Bo-Kaap provides a colourful contrast to Cape Town’s black and white nature – in more ways than one. Its buildings are painted every colour under the bright African sun, seducing photographers with its rainbow palette. And its Cape Malay residents are a blend of yet more ethnicities, a culture as colourful as its streets.
It’s appropriate that reaching the Himba involves such an arduous journey across Namibia. Arriving at the settlement, I realised life here was as far removed from my own as I could imagine, and the punishing journey was first test at leaving my comfortable, western lifestyle to enter another, more primal world, where human movements are dictated by nature, and not the other way around.
“We have a leopard situation.”
These words, spoken in the southern African savannah, far from the safety of the safari vehicle, were not exactly what I wanted to hear. But the beeping of the tracker’s aerial, picking up the leopard’s radio collar, was telling us that the creature was close. What’s more, the grass around me was waist-high – and leopards are the kings of camouflage.
Fidel, strutting around in a broad cowboy hat, greets me as if I am an old friend. We have, in fact, just met – but he is to be my new “dad” for the week, as I will be staying in his immaculate little bungalow in western Cuba. Here, donkeys and oxen are as ubiquitous as the 1950s cars, and the swaying tips of banana plants peek above the colourfully painted houses.
The vibe was urban, the music modern, but the setting was not. I was in the centre of the historic city of Florence, surrounded by Renaissance architecture, fine marble statues and magnificent churches, and around 200 Florentine hipsters, having a blast on a Friday night. In a destination famed for its 14th century roots, I was a enjoying a particularly 21st century night out. Continue reading
At five foot ten, Juan the shaman was unusually tall for an Aymara indian. He lived alone in the forest under the dense canopy of a mahogany tree, alongside the jawbones of his long-dead ancestors. Continue reading
The Amazon at night is an ebony underworld, a place where strange creatures awake while the rest of the world slumbers. The faint jungle hum that persists throughout the day reaches a squealing crescendo at dusk. Continue reading
A safari is normally characterised by trying to get nearer – tracking something down, pursuing it, getting the long lenses out. But a flying safari is about being just far enough away to make out the horizon beyond the mountains, to watch the coastal fog creeping up behind the dunes, to observe the earth becoming an abstract artwork of shadow and light, the known and the unknown. Continue reading
After almost 40 years leading tourists through the savannah, it was no wonder that George had an awesome anecdote for every occasion. Besides killing a buffalo with an ancient rifle, he had thrown himself to the ground to avoid being bitten in two by a one-and-a-half ton hippo, and escaped a lion by dashing up a tree. Continue reading
The tour introduced us to Namibia in a way that encouraged respect, admiration and a rather healthy (I believe) dose of fear. Standing within 15 meters of a notoriously grumpy black rhino named Hans Otto was a powerful experience; as was tracking radio-collared cheetah through the grasslands, only to discover that we ourselves were being tracked – by a leopard. We knew whose territory this was – and it was not ours. Continue reading
Namibia is described as the “Land of the Brave”, but that was not how I felt as I lay on my belly on a thin piece of hardboard on the edge of a sheer, 100 metre high cliff of sand, which I was about to whizz down face-first at a speed of 80km per hour. Continue reading
Namibian men like to spend large amounts of time “at the carwash”. But why do their cars need washing so frequently? And why on earth does it take so long? Continue reading
One of the surprises of travelling is that it is often the big attractions and wildlife that draw us to a place, but the tiniest, quietest things that end up being most fascinating. So many times I’ve looked forward to admiring a towering mountain, or encountering an enormous African elephant, but it’s the diminutive insects … Continue reading
Laguna Cuicocha – a bottomless lake in the high Ecuadorean Andes, is a sacred place where even the most cynical westerner can feel the spirit of Pachamama – the Inca Mother Earth. Continue reading
La Nomadita's Travels 