Racontours

29/11/2019

Bo Kaap how beautiful!

28/03/2018

Today Racontours joined Fair Trade Tourism, and we'll be doing all we can to follow and share their principles. Starting with no disposable plastic.

Ocean Basket is the first major South African restaurant chain to implement a ban on plastic drinking straws.

15/03/2018

Where humankind first walked, in the Cape

While more and more astounishing finds about our pre-human ancestors are coming out of the Cradle of Mankind near Johannesburg, the Southern and Western Cape coastlines offer up archeaological gems about our own past as humans.
Casts (the negative mould of the imprints) of footprints have been found in the ceilings and on walls of caves in sandstone deposits dating from around 90,000 years ago.
Visiting South Africa and the Cape should not be only about seeing the obvious. We like to show our guests some of the less obvious wonders and avoid the crowds.

09/03/2018

When I'm not reveling in the amazing Cape landscapes or slaving over the keyboard writing my next book, I pen dispatches from Africa for Bushtracks Expeditions website.
I have renently written a batch on how to bear the crowds and the cosmic prices of the Okavango Delta. This is number four.
Next will be an overview of the southern Tanzanian safari circuit including the Selous Game Reserve and Zanzibar archipelago (read: Mafia and Chole islands).

In the final installment by Bushtracks guest blogger David Bristow on alternatives to the Okavango Delta, we explore the great parks of the lower Zambezi River: Lower Zambezi and Mana Pools.

13/02/2018

One of my gigs is writing blogs about safaris and travel in Africa for splendid California-based safari outfitter Bushtracks Expeditions, this and the next two to follow about how to beat the crowds and the big bucks of the Okavango Delta.

Looking to avoid the safari crowds in Southern Africa? Bushtracks Expeditions guest blogger David Bristow recommends a Zambia safari at lesser-known Kafue NP.

04/01/2018

Last year something 180 climbers/walkers had to be rescued from Table Mountain last year. This year started with the tragedy of two climbers and their guide falling, two fatally so, directly under the cable car.
People were stuck on top of the mountain all night while rescue attempts were undertaken in sight.
Just saying, take care up there. Take water, a warm top and NEVER take a path you are not sure of.

Two people fell to their death on Table Mountain on New Year's Day. It serves as another reminder that the the mountain can be incredibly dangerous.

13/12/2017

Kirstenbosch is consistently a major highlight of all my guests' Cape Town experiences...

Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is acclaimed as one of the great botanic gardens of the world. Few gardens can match the sheer grandeur of the setting of Kirstenbosch, against the eastern slopes of Cape Town’s Table Mountain. Read More...

14/11/2017

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While visitors and their children frolic in the Cape winelands at places such as Babylonstoren, Kanonkop Wine Estate, Dirtopia Bicycle Workshop and numerous other estates surrounding the Simonsberg, it is gratifying to know that wild leopards are still roaming free on the mountain above.

Update from The Cape Leopard Trust: This is a beautiful female leopard known as BF15 - aka Stella, who has been photographed a number of times on the Simonsberg since 2012.

Captured by one of our residents on on the farm at 5:05pm this evening 😲A beautiful leopard with a porcupine dinner!!!

24/10/2017

A visit to the penguins at Boulders Beach (or Stony Point if we're heading to or from the Walker Bay area) is one of the most popular activities among our guests.

After reading this charming, informative post you'll be in no doubt as to why... 'African penguins are an excellent example of something conservationists call "charismatic megafauna": big, lovable animals that inspire people to support conservation, which aids the species' entire environment and the "less adorable" species it shares this environment with.'

Read the full post on Two Oceans Aquarium's blog here https://www.aquarium.co.za/blog/entry/african-penguin-awareness-day-10-things-a-penguin-can-do-better-than-humans

11/10/2017

Thoughts are with our friends at Bushtracks Expeditions affected by the ongoing California wildfires... and good luck to the firefighters. We well know the challenges you face.

California Wine Country Wildfires Impact Bushtracks Office October 2017

10/10/2017

This is a Wameru man I met in the Company Gardens, outside the House of Parliament, while doing a history tour of Cape Town. He comes from the Arusha region of Tanzania and plays only his own songs. We swapped stories about climbing Kilimanjaro (he worked as a porter on the mountain).

