Khayelitsha is a township of two million people outside Cape Town, South Africa. I had the pleasure of being able to visit with Jenny Nomvoya Housdon who works to raise awareness and help the people of Khayelitsha. Jenny showed me the home of her adoptive family and we walked around, chatted with the people who …
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Norotshama Lodge is on the Orange River that forms the border between South Africa and the southern border of Namibia. There are hundreds of acres of vines that are drip irrigated from the river as there is negligible rain in this lunar landscape and rocky desert. As you leave the town and hit the dirt …
Cape of Good Hope Was the first stop in our Africa riding tour. Originally called “Cape of Storms” by the Portuguese explorer Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 on his way looking for spice routes. This is not the most southern point in Africa but the symbolic point where navigators turn to head east for their real …
The Next Couple of Weeks I signed up with Jim Hyde and Ron Ayres’ combined little Discover Africa ride – Cape Town, South Africa to Windhoek taking in most of Namibia. All in all about 2,500 miles, mainly to places with dirt roads or no roads. Ron has promised that we will be “Dusty by …
Nobel Square and Coca-Cola Dude? The V&A Waterfront in the centre of Cape Town is the scene of significant gentrification around a working harbour. Upscale shops and apartments and restaurants sit right on top of a stinking fishing fleet and the whine and clatter of ship repair in the dry docks just outside my hotel …
Apples Don’t Fall Far From The Tree After looking with my sister at a few photos of my Dad during his military service and realising that we knew very little about his service, I wrote to the Army Personnel Centre to ask for a copy of his records. There are still more unanswered questions but …
The Shuttleworth Collection. I had a chance to visit the Shuttleworth Collection at Old Warden today. This is a must-see aircraft museum with dozens of flyable classics back to the 1909 Bleriot XI, the world’s oldest aircraft still flying, up to the icons of WWII. Every one of these is in immaculate condition and I …
Mirror in the Desert On a family drive from Palm Springs to meet an artist collaborator of Claire and Jona, we came across this mirage which tempted us to walk into the desert to investigate. What we found was a mirror shaped to the chimney stack of a destroyed house. Nobody locally knew how it …
What’s in your brain at night? Do you wake up in the middle of the night and struggle to get back to sleep because of the music playing in your head? I don’t mean your worsening tinnitus from too many hours listening to Led Zepp or the noise from the neighbour’s party; I’m talking about …
The Institute du Monde Arabe is a stunning building on Paris’ Left Bank. The glass tower has a elaborate high tech system of metal curtains to control the heat that work like thousands of camera lenses but arranged in patterns like the windows of minarets to create an infinite set of possible configurations. Fourteenth century …
Colin's Travel Journal 