We’ve been on holiday for the past week and a bit and it has been quite a hectic time really. First off Wouter and I spent a couple of days in Garies with friends. Where I might add it was PHENOMENALLY HOT, we’re talking climb into the freezer with the ruddy great big hunk of beef hot. Wouter had a wonderful time shooting with Dries, whilst I spent a large part of the time wallowing in cold baths.

The both had fun shooting the last one. I on the other hand had fun taking a few ‘arty’ type shots.

Have to confess, this last one was manipulated a bit with photoshop - still awesome though

After Garies it was on to Oudshoorn for the KKNK we didn’t have a lot of time so had only booked two shows. As it happened we spotted a poster for a Valiant Swart show, and being ardent supporters (’k so Wouter’s the ardent fan, I’m merely a hanger on) we rushed off to get tickets. Turned out we needn’t have worried, it was a dismal turnout - the show was great - and the handful or so of us in the audience really enjoyed it. Having been to a few KKNK’s now - I was amazed at how quiet this one was - reckon the financial situation is hitting many pockets. Our other two shows had a better turnout - Ddisselblom was lekker as always and Koos Kombuis was a delight. In fact some members of the audience enjoyed him so much they had to be taken away in a police van. We’re in two minds as to whether this was a publicity stunt or not, but my money is on not. After all there always has to be one or two idiots in an audience - or so it seems.

We took the Swartberg Pass to get to Oudshoorn and then the Seweweekspoort pass out. Awesome scenery.

We’d passed through a thunder storm on the way to the Swartberg Pass and it was still raining when we went over it - not that we had any problems navigating the pass.

Seweweekspoort Pass

We were back in time to spend a few days with the kids before they went off to their Dad’s. I’d told them they could decide what they’d like to do, so they said they wanted to visit Tygerberg Zoo.

Pretty sure there weren’t bears there last time we visited (then again that was several years ago) was a lot of fun and I’d recommend a visit.

My mother, much to the annoyance of my father (most of the time) has decided it is her duty to keep the entire bird population of the area they live in, in a life they probably weren’t accustomed to - that is till she got there. Mango, kiwi fruit, strawberries, pineapple - to name but a few of the fruits they get given on a daily basis. There is however one blight on her horizon - her nemesis - a pigeon that just will not take the hint that he is not welcome. He eats up the bird seed of the smaller birds and tends to scare away the rest. Well all but the Louries that is.

Tamsyn spent much of her time chasing him away, not that it made any difference - within two minutes he was back again.

The area is a bird sanctuary and therefore cats are strictly forbidden - being a cat family I suspect my mother is adopting the birds as a substitute. Pretty poor substitute in my book.

We took a walk on the beach on Leisure Isle the one afternoon, the tide was out so it put pay to any ideas Tamsyn had of swimming. She walked for ages to try and find deeper water, to no avail. Jessica did the teenage thing, walked on the beach in her ‘leather’ jacket and music blaring from her ipod.

Trying very hard not to smile

And finally not often I’m not behind the camera, but with Tamsyn now deciding she rather enjoys photography, there are more pictures of me - well the few I haven’t deleted due to reactions like - oh gawd do I really have that many wrinkes? Or - frek, this camera adds 20 pounds, it must be defective.

The kids and I decided to spend a few days with my folks in Knysna and rather than drive we opted to take the bus. Which surprisingly turned out a lot better than I thought it would. Due to the days and times I chose we ended up going up on City to City and coming back on the Citiliner. The City to City buses are very basic, ours had no aircon but despite this the trip really wasn’t that bad, we were allowed two ‘pit’ stops with strict instructions to ‘be back in 20 minutes’. We were also bang on time, probably had something to do with a driver who drove like a bat out of hell most of the way, not that we ever felt unsafe.

The trip back was billed an hour and a half longer, I’m still not sure why and it was made longer by the 45 minute delay waiting for it to arrive. I must say though the Citiliner buses are much more comfortable, have aircon and movies! Oddly enough though - no toilet on board. Not that one would use it, but I still thought it strange.

The time spent in Knysna was lovely and relaxing - we ate out, went shopping, ate out some more and would have gone on Dad’s boat had the weather not turned icky. (To be honest, I’m rather glad it did - I’m not a boat person but had agreed to go along, reluctantly)

Tamsyn and I played photoshoot a couple of times and if I do say so myself, I think the photos came out rather well.

My folks’ garden is the ideal place for taking pictures, truly stunning.

Not to be outdone, Tamsyn decided she’d like to try her hand at photography too…

Not bad for a nine year old… she’s rather taken to it now and has decided her ‘point and shoot’ digital camera just isn’t good enough any more, she wants one like mine.

(to be continued)

There is something peaceful about being the only one awake early in the morning, for some reason I woke up just before six this morning, got up - decided it was too early to get up, went back to bed, lay in bed thinking about what furniture we need to buy for the house and realised I wasn’t going to fall back asleep again, so got up for real.

Thought I’d show you one of the many (and we’re talking many) pictures I took of the Knysna Louries that drop by the folks place in Knysna for breakfast each morning. They’re extremely well fed birds in fact word on the street is my folks are enticing them away from the long standing residents, and they’re not happy. The long standing residents that is, the louries are happier than the proverbial pigs in doo daa.

The wonders of technology - here I’m sitting in the car - connected to the internet via bluetooth - surfing, checking email, chatting to friends and blogging, all whilst W drives us home from Knysna. It’s fantastic!

