Blog Posts in Category: South Africa

South Africa and Overlanding from Windhoek to Victoria Falls

Alastair BegleyAfrica, Botswana, Landscape, Namibia, Overlanding, South Africa, Wildlife, Zambia, Zimbabwe Short Link

This blog post tells the story of my five weeks in southern Africa between two jobs. This is the longest period I have had off work since I left university, and it was a great break between the stress of finishing my previous job and starting a new job. The main part of the trip was overlanding through Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. However our trip started in South Africa which allowed us some time to acclimatise to the heat prior to starting the intense travel of the overlanding portion. South African Prequel Prior to heading up to Windhoek to start our overlanding adventure, I had 12 days in South Africa. The first 10 days were spent paragliding in Porterville, just north of Cape Town. The weather was unfortunately not always the best, so there were some other activities thrown into the mix during this time. Prior to heading up to Namibia, Becky and I had planned two days of wine tasting in Franschhoek, a classic wine valley near Cape Town. South African Open Pre-PWC Paragliding Competition (Full Post) After my first paragliding competition in North Macedonia in August, I signed. Read the full article…

Pilanesberg National Park

Alastair BegleySouth Africa, Wildlife Short Link

As we booked our flight to Johannesburg from Victoria Falls separately from our flight back to Germany, we did not want to risk a 4 hour connection, so ended up with a 28 hour connection. To make the most of this time we headed north west from Johannesburg to Pilanesberg National Park, hoping for a final hurrah with some wildlife, prior to heading back to start a new job. Our flight was very prompt, but immigration to South Africa was unfortunately not, so our timing went out the window, which was then not helped by having to go to Lufthansa to sort out an issue with my seat an then Hertz, who’s pace was glacial. This resulted in our ETA at Pilanesberg being 20:30, much later than I wanted, and honestly regretted not bailing the day before when we discussed it due to the wonderful wildlife we had already seen. Here the sunrise a lot earlier than it had in Namibia and Botswana, so we did not enjoy our 4:40 alarm call, for a 5:15 meeting time for the game drive. The weather was unfortunately not that great for photography,. Read the full article…

Boulders Beach Penguins

Alastair BegleySouth Africa, Wildlife Short Link

With a short window until we had to be at Cape Town airport to head to Namibia, we had time to visit the classic Boulders Beach to see a colony of African Penguins which are unfortunately an endangered species, in 1910 there was an estimated 1.5 million African Penguins, but only around 10% remained at the end of the 20th century. The uncontrolled harvesting of penguin eggs (as a source of food) and guano scraping nearly drove the species to extinction. We arrived later in the morning as we had a slower start to the day after the previous day’s wine tasking, stopping en route in Stellenbosch for some brunch and excellent coffee. This unfortunately meant that we didn’t have time to head down to swim in boulders beach, just having enough time to go and see the Penguins from the boardwalks over Foxy Beach. It really was quite remarkable seeing penguins in their natural habitat, especially as this area is so surrounded by a residential area. The species of the bird is Spheniscus demersus, and this colony has grown from two breading pairs in 1982 to around 2200 penguins. Read the full article…

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).