Weekend in Bredasdorp

This weekend I visited Bredasdorp, where my uncle lives. This is a small town about 2 hours drive outside Cape Town.

Cape Agulhas is about 20km away from Bredasdorp and is the Southern most tip of Africa.


At Cape Agulhas the Light house is a beautifully sight. I didn't go in this time, but last time I went up to the top and spent some time up there.

On the way back from there we drove along the cost through Hermanus, where the whale festival is on right now. Then through Kleinmond and lastly through the Strand.

Above is the bay where you can see the Whales in Hermanus. I saw a couple, but unfortunately was not able to capture one properly with the camera.

Robbeneiland Trip

A Seagull named Nelson.


Yesterday, we took a short trip out to Robbeneiland. The world heritage site and place everyone knows as the jail that held Mr Nelson Mandela for 27 years. This was my first visit to this historic place and was really an eye opener. You always hear about the jail on TV, but once you walk through the hallways, see what they went through and experience the small cells, you can't understand.

As one of the people in our group stated: "Everything is gray, dull and mind numbing. Totally made to keep you down."


The Island has about 180 people living there permanently and working one the island.

It has the 2de largest Penguin population in Africa.

The view and sun set from the island and the boat was amazing.

We were about 6 South Africa's in our tour group with people from all over Africa, Europe and the Americas.

This is a place that you should visit to understand what this country has gone through.

What has happened here, should not happen anywhere else in the world ever again.

Shy Guevaras' new album "We owe you one"

Last night I attended the Shy Guevaras' album launch at Mercury Live. The vibe in the club was electric by the time the band appeared on stage and then it got wild.

The new album is called "We owe you one" and features a collaboration on the one track with Inge Beckmann from lark.

I have uploaded all the pictures to my Facebook page and have included the links here.

Part1
Part2
Part3
Part4If you want to listen to some of the tracks from the band, try their myspace page or the homepage. Both have flash players that plays 3 tracks for you.

Intaka Island at Century City

This afternoon a friend and I went through to Intaka Island in Century City. It is a Nature reserve where any birds breed.This place doesn't look that big inside, but we spent almost 2 hours walking around taking pictures.

New Tablemountain Panoramic

When I was out taking the pictures of the stadium, I took the opportunity to take some new panoramic pictures.

Cape Town Stadium progress

There has been a lot of work done on the Greenpoint stadium in Cape Town for the Soccer world cup in 2010. Here is a picture of the entire work area.


Here is a picture of only the new stadium field.

Grootbrak

We spent the last 4 days in Grootbrak to celebrate Jasper's birthday. Groot brak is about 400KM from Cape Town. Very close to Mosselbaai. On Saturday night we had a brilliant sun set.

We had a very interesting braai. A lawnmower converted to a braai. :)

Johannesburg Trip

Last weekend we took a trip to Johannesburg. The main event was Kate's birthday. But we took the chance to visit some landmarks as well. I haven't been to the Voortrekker Monument in years, so that was one of our destinations.





We also took a trip to the Union Building.


The last stop that we made was the Origin Center at the University of Witwatersrand. This was extremely interesting. I never thought that it would interest me, but the exhibits were great. I will go back some time and spend some more time there.

First Lightning Picture

On Sunday night we had a small thunderstorm here in Cape Town and I decided to go and try taking a picture of lightning again. I got three successful pictures. I have posted one of the best.

The lightning struck behind Table mountain.

The Greenpoint Stadium

I had to catch up on some blogging tonight so there is a few posts directly after each other. I hope to get some more pictures soon.

I have gone up to Signal hill again this weekend to get a picture of the progress of the demolition of the stadium and this is how it looks by now. Unfortunately the weather has been a bit cloudy lately so it isn't one of the best picture. In this picture you can see that more than half of the old stadium has been demolished already.

Cheese and Wine Festival

This weekend past, the annual Cheese and Wine Festival took place in Franschhoek.

We have been going every year for at least 4 years. It is a huge event with hundreds of stalls with samples of cheese and wine. There are also other stalls like the Wedgewood nougat stall, that never seems to be able to have enough stock, since everyone always wants some of it. All the stalls have products to sell and usually at very competitive prices. This event runs over 3 days and is always very popular.

