Cornerstone Guest Lodge Pretoria

We had to leave Graskop at 7 am for our long day of driving. It was another cold, grey morning with drizzle dampening the mood. We had bulky breakfast packs provided on the bus, and that sustained me until dinner.

Leaving Graskop the town was no longer socked in thick fog as the night before, but was still as dead as a ghost town. We passed through Pilgrim's Rest, South Africa’s historical gold rush town (1870s) and preserved like ...

... in horns and color). The Tsessebe is supposed to be the fastest of all the antelope. We also saw many blue wildebeest, and several families of warthogs, without mentioning all the birds. As we came out of the Malatse Dam hide on a hippo pool, we drove around a corner to find ourselves very close to a large grazing hippo. It looked up, from about 40 feet away and stared right at us. We started feeling uncomfortable since hippos ...

Ich bin in Preoria angekommen. Und wie der Zufall es moechte, bin ich im gleichen Hostel wie im letzten Jahr gelandet. Das North South Backpackers. Und das allerbeste: Ich bin wieder unter Menschen - kann endlich wieder losquatschen. Schnattchen lebt ;-) Gross zu berichten gibt es nicht.... Ich lass die Dinge langsam angehen. Ein bisserl rumlaufen, am Pool liegen, lesen.... URLAUB eben :-) Heute (27.11.) gab es einen herrlichen Sommer-Sonnentag. Ein paar ...

... Shack before the trip matched the South African outlets. Mike drove me back to the lodge and we agreed he would meet me late in the afternoon to go to the airport to pick up Jim Parker and Jane Thompson, the other two NFS people who were here. They had flown to Cape Town on Friday for a weekend of sightseeing. Once back in my room I tried using the outlet adapter to power up my laptop computer when its battery wore down, but, I found I couldn't ...

... S******y 23rd June 23.00 Iggy And The Stooges 21.30 Editors 20.00 M*ximo P*rk 18.30 B*bysh*mbles 17.00 Kl*xons 15.50 CSS 14.40 Biffy Clyro 13.40 The Long Blondes 12.40 Br*kes 11.40 El Presidente 10.40 The Switches Sund*y 24th June 22.40 The Chemic*l Brothers 21.00 The View 19.30 The Go! Te*m 18.00 Mik* 16.40 The R*kes 15.40 Get C*pe We*r C*pe Fly 14.40 Coldw*r Kids 13.40 Sunshine Underground 12.40 The Enemy 11.40 The Hollow*ys 10.40 Kh*rm* 45 John Peel St*ge ...

... and had to get back to tenting-it. These two nights were to be our last nights of camping. The next day five of teh girls decided to go for a monster hike in teh Drakensburgs. The walk was supposed to be 9 hours long so we were up at 7 ready to leave for 8. We had to walk 5 kms to get to the start of the walk, thenthe walk itself was another 8kms each way. It was really beautiful, most of it was on fairly decent path, until we reached the river gorge where we ...

... don't know the status of any of the children (either orphan or AIDS) but it's very evident that some of them are very sick which can be hard, but there is a great sense of community here, all the mothers work together and the children for the most part of very respectful of one another. To be honest a hug goes a long way here- as cheesy as that may sound, they truly love to just get a hug. Ok- that's quite a bit already. We are only allowed on the internet at the Haven once a week ...

... prohibited me. Other than that, I haven't been doing anything too interesting. I have added some to my vocabulary, as Mary Anne was quick to notice during our talks. I now say things like, howzit, slaab lekker, dankie, izzit, and jah. Maybe I'll be a real Afrikaner when I get back. I am also posting some long overdue pictures with this entry. Some of them are old, but I hope you enjoy anyway.

MHMF ACTIVITY COMPLETED: IDENTIFY 100 BIRD SPECIES What a stunning first week! We owe a huge debt of gratitude to Nicolette & Herman, our hosts in Centurion, without whom we would never have known to visit the places we did. Before I go on I'll tell you about our first Miriam Hyman Memorial Fund CHALLENGE: Herman lent us his bird identifying book. By the time we left the Panorama chalet park we had identified 17 species of bird, and we were enjoying that so much that I got the ...

Hello All, We awoke at the farm at 7:00 am to start the day. I went for a quick walk around the grounds in the beautiful South African morning. Shortly after, we loaded up everyone into two hunting trucks to go out to the field. The hunting trucks we use have the entire box lined with pipes welded into a frame with a padded shooting platform built over the cab and a front seat. In the field we came across ...