Sabie weekend–2015-05-09

This post is related to my previous post—Bourke’s Luck Potholes - 2015-05-10—as it is part of the same weekend away in Sabie, Mpumalanga (Lat: 25° 5.914'S, Long: 30° 46.735'E). On the Saturday of our weekend away, my wife and I visited the Sudwala Caves (Lat: 25° 22.557’S, Long: 30° 41.555’E) and the Mac Mac Falls (Lat: 25° 0.041'S, Long: 30° 48.986'E).

We stayed over at the Jock-Sabie Lodge (Lat: 25° 5.876'S, Long: 30° 46.682'E). It is a lovely place to stay at right in the heart of the town of Sabie. It is very neat and comfortable, and they make a mean breakfast too!

In the background is the restaurant area of the Jock-Sabie  Lodge.

After we had a delicious breakfast at the lodge we headed out to the Sudwala Caves. I enjoyed visiting the caves. The rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites had really interesting shapes and sizes.

Interesting formations in the cave.

After we finished the visit in the cave we went to the dinosaur park next door and ran into this guy!

When we finished here we went to the Mac Mac Falls. It was already late afternoon. I had heard of these falls so many times, so I was very excited to finally get to see the falls. However, I was very disappointed when I finally got to see the falls. First, you can’t get near them. Second, you get to see the falls from behind a high fence that you need to peer through. Third, with the number of visitors, you have to jockey for a good position if you intend to take any photographs. Fourth, at this time of day the sun sets right behind the falls. In the end, I didn’t have enough time to set up properly in order to get good photographs. My intention was to take long exposure shots of the falls, but with all the people there I didn’t want to occupy the best spot for too long.

I took this photograph with shutter speed of 1.3 seconds, aperture at F29 and ISO at 100.

All in all, my wife and I enjoyed the weekend away and definitely go back to this area. There is just so much to see that we never got to see!

To see the rest of the photographs from this day, please visit this album on my Flickr account.

Bourke’s Luck Potholes – 2015-05-10

A month ago my wife and I had a weekend break in Sabie, Mpumalanga (Lat: 25° 5.914'S, Long: 30° 46.735'E), an area in South Africa where the main business is trees. Yes, they grow thousands upon thousands of trees in the region that are used mainly in the paper making business. The region is one of the most beautiful regions in South Africa!

The problem with this break was that the previous Sunday I started getting sick, and by the Monday morning I was very sick. I decided to go see the doctor, with the result that he booked me off sick the whole week! I had developed bronchitis! The problem was that my lungs did not want to open up and release all the gunk in them. By Wednesday, my lungs weren’t doing better, so the doctor prescribed me a second set of antibiotics to take together with the first set, and he also prescribed stuff that I needed to nebulise with twice a day. By the time Friday arrived—departure day (8 May)—I was still not better. I was still nebulising, but I just felt that we had booked the weekend, and we (my wife and I) were going! I wasn’t going to just lose the money for the weekend away.

My wife had to do the driving, since I couldn’t drive at the time because of all the coughing. I would suddenly get these coughing fits that would completely rob me of oxygen, making me go light-headed with momentary blackouts. I couldn’t sleep in the car as I was the navigator. We eventually arrived at the lodge at about 21:00! After unpacking, I first had to nebulise. Saturday and Sunday morning I first had to nebulise before we went out for the day.

So, even though I was sick, and being in this beautiful area, I just had to take photographs. One of the most amazing places to visit is Bourke’s Luck Potholes (Lat: 24° 40.447'S, Long: 30° 48.646'E). These potholes are truly amazing, and here are some of the photographs I took.

For more photographs of the Bourke’s Luck Potholes, please visit my Flickr account. In the past we used to be able to make slideshows of albums to embed on web pages and blog posts, but it seems that it is no longer available. I also tried some third party Flickr slideshow generators, but none worked.

Mountain Sanctuary Park - 30-12-2008

As an extended family we visited Mountain Sanctuary Park on 30 December 2008. It is about 120Km from Pretoria in the Magaliesberg mountains. Well, not high up in the mountains anyway. Here are the pics from that trip.

The picture above is of the Buffelspoort Dam. That should give you an idea where Mountain Sanctuary Park is situated.

Ballito - Chaka's Rock Beach - Geology

25 September 2008 - Like at Thompson's Bay, the geology here is also quite breathtaking.