10/10/2017

We heard news recently that prison tours by former Robben Island political prisoners will soon be discontinued. Even though these tours are something very special and affecting, they are taking a heavy physical and emotional toll on the few remaining guides who are former inmates of the island prison.

Read the rest of our Spring 2017 news from Racontours' unique Cape Town tourism offering - always on roads less travelled http://mailchi.mp/73909264d5c6/4lrcle6as1-2490401

09/10/2017

The much awaited opening of the Museum of Contemporary African Art in the V&A Waterfront has come to pass. The main event is the building itself, a re-purposed old grain warehouse that was headed for demolition. The art is more modern art by Africans than what you might expect out of Africa (always something new, indeed).

09/10/2017

03/10/2017

Excellent article from Safarious, greatly enjoying their new site.

(For some people it seems) that the more fossil evidence of early humans that are found, the more confounding (and contradictory) it all becomes. Like the scientists are grasping at evolutionary straws. But in fact the opposite it true - it is revealing a far richer and more complex origin to our species. and less of a one-dimensional view that persisted until modern finds were made and more sophisticated tools for analysis made available, such as high-resolution MRI scanning and electron spin dating.

Genetic data from the skeletal remains of seven people who lived centuries ago in South Africa's KwaZulu-Natal Province is offering intriguing new evidence that our species, Homo sapiens, is older than previously believed.

23/09/2017

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MOCAA - the Museum of Contemporary African Art - opens in the V&A Waterfront this weekend. It will add a new dimension to Cape Town visits, with the world's largest collection of African art.
The museum is housed in old grain storage facility in the harbour, where the internal silo flues have been integrated into the structure of the repurposed building.
Anyone staying at the Silo Hotel alongside gets a free guided tour.

Imagine forty-two 33 metre high concrete tubes, each with a diameter of 5.5 metres, with no open space to experience the volume from within. Imagine redesigning this into a functional space that will not only pay tribute to its original industrial design and soul but will become a major, not-for-profit cultural institution housing the most significant collection of contemporary art from Africa and its Diaspora. The brief given to was to reimagine the Grain Silo Complex at the V & A Waterfront with an architectural intervention inspired by its own historic character. The project called for a solution that would be unique to Africa and create the highest possible quality of exhibition space for the work displayed inside. The V & A Waterfront ’s challenge to repurpose what was once the tallest building on the Cape Town skyline caught the imagination of internationally acclaimed designer, and his innovative team of architects. This was a chance to do more than just appropriate a former industrial building to display art, but to imagine a new kind of museum in an African context.

Here is a peak at what you can expect when you visit the museum this weekend for the Grand Public. Opening.

Images by Iwan Baan and Mark Williams

22/09/2017

SHARE OF THE DAY
Devil's Peak on the left, Table Mountain on the right.
Spot the photo bomber.

PIC OF THE WEEK

Spotted! Southern-Right whales playing on our doorstep 🐋💕 What a sight!

Pic via Kaskazi Kayaks & Adventures on Instagram | | www.instagram.com/kaskazikayaks

18/09/2017

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In South Africa we have a saying - "n boer maak n plan" (A farmers always makes a plan). Not sure if this guy is a farmer, but how is this for a plan?

A bit of Saturday fun - Caption this!

Subscribe at www.MountainPassesSouthAfrica.co.za
Everything you need to know about passes & poorts!

Winning caption is by Hendrik Pretorius. 'Transkei Ventertjies'

15/09/2017

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When I was editor of Getaway magazine we published two books on funny signs that we and our readers had seen on our travels in Africa. I'm happy to see that the fabulous website Mountain Passes South Africa is continuing the tradition. As we say, only in Africa.

Africa's not for sissies!

Subscribe at www.MountainPassesSouthAfrica.co.za

24/08/2017

SHARE OF THE DAY - STUFF YOU'LL SEE ONLY IN AFRICA
Pet stores sell cat scratching posts to stop Tabby ripping up your couch. At Shumba safari camp in Zambia's Kafue National Park the resident cats use this tree.
Wilderness Safaris' barman there has a second use for this tree: take the bark, soak in water, add gin and ice then throw away the bark ... it is a quinine tree, the natural source of anti-malarial quinine that colonials would take with gin to mask its bitter taste.
Cheers.

