Antique cars in South Africa

In Ghana, one rarely sees a car older than 15 years old. Ghanaians think old cars are hilarious and can't understand why anyone would want to have one. In terms of antique cars, Ghana is a wasteland.

South Africa, however, is a place where classic automobiles are appreciated. One day, while visiting the historic town of Graaff-Reinet, we noticed a gathering of people and went to see what it was about. Why, it was the Bentley Club, of course, taking their 1920s-era Bentleys out for a spin.



All of the Bentleys had badges reading "Tour of South Africa 2007" on their grills or front bumpers. Each badge noted the owner's country of origin. There were cars there from the US, Australia, and England as well as South Africa. So presumably these drivers had to ship their giant vehicles over here for this motor tour. Wonder how much that costs.



In the town of Uitenhage, we visited the Volkswagen Museum. It's attached to a VW plant where they have been manufacturing VWs for decades. This plant started out making Studebakers.



The museum is pretty impressive and has some flashy displays as well as mint-condition old VWs, such as the shiny Beetle above.



We saw this old Benz at a refurbished old-timey service station in Thomas River.

A few South African flowers

We visited South Africa in October, which is springtime there. As it turns out, that's a great time to see wildflowers in bloom. We missed by a week or so the major blooming season, but managed to see some beautiful flora. Here are some examples.



The yellow blooms above are proteas. The protea is the national flower of South Africa. We saw these at the Cape of Good Hope.



These pinkish-purple flowers fill whole fields in western S. Africa.



The texture of the petals on these daisy-like flowers is papery.



Even the cacti were blooming.

Birds of South Africa

South Africa is great for wildlife viewing. Many have heard about the opportunities to see the "big five" (lion, elephant, buffalo, leopard and rhino), but the country is also rich with bird life. Here's a few we saw on our trip.

We saw this hoopoe while eating lunch in Kruger National Park. He was not skittish and didn't mind having his photo taken.



We tried to get closer to this white-fronted bee eater but he flew away, so this is a blow up of the photo taken before his escape. (Yes, we used a zoom lens, but we don't have one of those 6-foot-long mega lenses that allow you to see a gnat on the bird's beak.)



This cape weaver and his friend are perched in a tree outside of our chalet (a house, really) at Hlalanathi in the Northern Drakensberg range. The chalet looked out on "the amphitheater," a section of the mountains often pictured on postcards. A photo of the amphitheater is in our first post on this blog.



We spotted this spoonbill on the other side of the country at West Coast National Park.



There's a penguin colony at Boulder's Beach, near the Cape of Good Hope. You can get close to the penguins, but there were far fewer here than in the reserve we visited in Argentina, Reserva Provincial Punta Tombo.



Aerial view of a penguin.



There are lots of ostriches in South Africa. Some live wild in the parks and reserves, like those pictured here. Others are raised on farms for their meat.



These two ostriches appear to be in love. Or something.

Blyde River Canyon

There's a beautiful place in South Africa called Blyde River Canyon. Supposedly it's the 3rd largest canyon in the world. (Not sure what numbers one and two are; maybe Copper Canyon and the Grand Canyon?) There are well-maintained trails there, and we had a great time hiking on the "guinea fowl trail" and "leopard trail." Didn't see any people, but we did get an earful of a baboon fight!



The photo above is of Bourke's Luck Potholes, a rock formation with round holes made from churning water.



No lack of baboons in this area. This one thinks he's funny.

Welcome to the new blog

Hello. We're starting up a new blog, "Peripatetic." This is our first post.



We want to catch you up on our goings-on and also post fairly frequently, so we are going to start out by telling you about some events that took place a while back.




In October, we went on vacation to South Africa. Some friends had recommended it, and we had read some good things about it, but we had no idea how fantastic it was till we experienced it.



What was so great about it, you ask? Just to begin, and this list is nowhere near comprehensive, here's a few fabulous aspects of S. Africa:

-great infrastructure (smooth paved roads, excellent signage, dependable electricity)
-easy for tourism (plenty of gas stations, stores, hotels, restaurants, maps, guidebooks)
-beautiful scenery (beaches, mountains, canyons, savannah, rolling hills, tons and tons of wildlife)
-polite and friendly people
-pleasant weather (low humidity, 70 degrees or so)
-fresh air (no smell of burning garbage)
-impressive network of national parks
-clean public restrooms that contained toilet paper, soap and running water, even in gas stations!

Before now we have not been so excited by all those creature comforts, but living in Ghana for 14 months makes you appreciate such things.

More about the South Africa trip in the next post -- stay tuned!