The Passionate Traveler

King of the jungle One of my favourite places in the world is the Kgalagadi Transfrontier Park. This was previously known as the Gemsbok national Park. The park boarder on Namibia on the western side and Botswana on the Eastern side. The Nature reserve is in South Africa and Botswana and visitors to the park can travel freely between the South African side of the park and the Botswana side. Gemsbok fighting My wife (Marie) and I have visited the park numerous times. Both of us are keen wildlife photographers and this park is a wonderful place for wildlife photography. The Park is a desert region with red sand dunes. In the South African part of the park, the roads and camps are along the two dry river beds. There are many man made water holes along these dry river beds, so much of the wildlife is concentrated in or around the river beds. Ground squirrel  This is a wonderful place for predators. You can count yourself very unlucky if you have spent a few days in t...

View from the World's Tallest building As I have mentioned previously, my favourite airline is Emirates. So, most of my trips are via Dubai. According to my app on my phone (where have I been), I have spent some 27 days in Dubai. Most of this time has been at the airport. However, I did have a short stay in Dubai. This was in fact, the second time I had been in Dubai. The first time was quite some time ago with Wouter. My last trip to Dubai included a presentation of Virukill for some clients. I also took a few days to explore Dubai. View from my hotel room Marina area at night My flight into Dubai was on business class. Can't really remember where I was come from, or going to. I often try to combine different trips into one, so I might, for example combine a trip to the USA with a trip to China. The nice thing about Emirates business class, is that they have a complementary chauffeur service in most destinations around the world. Obviously, this includes Dubai...

Great Wall of China - all my photos One of the Wonders of the World, and apparently visible from space. This is the Great Wall of China. Building on the Great Wall started around the 7th century BC! The Wall, which was built in 220 BC to 206 BC was the first real wall. Very little of this wall still remains. Over the years, work on the Great Wall continued and much of the modern Wall was built around 1368 - 1644 by various dynasties. Typical watch tower and wall The main purpose of the wall was for defence along the boarder and was mainly built to keep the Mongolian raiders out. It was also used for boarder control as well as for tax purposes along the silk route. The wall is connected with various watch towers and barracks for the troops who were manning the wall. The Wall is massive. It is not called the Great Wall because it is small! An archaeological survey has measured the entire wall with all its branches and found that the wall was 21 196 km long - not a s...

Time Square at night - All my photos By now, most people who have been following my blog know that I am not a city person. Give me the bush and wildlife any day of the week. I would much rather be looking for tigers or other strange animal is some strange land then visit a city. However, there is something very special about New York. I really love that city - and I am not a city person. The is a buzz and activity which is hard to explain. Anything goes on Time Square I have been to New York a few times now and I have loved each trip. The Standard Operating Procedure when in New York is to get a two or three day "Hop on - Hop Off" bus ticket. This can be done on line before the time, but there are also many people on the street in New York selling the tickets for the buses. The people selling these tickets are normally around the bus stops on the route. This is a really great way to see New York. There is an open top deck on the buses, to you have an unrestricted vi...

Germany vs England 2010. All my photos in this post German goal! The football World Cup has just started in Russia. This brings back a flood of memories when the World Cup was hosted in South Africa in 2010. Who would have ever thought that our little city of Bloemfontein would play host to, not just one, but six matches. There were five group matches here and one of the round of sixteen matches. I bought tickets for that match, not knowing who would be playing. The most likely team to top their group was Germany, so I was pretty sure that at least one of the teams would be Germany. The other group that would contribute a team to the match, had England and Australia in. All bets were on England to top that group. In the group match, a bad goalkeeping error gave Australia the win, and England ended up second in the group and had to face Germany. So, I had tickets to see the greatest rivalry in world football, in Bloemfontein. The rivalry between England and Germany is so great t...