Adventure in South Africa
Presented by Gail and Ladd Seekins
Gail and Ladd Seekins will present a slide show of their recent trip to South Africa. They spent five weeks in the country, visiting many of the top attractions, booking day tours locally. Their show will cover all the places they visited and will feature South African prehistory, history through the Apartheid years, beautiful scenery, outdoor adventures and wildlife.
The meeting will be held on February 3, 7:30 PM, at the San Bernardino County Museum, 2024 Orange Tree Lane, Redlands.
Gail and Ladd, as usual, organized everything themselves, staying mainly at backpacker-style guest houses and traveling by bus. They saw a good representative slice of this very large and diverse country, from Cape Town up the coast to Durban and then to Johannesburg and Kruger National Park.
While in Cape Town, they toured the Cape of Good Hope, visited the Imizamo Yethu Township, a penguin colony, the Kirstenbosh National Botanic Garden and the former prison on Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela and other political prisoners were incarcerated. They learned about apartheid, went wine tasting, hiked Table Mountain and visited the South African Holocaust Museum.
In Hermanus they saw southern right whales, toured an abalone farm and went wine tasting again. They learned about maritime history in Mossel Bay and hiked through some great rugged seaside scenery at Stormsriver. In Port Elizabeth they took a historic city walking tour and spent a day at the Addo Elephant National Park viewing wildlife. At Coffee Bay it was more rugged seaside hiking.
In the southern Drakensberg Mountains, they took a day trip over Sani Pass into the Kingdom of Lesotho, where they sampled bread and native millet beer in a traditional Basotho village and visited the 9429 ft. Sani Top Lodge, Africa’s highest pub. In Durban they took a day to walk through the city, visiting Victoria Market, the botanic garden and several museums, stopping to watch a political protest on the city hall steps and some wild Zulu dancing in the plaza.
They had three days in the northern Drakensberg Mountains, two days hiking independently in the Royal Natal National Park and one very long day hiking to the top of the 3107 ft. Tugela Falls, the highest waterfall in Africa.
Arriving in Johannesburg, they started a six-day safari in Kruger National Park, where they saw much wildlife, including a leopard and a pair of rare black rhinos in addition to the more plentiful impalas, other antelope, zebra, elephant, giraffe, lions and cape buffalo. The weather was cool and the hippos were out of the water in the middle of the day.
While in Johannesburg they toured Soweto, visited the stunning new Apartheid Museum, took a day trip to Pretoria, visited the Cradle of Mankind region, viewed the city from the top of Africa’s highest building, and saw some outdoor museums on Constitution Hill and the mining district.
