Category: Great Brak River

Postcards at Dawn

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   They march across the dimly-lit horizon, massive worn-down teeth of a sleeping dragon – the Outeniqua mountains, just before sunrise. Ragged edges. Smooth slopes. Shadowed ravines. A purple haze that looms out of the gloom. Fields and forests and valleys coating the lower slopes and flatlands.

I’m doing the morning school run, driving parallel to this moving, shifting masterpiece. The sun is still well below the horizon, the clouds splay out above, catching fire from beneath because the sun is still so low.

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A Recipe for Laughter

There’s nothing I like more than seeing something that makes me laugh or really think about what took place…and sometimes I stare in amazement! My arrival in the Garden Route has been punctuated by a series of these moments.

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On the second or third day here, we were confronted by a donkiekar trundling the streets of George’s suburbs, sifting through residents’ rubbish bins and garbage. In Joziburg™ there are waste pickers too, but the guys on those operations pilot ricketty trolleys that look like they’ve been salvaged from a warehouse yard. Self-drive and potentially lethal when they steer them down steep hills, fully loaded. Meanwhile, George operates at a more gentle pace.

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It’s like another country

george-south-africaThe words from my daughter as we drove down into George. Nothing I had described to her had as much impact as when she actually saw what we had thrown ourselves into.

It’s more South African and, yet, less South African. Or maybe, less Jozi. ….. Ok, definitely less Jozi!

The landscape is greener, the cows more plump. The mountains make the Magaliesberg look like pimples. The drive from Great Brak River (our temporary home) is filled with “oh my gosh” sights.

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