We always buy a bottle or two of wine, some cheese and some breads. Then we go an enjoy it on the grass in the sun. Unfortunately, this year it was very cold and raining intermittently. So we had to use the tents that they set-up. It was still great.

If you ever find yourself in Cape Town at the end of April, organize to go and go early. They had to close the gates for non ticket holders by the afternoon this year.

FedEx got it done.

Well ,after a stressful morning trying to get the package to Germany we just used a new courier(FedEx). I am glad to say that the package made it to it's destination on time and with no fuss.

We delivered the package directly to the depot on Friday morning(Freedom day, a public holiday here in South Africa), since we had to have a new copy of the report printed and bound. The package got there this afternoon.

The saga continues for DHL though. After many phone calls, on Friday night late (after 21:00) we got a call that the package was back in South Africa. They wanted to know if we would like it delivered to us to to try and send it of to Germany again.
We told them that we have already used a different courier to get another copy of the package to Germany and that they could send the package back to us and refund us.

This morning they phoned to let us know that the package has been delivered in Germany and thus will only be able to refund us partially. I am sorry but if this is the way that they do business I will not use them again.

A little hike.

A couple of weekends ago we took a drive out to Houtbaai to take a hike up to Kapteins Peak. I found out about this hike from Mike Lundy's book Best Walks in the Cape Peninsula. The hike was not 100% accurate as per the book, but it was definitely worth it. The wind was blowing something awful, but that was probably a blessing in disguise, since it was quite hot.

As you can see from the panoramic shot, we had a spectacular view from up there. The second picture was just a couple of hundred meters in the opposite direction of the panoramic shot.

Picture Lark

Here are all the best pictures of the Lark night.

Lark in Cape Town

Lark Live

I have uploaded the first song of the night as well. I hope you like.

The LARK has sung

Last night we were in the packed Mercury Live. The music was great and I took a couple of nice shots of the band. I still have about a hundred to work through but I have quickly prepared a view to upload.

I will post the rest later in the week. I also made a video of the first song which I will upload to Google Video or YouTube.



I have also come across a nice technology blog in the South Africa and have linked to it here on the side bar.

Lark back in Cape Town tomorrow.

Tomorrow night Lark is playing at the Mercury Live in Cape Town. They have a very interesting sound; electronic, beats and some very melodic vocals. I will try and get the camera in tomorrow night and get a couple of pics. They have 3 songs on their myspace page. Listen to it and go out and support them.

First try at fixing a picture

I have posted my first attempt at "fixing" a picture of mine.

Hope you like ;)


In the last 2 weeks I have been in Johannesburg for 3 days and 2 days in Durban. Both times Cape Town has had heat streaks. I still love coming back home through.

Still no proper Internet connection :(

Comet McNaught

It has really been a while since I have had time to update the blog. I hope to get some more time soon. Last night we drove out to Bloubergbeach to go and have a look at the McNaught Comet. I got a couple of pics and posted 2 of them here.

I will go through the rest of the pictures at home and see if there are any other nice picture to post.

I have also started taking pictures of the Greenpoint Stadium that will be replaced with the new 65000 seat Stadium for the 2010 World Cup Soccer. I will try and post pictures of the progress.Here you can see the entire area that will be used to develop the new stadium and surrounding facilities. All the green sports fields will be reclaimed and used. There has been a lot of protest of the people in the area against the development, but the benefit for Cape Town as a whole will out weight the complaints of a couple of people. I just hope that the public transport in the entire Cape area is drastically improved.

The new year

We made it safely back to Cape Town. We traveled approximately 3000 km in the week that we were away. I have seen parts of the beautiful country that I have never seen before. Unfortunately the weather was playing along most of the time to get pictures. As you can see on the picture here the clouds were rolling in for more rain. We stopped over in Graaff-Reinet on our way to Oudshoorn and I took a pic of the church in the middle of town.

We are preparing now for the new years eve party at a friends house tonight. I hope that everyone will have a great party tonight.

I hope to go out and get some more pictures soon to update here. Also have my 30th birthday coming up this week. Hope to remember some of it... ;)