Chameleon Album
What an experience! On a recent trip to Mpekweni beach resort (pictures to be posted separately). We had a Chameleon visit us on the patio of our hotel room. It is the first time we ever saw a chameleon around here, so we had to investigate closer. We discovered the chameleon was very slow, so we managed to take some fabulous pictures and have it climb onto our hands. Click on the image or here to have a look at those wonderful pictures in the gallery.
We had a couple of birds visiting us which we had not seen around our place before. Karl took a beautiful picture of one of them. Click on the image to see a larger version.
Bird visiting
Belgium and New York Album
Last week, I made a business trip to the US for a training session. There are direct flights from South Africa, but in this case, the timing of these flights was such that I would have ended up back in South Africa after the last flight to East London would have left. With other words, I would have been stuck for a night at Johannesburg, which was not a very nice prospect. I therefore opted to fly over London and make a sidetrip to Belgium for a couple of days, visiting family and friends.
The trip was long, covering 4 countries in 10 days. The first night I flew to London and then from there to Belgium. You find some of the pictures of people and places I visited in Belgium in the gallery.
On Saturday, I flew back to London and from there to the US. Sunday was my birthday AND Easter, so a good occasion for doing something special. I went into New York and went to the Easter Parade. At this parade, people wear fancy hats, anything from a nice sunday hat to extreme hats made from real plants. Have a look at the pictures and see!
In the afternoon, I saw the Lion King show on broadway. The show was great: the music was wonderful, the costumes innovative and fascinating and the whole experience amazing. Highly recommended, although very expensive ($120 per seat!). After the show, I visited central park, which was also a wonderful experience as the weather was fantastic.
The following Wednesday, I flew back to the UK (overnight), visited the UK office (during the day) and then flew on to South Africa (overnight).
What a trip … You can have a look at the pictures by clicking here or on the picture on top.
We regularly have fisheagles that come by and circle above the estuary by our place, looking for fish. Usually, they are too far to make a good picture of, but this one basically flew above our house, giving us a good chance to take some pictures. Unfortunately, the weather was overcast, so the colours did not come out too well. Click on the images to get a larger version:
We are wondering why we find a bird that is so similar to an American eagle here in South Africa. They look so similar that it would seem there ought to be a relationship between the South African and American counterparts.
A couple of days ago, the night sky was beautifully clear and the moon was mostly full so I decided to make a picture of the moon from South Africa. It was actually quite a bit of work since the picture kept coming out too bright, but I finally managed. Here is the result:
Nahoom Beach Album
We went to Nahoon beach in East London over the weekend and had our cameras with us. This album contains the resulting pictures with people and animals on the beach, including some great pictures of kite flying.
The best news of all is that I managed to get around the beach with my ankle, which means it must be getting much better. I don´t wear my cast anymore, nor do I use crutches. I still go to the Physio, though!
As always, click on the image, or here to go to the album.
Knysna Album
As mentioned in my whale post from December 19th, we made a wonderful trip to Knysna and visited nearby Tsitsikama national park and Robberg Peninsula in December 2005 (middle of winter!). This album contains a series of pictures from that trip. All three of these locations were very nice and definitely worth visiting!
Click on the image or here to see the album.
.. (almost 85 Fahrenheit) was the temperature of the pool last weekend! The last few weekends have been very warm and pleasant and we spent a lot of time in the pool. To give you an indidication, a pool is refreshing at 25-26 degrees celcius (77-79 Fahrenheit) an this is probably the warmest the pool has gotten since we moved to East London!
So for those of you living in cold climates, consider visiting South Africa at this time of the year!
South Africa is a very multicultural society. According to southafrica.info “Africans are in the majority at 37.2-million, constituting 79.4% of the total population. The white population is estimated at 4.4-million (9.3%), the coloured population at 4.1-million (8.8%) and the Indian/Asian population at 1.1-million (2.5%).” Unfortunately, on a day to day basis, you still see a lot of segregation with little real mixing of blacks, whites and coloured people. The different racial groups appear to live next to each other, but don´t really mix that much.
It is always delightful to see examples where kids of different cultural backgrounds actually hang out together. We therefore thought it was worthwile to take a picture of this engaged discussion between three boys of different colours at Gold Reef city:
How lame! About 4 weeks ago, I twisted my ankle at the gym from doing steps during the super circuit. This is not the first time this happens, but the swelling was definitely much worse than ever before and the nurse at work insisted I needed to go to emergencies. There they took X-Rays, which didn´t show anything, and concluded that it must be a badly sprained ankle with possibly torn ligaments. They gave me a removable “aircast”, some crutches, painkillers and anti-inflamatories. The specialist I saw the next day only could inform me that I would probably need to wear the cast for about 6 weeks and he may need to do surgery on the foot if the ligaments are actually torn. He couldn´t give me much more advise apart from the fact I needed to come back in 4 weeks (that will be next Monday!).
Six weeks seems forever, but the specialist may unfortunately be right. The first couple of weeks, I could hardly get around and I had to use a wheelchair during a visit to Johannesburg which we had planned weeks in advanced. Here is a picture taken at the Gold Reef City amuzement park that we visited:
The last couple of weeks have been much better, but the foot is still very sensitive and hurts at the slightest movement. I can now put pressure on it, but still need to wear the cast to support the ankle and avoid hurting the foot again!
Wearing a cast and having crutches has been an incrible frustrating experience – it is hard to do simple things like getting a glass of water and travelling or going to the beach has been out of the question. Today was around 30 degrees and sunny all day, so this has been particularly frustrating. Luckily I can go for swims in the pool! Guess we won´t be doing much travel this summer!