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Director of Want a Headshot? Partner at katin images, a travel photography business.

Author: Nick k

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-four – Cape Town

    Table Mountain was next on our agenda but that was tomorrow’s challenge in the meantime we had to get back and eat! Largely because of its multiculturalism Cape Town is considered the gastronomic capital of Southern Africa. There are lotss of restaurants and cafes of all descriptions and price tags. In Observatory there were several…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-three – Robben Island Cape Town

    Another pretty interesting guy whom unfortunately we didn’t get around to meet was Nelson Mandela. We did however get to meet someone who served time with him on Robben island a small former prison island 11 kilometres north west of Cape Town. Eugene was his name and he served seven years on Robben Island for…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-two – Cape Town

    Back in the guest house we learned what we had suspected that morning, Andre was a ‘know it all’ who liked to give you the benefit of his wisdom and experience in as many words as possible regardless of whether you asked for it or not. In fact listening to him politely, trying hard to…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty-one – Cape Muslim quarter Cape Town

    You know Cape Town is really a very beautiful place. It’s up there with the likes of Sydney, Rio de Janeiro and San Francisco as places of natural beauty. With the Atlantic Ocean on its western and northern sides and the brooding presence of Cradle Mountain to the south, it’s in a great location. Of…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Thirty – Cape Town

    What was in regular service were the minibus taxis. If you have being paying attention you’d remember that I’ve mentioned these before. These are generally run by black or more often or not in Cape Town, coloured South Africans and are mostly used by both these groups of people. They are of course found in…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-nine

    We left J’burg for Cape Town the next day via a domestic South African airways flight. We had been to Cape Town before but we had felt that hadn’t done it justice, so this visit was to ‘see’ the place properly. Last time we had stayed in a pleasant Bed & Breakfast near the city…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-eight

    Next stop was the first of two shebeens. A shebeen is basically a township bar that until recently were illegal and like the rest of the world there are shebeens and there are shebeens. This first one was a kiosk on a small patch of land that serves beer, for R1.30 a litre, made from…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-seven

    Our first stop was the “poor end of town” which in size is the smallest part of Soweto but also by far the most densely populated. We were taken into a small two room “house”. I say house loosely because it was no bigger than two decent size tin sheds found in any Australian suburb.…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-six

    The main reason that we had elected to stay in J’burg the extra night was to see Soweto. Soweto you say! Why would anyone want to see such a notoriously dangerous place? Well, most tourists visiting South Africa regardless of budget have minimal contact with black South Africans. Very few get to visit black townships…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-five

    The hostel itself was an old large rambling single storey house with hand me down furniture spread haphazardly around the place,………… lounge chairs, torn dining chairs and card tables that had all seen better days and a large garden. Sounds all right doesn’t it? Well I did miss out one important fact. It backed onto…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-four

    It was as the guy from Budget was driving away that a rather worrying thought crossed my mind. What if he wasn’t a Budget employee and had just easily hoisted a car from two unsuspecting and naïve tourists! The fact that he was standing in the Budget car park with a Budget jacket might mean…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-three

    We found the Isandlwana battlefield quite eerie and moving. Monuments and unmarked graves in the form of stone cairns (piles of small rocks and stones for anyone that doesn’t know what a cairn is) dot the base of the hill, marking spots where they believe certain events or deaths took place. There is a memorial…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-two

    In the middle to the end of nineteenth century a large group of Afrikaners, (descendants of the original, mainly Dutch, French and German settlers) trekked their way their way from the Cape after the British took control of the Cape colony. This was called the Great Trek. When they got to Natal they found the…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty-one

    What Giant’s castle is really known for is its 5000 Bushmen Rock Paintings and the twelve species of Antelope and from our experience it’s a lot easier to see the former than the latter. With one of the park rangers we went to Main cave, one of the two sites open for viewing. He pointed…

  • African shoestrings – South Africa Day Twenty

    The accommodation at Royal Natal was more than we wanted to pay so we took our chances on the road. Peering through the gloom we knocked on several doors of motels and B & B’s all of which were full! Eventually we managed to find a huge chalet at a rather sterile Drakensville Resort. This…