposited in an early basin of the Gamtoos.  The material was subsequently cemented together to form conglomerate.  The Enon Formation was deposited in the form of alluvial fans by rivers draining the Cape Fold mountains.  In places the Enon conglomerate is quarried to produce crushed aggregate.

 

 But back to Queen Vic.  Have another look at the rock formation and then at this old picture of queen herself.  Kinda looks like her, doesn't it?

The new kid on the Jozi skyline

The Nizamiye Turish Masjid - or Midrand Mosque -  has made a big impact on the Johannesburg, and in particular Midrand, skyline.  The mosque with its 55 meter high minarets is the brainchild of retired Turkish property developer Ali Katircioglu (known as “Uncle Ali”) and was modelled on the Selimiye Camisi mosque in Edirne, Turkey.

Mushroom Farm Park - greening urban areas

Johannesburg boasts that it's the world's largest man-made urban forest and that's difficult to imagine until one actually visits the city and see how many open spaces, parks and nature reserves there are.  One of these parks is Mushroom Farm Park in Sandton.  I've passed here a couple of times before but visited for the first time on my last visit to the City of Gold. 

Sandton started out in the 1930's as farms and estates and only transform from a farming community to a business district in 1973 when Sandton City was built.  In the 1990's it became part of the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality at the time when there was quite a boom in development which seemingly hasn't stopped yet.  I haven't found any history on why the area is called Mushroom Farm, but in 2006 during the construction of the Gautrain a shaft was sunk here to access the underground tunnelling operations. 

After the completion of the Gautrain development, rehabilitation of the area started by representatives of the developers.  The terrain has been landscaped, new pathways have been laid, a children's play area created, irrigation and pathway lighting installed, topsoil introduced, the waterways have been cleared and new indigenous flora was plated.  Most of this have now been well established and the park is looking stunning.  On my visit the park was being utilised by both families and business people taking a break away from the hustle and bustle of their offices.  I imagine there will be a couple more people using the park late afternoons after the end of business as well as on weekend, specially those living in apartments in the area.

There is an aerial balloon in the park in which visitors can go up to 120 meter for a lovely view of surrounding Sandton and Johannesburg in the distance.  The Mushroom Farm Park is a prime example of what can be done in urban areas by municipalities in partnership with the private sector when there is a will to do so.