Makes sense.
But I recall the path as steep and rough enough that it might be trickier on the way down. (And ISTR that you paid at the bottom, with the ride down being free.)
The walk down is def. steeper!
Shoot, everyone’s already mentioned the things I wanted to recommend, so let me just nth going to the top of Table Mountain and to the Cape, and say that the vineyards are glorious and that South African wines are gorgeous. We found the steaks to be fabulous and ate quite a lot of ostrich steaks as well.
No, it is decidedly not beach weather. By all means, visit a beach for the view. But do not expect to swim or suntan… our water is cold (was in at Seaforth this W/E - big mistake)
His initials didn’t happen to be K.B., did they?
Too bad you weren’t there this past week - you could have taken in the World Underwater Hockey Championships! (A niece is a longstanding member of the Women’s Elite! How’s THAT for a brush with fame?!)
Now you’ll have to wait 2 whole years to catch the next tourney in Canada!
We’ll be visiting the Stellenbosch Winelands. Looking forward to that. I may have to sample one of the ostrich steaks as well. Thanks.
Have to drive up into the Drakensberg Mountains, esp. around sunrise/sunset, when it is lit up like a son of a bitch.
No. My guide on the main tour was Rick Nuttall, who was then a grad student but now the Director of the National Museum in Bloemfontein. My local guide in Cape Town was Richard Grant.
If I could secure my security, I would live in South Africa.
The people are amazing. Black, Afrikaner, English, the people I’ve dealt with professionally and socially have been awesome. There is crime in J-town and Pretoria, but I’ve been lucky.
The food is awesome.
The scenery is awesome.
I really, really love South Africa.
Did your mother write that line in the Wikipedia article too?
I doubt it. It is a famous world heritage site. She probably got the info from the same brochure that the Wikipedia authors did or maybe she just looked it up when she was writing her description. That is just a short, fact-filled, description of the site.
Busted!
I am still wondering about what. She just used part of the standard description of the place as part of her message about what a wonderful experience she had in South Africa. I would do the same type of quick fact copying if I went somewhere that most people aren’t very familiar with and I wanted to give a quick summary. I am not sure about Dopers, but most normal people don’t include cites and footnotes in e-mails and messages intended for friends and family.
Your mother is the world-renowned motivational speaker, isn’t she?
Yes she is and a very good one as well as a successful author on educational strategies. That doesn’t mean that she is any different than other mothers in e-mail to her friends and family.
I can see now that I should not have posted that. It was supposed to be helpful and positive to the OP but some Dopers are so skeptical and malicious that they will pick anything apart, no matter how innocent, as an attempt to do something that I cannot even comprehend the motivations for.
I personally couldn’t care less if she copied the basic description of a place she visited off of Wikipedia or if Wikipedia itself probably got it from the same brochure she did. That is a stupid objection to anything of that nature.
Then again, maybe she didn’t really go to South Africa last month. I wasn’t there. The myriad of pictures could have been Photoshopped or taken on a set somewhere - just like the moon landings.
Well, I’m no expert on globe-trotting sinew-stiffeners, so for all I know they do write their personal blogs like a 12 year old whose Social Studies assignment is due tomorrow.
Sure she did.
Is international travel really that exotic to people here that they can’t even imagine someone doing it routinely for work? I have news for you if you believe that is the case. Lots of people do it routinely including me. It makes up the highest profit center for the airline business. I have friends in finance that are in the Middle East more than they are at home. There are others that do supply chain work that travel the U.S. all week almost every week.
I have to do it myself and have to travel from the Boston area to the backwoods of Colorado routinely and I may have to go to Belgium soon as well. The only thing special about traveling to South Africa is that it is a pain in the ass to get to from the U.S. (or almost anywhere else for that matter). You are looking at 16+ hour series of flights in many cases and even getting to Australia is a little easier. Still, thousands of people do it every day of the year. It isn’t a space mission. I am sorry if many of you aren’t experienced travelers but you can go to South Africa for less than $2000 round trip and usually much less. That isn’t significant money for business operations of that type.
“Belgium is a low-lying country on the North Sea coast in the Benelux. With the majority of West European capitals within 1,000km or 622 miles of the Belgian capital of Brussels, and as a member of the long-standing international Benelux community, Belgium sits at the crossroads of Western Europe. Its immediate neighbours are France to the southwest, Luxembourg to the southeast, Germany to the east and the Netherlands to the north. I am certainly having a wonderful time in this country of Belgium that I am absolutely in.”