23/08/2017

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False Bay is full of marine life, whales, dolphins, sharks, orcas and of course fish. It is also full of fish lines and traps. Yesterday the South African Whale Disentanglement Network, working with the National Sea Rescue people, set this whale free from one such trap.
We think they should be renamed the "un-network network" :)
In one of the pics you can see it is a southern right whale by the callosities in its head - those big white clusters that look like clusters of barnacles but are actually skin blemishes.

21/08/2017

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Those of us above the surface have been left wondering where have all our famous great white sharks gone these past two years. Nicole is a wonderful book about them, focusing on the one named after shark enthusiast Nicole Kidman by researchers. She was tagged and followed from the Cape to Australia and back. So if you do not get to see them in person you would learn a lot about their world by reading this book.

Sharks are among the most persecuted animals on Earth. Nicole’s blockbuster story lifts the lid on the shocking details of the trade in shark fins, and raises awareness of the plight of sharks in the 21st century.

In November 2003 a female Great White Shark was tagged near Dyer Island in South Africa. Her tag popped up in February 2004, just south of Western Australia. The shark, later to be named Nicole (after shark enthusiast Nicole Kidman), had swum an epic 11,000 km. Scientists were even more surprised when she was identified back in South Africa in August 2004 – she had covered 22,000 km in less than nine months, using pinpoint navigation both ways.

Three winners will each receive a copy of NICOLE. To stand a chance of winning, simply complete the online competition form here: http://bit.ly/2tdXrgz by 31 August 2017. Terms and Conditions apply.

18/08/2017

Who would have thought the humble wash line would rank among the most sustainable inventions of all time?
According to one of my favourite pages, Treehugger, it ranks along with the bicycle (my personal best), the ceiling fan and the condom as humankind's "Seven Sustainable Wonders" inventions.
Think of all the electricity it would take to dry our clothes without washlines (for people who don't have balconies or bushes in their gardens on which to hang their washing).
The see the full fun list click on
https://www.treehugger.com/culture/seven-sustainable-wonders-world.html

18/08/2017

What would you think are the 10 most endangered animals in Africa?
Topping the list is the riverine rabbit with just 250 adults thought to exist in South Africa's dry Karoo region. Next comes the Ethiopian wolf and then the mountain gorilla.
To read the full list and all the background information take this link from the Tusk conservation group:
http://www.tuskphoto.com/next-ten-years-africas-endangered-species/

15/08/2017

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"Eye in the Sky" Jean Tresfon was up over False Bay yesterday watching southern right and humpback whales cavorting. From beginning July until end October this would be my absolute number one thing to do in the Cape .... not flying but whale watching on the Simons Town Boat Company launch. You could also see huge pods of dolphins, Cape fur seals, lots and lots of sea birds and - for the very fortunate - sharks and even orcas.

14/08/2017

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Somewhere in Africa today: prandium interruptus for the classical scholars.

Caption This ?


Thanks to Fritz Breytenbach

11/08/2017

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IN AN INTERESTING update on the Cape great white shark situation, Monique Fallows writes in APEX SHARK EXPEDITIONS newsletter Shark Bytes:
"... Another factor that could be playing a part is that whale entanglements, either in experimental Octopus long line pods which are strewn all over False Bay and crayfish traps which are in their hundreds at the mouth of the bay, have been responsible for at least 15 whale entanglements and possibly as many as 5 brydes whale and 1 humpback whale death in just over a year and a half. What this means is that when the sharks find one of these floating carcasses they gorge themselves to the point of saturation, having over the years personally witnessed this on 5 separate occasions, and don’t resume normal feeding for weeks at a time. This tragic and completely unnecessary loss of the lives of our bays whales could therefore also be having an impact on our sharks."
Stuff that goes on under the waves that we just don't see!
[pic from Google images]

08/08/2017

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Every discarded plastic straw becomes a deadly weapon for some living thing.
Whenever I see someone in Cape Town throwing down a cigarette stub I tell them they have just killed a fish.

STOP SUCKING! Did you know that in the US alone 500 million plastic straws are used EVERY single day? Imagine worldwide! most end up in our oceans polluting and harming marine life. Next time say NO PLASTIC STRAW, its a small choice that can have a big impact, the ocean and sea life will thank you. For more info visit www.strawlessocean.org

28/07/2017

I saw a documentary about these coastal wolves in British Columbia. They reminded me of the baboon troop at Cape Point that forages in the intertidal zone for protein, mainly shark eggs. Apparently the only non-human primates to do so.