May

03

2016

RATTRAYS, BIG 5 or CUBS ?

Wildlife  Posted by / 0 comments

Mala Mala is just about the best place for wildlife photography. This time we got lucky, upgrade to Rattrays, which is very, very nice ! Plus we got to drive with my favourite ranger, and because there were so few people around we even got a private jeep. Nothing can keep me in camp now, however nice it is !

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Welcome to Rattrays

 

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Our room

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and our veranda

Finding the Big 5 is not an easy thing to do. Unless you come here ! Usually by day 2 you will have found them. Same for us, within 2 game drives we saw them all.

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Apr

19

2016

GOING GREEN…

Nature / Photo tour / Travel / Wildlife  Posted by / 0 comments

ZIMBABWE’S MANA POOLS in the green season

So here we go, 5 days in Mana Pools in a mobile camp. It will be set up for us, and after we leave there will be no traces of us ever having been there. Leave only foot prints, take only photo’s. And that’s exactly what we are going to do ! Beware :  don’t try any of the things we do here in any other place in Africa, this is not a “normal safari”!

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And this is what it is all about

DAY 1 : WHEN THE TOUGH GET GOING

At noon we reach Harare. We get a visa for 30$ each, then move on to domestic departures. We then wait in the very old, very worn down, and very deserted departure hall, what better to do than have our first G&T.

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First round of G&T

Another 1hr flight, this time in a 14-seater, gets us to a dirt airstrip in the middle of no where. It is deserted. The camp manager from nearby Chikwenya Camp comes to pick us up, our Humphrey is no where to be seen and we can’t reach him or the camp, not on phone or sat phone, this is weird. We relax on the deck, enjoy the brilliant view, have a few beers, watch a small herd of elephants walk by. At 17:30 we decide to spend the night here, not that we have much of a choice without a jeep and driver ….

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Mar

08

2016

10 REASONS TO VISIT ICELAND IN WINTER

Nature / Photo tour / Travel  Posted by / 0 comments

Because we liked Iceland so much …

Here are 10 reasons to visit Iceland in winter:

1. Reykjavik, the smallest capital city in the world. A small town with a big soul.

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Harpa, the concert hall

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Feb

14

2016

ICY ICELAND continues

Nature / Photo tour / Travel  Posted by / 1 comments

ICY ICELAND – WEEK 2

Our trip continues, the start of week 2. Will it be as good as the first week ? Will we see more auroras ? One more day in JÖKULSARLON, one more go at the beach, one more ice cave, then we move on to the highlands and into the cold.

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Ice cave nr.2

DAY 8

As usual our plans change, so does the weather, it is snowing again as we go for breakfast, damn, damn, damn. At 9:00 we do decide to give it a go. At the beach there are only about 4 pieces of ice in the water, so we decide to go to the lagoon. We climb to the lookout point and get some lovely shots of the lagoon all covered in a fresh layer of snow. We move to a second spot, the light on the mountains in the back gets better. We even stay when a snow storm hits us, we are the hardcore landscape photographers.

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Feb

06

2016

ICY ICELAND

Nature / Photo tour / Travel  Posted by / 3 comments

ICY ICELAND – WEEK 1

A PHOTO TOUR

with Hougaard Malan & Isak Pretorius

There are no direct flights to Reykjavik for us in winter, because all the “normal” people go there in summer. We leave on January 29th, the sun will rise at around 10:00 and set at 17:00 and won’t get higher than 10 degrees above the horizon. The bad thing is we can’t pronounce any of the names of the places we are going to see, and we’ll barely have 9 hrs of light per day. The good thing is we can do sunrise shots and sleep late.

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And this is what we want to see

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