the new petro power paradigm - Diplomat Magazine

destinations|DELIGHTS
Graeme Williams/MediaClubSouthAfrica.com
Mary Alexander/MediaClubSouthAfrica.com
Graeme Williams/MediaClubSouthAfrica.com
Beads in South Africa, particularly among
Zulu-speaking people, contain codes for
the giver’s feeling toward the recipient.
The Northern Cape is famous for the Kimberley diamond mine, where digging started in
1871 and finished in 1914. Today, it’s a crater known as The Big Hole.
A lilac-breasted roller at Limpopo Kruger
National Park.
diplomat and international canada
Knysna and Plettenberg Bay. Stopping
to buy a feast of seafood from the fisherman,
inhaling the aroma of peri-peri
prawns and curry fish and eating it on
the sandy beach is nirvana. Replete with
good wine and food, at sunset, the sky
and the sea make perfect love to each
other offering variations of blue, purple
and turquoise and finally a reflection of
bronze fire colouring both the sea and
the sky.
Ixopo in the Midlands of KwaZulu
Natal has a beauty that is so surreal you
have to keep pinching yourself to make
sure it’s not a photograph in a coffee table
book. I have sucked the most addictive,
juicy, sweet sugarcane that flowed down
my chin. It reminds me of my childhood
when we could not wait for the sugarcane
harvest to come. The landscape is
so breathtaking; Alan Paton in the opening
lines of Cry, The Beloved Country said
“There is a lovely road which runs from
Ixopo into the hills. These hills are grasscovered
and rolling, and they are lovely
beyond any singing of it.”
Exquisite and lush, these hills are a
mystical haven to retreat and renew. I
love waking up to the fresh mist. Sipping
a warm cup of tea on the veranda,
I watch as the mist wages a losing battle
with small rays of sunlight which allow
a peep of homes painted in pink, blue
and green hues in Zulu kraals [villages]
scattered like polka dots on the rolling
hills.
Ixopo is where the old people speak
proudly of great warriors of the past
through the ancient oral tradition of storytelling.
They tease the imagination with
their legends and tales of victories in the
great wars fought in the hills.
Where else can you smell the heady
scent of rain coming? It is across the
veld amongst the flowers that perfume
the grasslands with air so pristine its
freshness touches your lips like a cool
drop of water. Flower season begins as
if by magic — an enticing tapestry of
brilliantly coloured blooms in Namaqua
National Park. In August and September,
the dusty valleys of the Namaqualand
are carpeted with wildflowers. More than
1,000 of the estimated 3,500 plant species
are found nowhere else on earth.
From Uppington to Port Noloth in the
Northern Cape province, you can experience
a sun that burns away the endless
balmy afternoons to unlock the Southern
Cross that will appear so close you’ll
have an irresistible urge to reach out and
touch it. If you walk softly in the Kalahari
Desert, you’ll no doubt meet a meerkat,
the 30-centimetre-high member of the
mongoose family. A precocious animal, it
is cute but strong enough to kill a cobra
snake.
This exotic combination of landscapes,
people, history and culture offer the visitor
to South Africa a unique diversity of
experiences. It forces one to leave everything
that’s ordinary at home.
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