Certain adventures in my youth impressed on me how fynbos details track seemingly infinitely in - gross structural detail reveals smaller structures which reveal near-micro structures and so ad infinitum. This particular one has stems on the “flowers” (if they are flowers and not clusters of flower-arrays as I believe some fynbos flowers really are) with fine spiky leaves that make them look like the braided wire insulation on old fashioned electrical wiring.
Sometimes we have to venture into weird little SA village pubs and meet the locals so you don’t have to. Throwback to a few years back on a winter night in Nieu Bethesda. Apart from the TV there’s not much to tell you it was taken after 1955.
I’ve been taken with a real hankering to use my Pentax 645 again. Such a great camera. This was in 2012 at the little airport outside Beaufort West that was a bnb at the time. Hence @withoutaleaf hanging out on the air traffic control tower. When we were next there a couple years ago the runway was in action again training Chinese pilots for their indentured servitude in China’s commercial aviation industry. Worse jobs to be enslaved to, I guess.
The blue wobbly bit around the edge of South Africa.
The Southern spring is go.
#throwbackthursday in more ways than one. This is the skin of the lion that jumped Harry Wolhuter - a hunter turned The Kruger National Park’s first game ranger. The lions ambushed him and he was thrown from his horse. He came to being dragged by the shoulder between the animal’s legs. He reached for his knife, praying it hadn’t been thrown clear as it had on two previous occasions. It was there. He then had to awkwardly reach around with his left hand as the lion’s jaws had completely incapacitated his right arm. He stabbed the lion thrice where, as a hunter, he knew its heart to be. It grunted and released him. After an awful night tied up in a tree by his belt, he was rescued by his retinue and they tracked the blood trail to the lion’s body. The puncture wounds are clearly visible. On a visit to England he went to buy another of these knives. He told the guy at the counter that he’d killed a lion with one. The clerk said sarcastically, “Yes sir. Here we use them to kill sheep.
What the heck was in my morning coffee?
Touristing today at the South African Constitutional Court - the beating heart of South African democracy. It did not succumb to the treachery of our former president and his foreign paymasters. It stands against the vicious tyranny of our past and the sellout traitors of our present and future.
Crested Barbet. Not uncommon to see in Johannesburg gardens. I managed to photograph a few things that got close enough for my Pentax 67 film camera. I’ll have to wait and see whether any of them worked out. I might try it again though. It’s a lot of fun to use and the clatter of that enormous shutter is very satisfying.
It’s our last day in Kruger. So lucky to get to stay so long, and yet it seems to always be over so fast. We saw this smart little Black-Backed Jackal yesterday. Just taking it easy in the twilight.