Blog Posts in Category: Africa

Vineyards near Cape Town

Alastair BegleySouth Africa Short Link

One of the things which I definitely wanted todo while near Cape Town was to do some wine tasting, due to a few days of non-flyable weather, I ended up having more days tasting wine than expected, no bad thing! So in the end I had two days of wine tasting near Porterville, one day with Becky when I picked her up and then we had two days staying in Franschhoek. Nederburg, Paarl My first experience was at the beautiful Nederburg wine estate near Paarl. It was really very special driving in down the drive with the views over the vineyards and the mountains. To start with I enjoyed a tasting of 4 wines, along with cheeses. This was exceptionally good value and it was a great way to start the day. After the wine tasting, I headed to the restaurant where I enjoyed a fantastic lunch of mussels followed by ostrich steak, all of which was very well cooked. Unfortunately there was no more wine with lunch as I had to driver after. After lunch I headed to the Drachenstein Lion Park. Saronsberg, Talburg On another non-flying day we. Read the full article…

Porterville Open Paragliding Competition

Alastair BegleyParagliding, South Africa Short Link

After my first paragliding competition in North Macedonia in August, I signed up to the South Africa Pre-PWC/Porterville Open, at Porterville in South Africa. This was to form the first part of my extended holiday between jobs. I arrived on the Wednesday before the competition, with the aim of having a few days of flying before the competition to familiarise myself with the area. However unfortunately the conditions were not that good, as I arrived too late to fly on the Wednesday, and was too tired anyway. On the Thursday I did a short flight back to the lodge, however I was still feeling the effects of the travel and was quite airsick, hence the short flight. The Friday was a non-flying day, see wine and lions, so all that was left was the flight on Saturday. Saturday was a strange day, as it was the practice day for the competition, but there was no official task and no retrieve, and until the morning we did not even know there was an official lift up to launch. As the XC conditions looked good, a friend and I decided to hire. Read the full article…

Drachenstein Lion Park

Alastair BegleySouth Africa, Wildlife Short Link

On a non-flying day I decided to head to the Drachenstein Lion Park, which is a sanctuary for lions who have been rescued from persecution by humans, but which are unable to be released into the wild due to having been bred in captivity. Prior to going I did some research, and it does appear that this lion park is regarded as actually being a sanctuary for the lions, who are well looked after and now have the minimum of direct human contact. It was wonderful to see the lions, who all had lots of space, but I was sad at the same time reading the stories of what humans had done to these lions (and one tiger).