We’ve had a lovely time in Knysna - celebrated Jessica’s 13th birthday by going out on the John Benn for lunch. I’m not a happy sailor - much prefer terra firma to the sea although I find consuming vast amounts of alcohol helps, that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it! Their food was very nice and although it was a fairly dull day the trip was fun.

We ate out at several places over the time we were there - had supper at the Dry Dock, Knynsa Waterfront - nice food, I had cajun calamari which despite the waiter saying it wasn’t that hot, turned out to be somewhat burny. Everyone else enjoyed their food and I must say the vegetarian dish Jessica had was very tasty indeed.

The other place worth mentioning is The Zucchini, at the Timberlake Village the place appears to be in the middle of nowhere, Is extremely charming and the restaurant’s food - to die for. I have taken pictures which I will upload sometime when I’m not on the road. Suffice to say, well worth a visit.

We can definitely tell we’re nearing Cape Town, it’s been raining non stop the whole trip back so far, miserable part of the country. Hurry up Summer!!

It’s 18:27 and we’re still probably several hours away from Port Elizabeth despite driving ‘hell for leather’. We’re meeting up with a friend there and as we’re off again tomorrow for Knysna we’d like to spend a bit of time before the lure of our bed becomes too much.

Wouter’s been doing most of the driving, poor guy. I did do a bit but we kept coming up to sections of the road where they were doing road works which meant stopping which disturbed W’s rest. I don’t mind driving but I find long stretches really tiring and I haven’t had all that much practice with them, besides I had one of those books that you don’t want to put down despite the subject matter being somewhat disturbing, so when W suggested he drove again, I was all for it.

The Red Dragon by Thomas Harris – yes I know it’s been out for a long time and he became somewhat famous when they made the movie of his book Silence of the Lambs, which by the way I have seen, but I’ve never read any of his books. They’re not bad, what one might call airport novels, you know the type – grip you from the beginning, don’t require an enormous amount of concentration and make you forget where you are for awhile. Red Dragon did that for me today, made me forget we’ve been on the road for 12 hours and counting. There is something a bit disturbing though about a mind that can think up and create characters that evil. Makes for gripping reading though.

Standerton – detours and no road signs – recipe for getting lost. And we did get lost. Tried asking a bloke meandering down the road how to get to Vrede – he looked a bit nonplussed, waved his arms vaguely and then suggested he got in the car with us to show us. A suggestion we did not follow up on. My suggestion of following the green suv didn’t pan out either, he took us down a road to his repair shop. Fortunately nearby was a Shell garage – asked the pump attendant where Vrede was and how we get out of this flippen town. A very kind guy said he’d show us the way, which he duly did appearing to have gone out of his way to do so. But it didn’t end there just when we thought we were on the right road, another detour sign – much swearing on W’s part – lost again. Asked one of the police at a road block (just happened to be on the road we were on) – he gesticulated to a road nearby – go left there he said. More detour signs… more swearing. Yay, we found the right road by a process of elimination and careful map reading by W. I was too busy typing up the blog entry to be of much help.

Jeff took us out to dinner the two nights we stayed with him, the first night we tried a new Portuguese restaurant – literally around the corner from him. Nicely decorated, service was good and the food was nice. Jeff and W started with sushi, I tried a bit of W’s – yeuch. Way too fishy tasting for me, but by all accounts it was good. Main courses, I had the sole, Jeff a fish kebab and W went for the ‘if you’re brave try this’ dish. Turned out to be a glorified fish cake but according to W, very nice.

The second night we went to Nelson Mandela Square – very popular (one of those ‘you have to be seen here at least twice to be thought of as in’ places), couldn’t get into our first choice of restaurant so we tried Trumps. Once again the service was very good, nice young guy who memorised our order perfectly. We did have a few hiccups though, they brought Jeff and W’s starters, trinchado and deep fried camembert, but no caprese salad. Eventually I asked one of the manager type dudes walking around and a short while later my salad arrived. One taste of the cheese and yeuch, again. Dunno where they got the mozzarella from but it tasted worse than the really really cheap cheese one buys at the supermarkets, you know the type – has a remarkable likeness and taste to rubber. Then the poor waiter managed to spill most of the trinchado sauce over himself and Wouter when he was clearing the table away. All was not lost though – the main courses arrived, at the same time and we’d all opted for steak, 2 medium rare and one medium well. Upon eating we forgave them for their earlier sins. Very nice steak indeed. They also took the starter off the menu and at the gentle hinting from Jeff added a free round of coffees, which according to W were excellent. I don’t drink coffee.

The trip has been somewhat hectic so far – a lot of driving around – well it took us 15 hours to get to Rustenburg having left Bellville at 4 in the morning – we spent the evening chatting with friends and hit our mattresses hard.

It probably wouldn’t have taken us quite so long if we hadn’t taken a wrong turn in Klerksdorp. Everything was going well until we had a road block in the middle of town – just a routine check of driver’s licenses – quick type in of our ID number into the laptop to see if there were any outstanding fines and we were on our way again. However this stop caused us to miss a sign (or there was no sign) and we ended up on a dirt road. I’m still unsure how we managed this but we ended up going quite a bit out of our way. We were almost to the point of turning round and back tracking but fortunately came to the tarmac road just in time.

We’ve discovered that a lot of towns in the greater part of Gauteng and Mpumulanga seem to believe their streets do not need signs.