Beautiful country of mine | Travels through a geek's mind

Jul 29 2014

Receiving 15 aircraft in your back-yard

I’ve always said that I am a little left of normal and this is true of my entire family. Case in point: my sister Christelle is a student pilot, and her love of aviation combined with my mother’s love for cooking lead to this amazing breakfast fly-in.

We proved a while back that the farm where I grew up is the perfect wedding venue, but Christelle took it one step further this past Saturday by receiving 15 aircraft for breakfast.

The morning started with a true Zandfontein wind, blowing everyone setting up to receive guests hither and thither. The weather app on my phone claimed that it was only gusting at 16kmph (just over 8 knots for those aviatory-folk), but it sure felt and sounded like far more.

By 11:00 the wind had calmed down significantly, and the 900m runway had received a number of slings. The helicopters were lined up nicely and Mike Rumble literally dropped in on the festivities.

If you love great food and want to experience something slightly different in the Joburg and Pretoria vicinity, keep an eye on 29 Zandfontein’s Facebook page for the next event. It should be a lovely lunch in October.

All images by the author: © catterflyworx 2014. Please contact me if you would like to use any images from this site.

Tagged Air shows, Aviation, Fly-in, Johannesburg, Pretoria, Site-seeing in Johannesburg, Site-seeing in Pretoria, Things to do, Weekend

Apr 23 2014

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Beautiful country of mine, Experiences, Photos, South Africa, Travel

A cold Easter in the Free State

As I mentioned in my previous post, we spent the long weekend away from home visiting the beautiful Golden Gate Highlands national park in the Free State. Other than gushing about the beauty and complaining about the bitter cold, I thought I’d share my five tips from the weekend.Yes, and some (mostly HDR ’cause I’m a little obsessed at the moment) photos.

If you’re visiting Clarens (which you should!), don’t pay R60 for a pretentious breakfast. Go to the Roter Hahn Bierstube Und Deli and enjoy a very wide choice of German beers with an even better meal.
Pack lots of blankets. Then another one. Also, a hot water bottle.
Take a good single malt with, it fights off the cold.
If you’re camping in a spot that doesn’t get a lot of sun, stay in bed ’till the sun hits your tent.
Visit the vulture restaurant on the Oribi loop drive. Maybe you’ll have better luck than we did and see some of these amazing birds.

A mountainous view from the Glen Reenen rest camp reception area

Looking back towards Glen Reenen rest camp from the vulture restaurant’s parking area.

An experimental HDR panorama of a watering hole set in the mountains

An experimental HDR panorama of a view on the mountains from the Blesbok loop drive

Another HDR experiment, the golden light on the left of the cliff face is from the setting sun

Some people in the image to add scale to the mountain side 🙂

A last view on the iconic colours of Golden Gate

Tagged Free State, Golden Gate, Golden Gate Highlands National Park, HDR, HTC One, photos, roadtrip, Site-seeing in South Africa, Site-seeing in the Free State, South Africa, travel, weather

Apr 19 2014

Golden Gate in HDR

We’re spending the Easter weekend in the Golden Gate Highlands National Park. Stunning mountains and freezing temperatures are the first two things that come to mind. These two panorama images, taken on my HTC One, were a spur of the moment experimentation with HDR. I’m quite happy with the results.

Full report back at a later stage (when not posting from my phone and dependent on patches of signal).

UPDATE: Photos and a few tips in the next post.