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Most of us will carry the memories of our best holidays to our deathbeds: beach holidays as a child, a bushveld holiday with your own kids, that big European grand tour after retirement… The preferred American term for a holiday – vacation – has its origin in the Latin word vacare, which means “to be free” or “to have free time”. It was the Latin speakers, the ancient Romans, who were first to make a point of going on a journey specifically for pleasure, not just to conquer or trade. Hotels, restaurants and even the first written travel guides (go!‘s Latin forerunners) were created to meet the needs of Roman holidaymakers. Even today, more than 2000 years later, we associate a great holiday with freedom – not just from work…

Knock, knock. Who's there? RENÉ VAN ZYL from Pretoria writes: I found this cocoon against our garden wall. The insect attached itself vertically against the wall, but could move the cocoon by sticking out its head and front legs. What kind of insect is it? Entomologist DUNCAN MACFADYEN says: This case is made by a bagworm – the larva of a moth in the family Psychidae. The adult moths are rarely encountered. They lack mouth parts and are short-lived. The males fly rapidly and erratically, searching for females. The males mainly fly by night and sometimes are attracted to light. The larvae, on the other hand, are conspicuous and commonly observed. A newly hatched larva uses vegetable debris, leaves and even thorns to construct a silk-lined portable case. Both the…

Where are Saturn's rings? Saturn is visible through most telescopes, even those beach-house models people use to watch passing ships. If you've taken a peek at Saturn recently, you might have noticed that its rings seem to be disappearing. What's going on? The phenomenon is the same as when you look at someone wearing a wide-brimmed hat tilted. When you look at the person from behind, you see the top of the brim. When you look at the person from the front, you see the bottom of the brim. And when you look from the side, the brim of the hat is only a sliver. Saturn's axis is tilted by 26,7° relative to its orbit around the sun – like a tilted hat. So, we see Saturn's rings from different…

Run. Risk. Reward: My Epic Trail-running Adventures by Ryan Sandes with Steve Smith, Penguin Books R320 in bookstores Whether you find endurance sports inspiring from the comfort of your couch, or if you also like to barrel up and down mountains, you'll enjoy this account by South African ultra-distance trail runner Ryan Sandes. Run. Risk. Reward. picks up where his previous autobiography Trailblazer (2016) left off. The focus is mostly on his adventure projects: He recounts a 1500km trek across the Himalayas, an attempt to dash up the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, and a run around the Mountain Kingdom of Lesotho. But there are also many other trails and races in-between, like a behind-the-scenes look at how his popular 13 Peaks Challenge on Table Mountain came about. Sandes is all…

What do we have here? On the surface, the X100VI is a“point-and-shoot”, but it'snot an entry-level camera at all. It's high-end and full of incredible technology; a camera for people who already own three or four other cameras but want a unique shooting experience. (Kind of like if you already own a SUV and a doublecab, but you realise that driving a Jimny just makes you feel better about life.) The built-in lens is fixed at 23 mm, which is equivalent to 35 mm on an old film camera. This makes it ideal for street and documentary photography, as it delivers a natural perspective similar to what the human eye sees. It's great for unobtrusive use around the braai, to get a shot of camera-shy granny or baby Josh smearing…

I'm not really one for New Year's resolutions. Try as I might, by February, my grandiose plans have all fluttered away: hitting the gym, emptying my inbox, submitting a go! column on time… Maybe these bird-related resolutions will stick… Let's make this the best birding year ever! SEE AN ALBATROSS. Time to start whittling away at that big gap at the start of your life list: pelagic seabirds. If you've never been on a deep-sea birding trip before, this is the year to do it. Most trips depart from Cape Town (Simon's Town or Hout Bay), although day trips are also run from Durban. There's something magical about that first shearwater or petrel gliding past the bow. Once you're out past Cape Point, the lifers literally appear out of nowhere.…

HAVE YOU SEEN SOMETHING AMAZING? Send your series of photos and a short description of the sighting to toast@gomag.co.za. You could win a Thule Subterra PowerShuttle bag! The Thule Subterra PowerShuttle bag is ideal for people who travel with a lot of tech. It's a sturdy carrier made from durable materials and is perfectly sized (21 x 7 x 14,5 cm) to organise everything from cables, earphones and adaptors to power banks and compact external hard drives. There's also an easily accessible pass-through slot that allows you to charge your device in the exterior slip pocket from a power bank inside the bag. With the Subterra PowerShuttle, you'll never have to search for a single cord again! For more information about this and other great gear for your active lifestyle,…

In October 2024, I did a hot-air balloon safari over the wildlife-studded plains of Kenya's Maasai Mara with a group of South African tourists. While it's noisy at times when the pilot fires the gas burners to keep the balloon in the air, the silences in between are truly special. It reminded me of a mokoro ride, where you don't have the distraction of a noisy motorised engine; just the sounds of nature. Likewise, in a balloon, you get to experience something of what a bird must feel like, a hundred or so metres above the ground, observing what lies below, listening and watching. Although we saw wildebeest, topi (a local kind of hartebeest), Thompson's gazelle, elephant, lion, hippo and other game during our one-hour flight, the highlight was when…

Smile – you're on camera! Although this column is focused on leopards, the method we use to study these big cats in the Western Cape – namely camera traps – also provides many photos of other interesting animals and their behaviour. Below are a few examples from the Cape Leopard Trust's camera surveys. How many of these creatures have you seen in the wild?…

Your earliest memories of trees? I grew up in Rustenburg in the Magaliesberg and mostly spent my school holidays on my grandfather's farm in the Marico Bushveld. Wild fig, moepel, stemfruit, marula, wild medlar and silver cluster-leaf trees occurred in these areas. As children, my brother, my friends and I ate the fruit of many of these trees, as well as the fruit of a creeper we called “wild peach”. In later years I learnt it's called a rock milk apricot. I still like to keep a bowl full of marulas in my kitchen to enjoy the delicious aroma. These days I live on a farm next to the Matlabas River north of Thabazimbi. We have great examples of bushveld trees like leadwood, russet bushwillow, red bushwillow, knob thorn and…

WINNING PHOTO IVOR MOMSEN IG: @momsen_wild Canon EOS 90D Sigma 150–600mm lens IVORWRITES: In October 2024, I was scrolling through posts on BirdLife South Africa's Facebook page, when I noticed a pair of blue-mantled crested-flycatchers had been spotted at Fernkloof Nature Reserve just outside Hermanus. Having never seen these elusive birds before, my wife and I went to Hermanus for a quick overnight trip. We got lucky and came across the crested-flycatchers near the reserve entrance. For me, birding is not about tallying species but about capturing and sharing the stories of what I encounter. Big moments like this often arrive unexpectedly, which means you have to scramble for photos, but this time I actually got some good images. It was a dream lifer moment! TOAST SAYS: What a winner!…

UUNAME TRAVEL PILLOW You don't have to max out the credit card to buy a decent neck pillow. Shop around onTakealot, for example, and you'll find a variety of designs and colours for every budget. One of the most popular is this U-shaped pillow made from soft memory foam. You can compress the foam and tuck the pillow into its own travel bag. It's firm enough to support your neck and also your shoulders and chin. You can even unzip the cover and wash it. Available in blue, grey, green and pink. R259 takealot.com SNAIL TRAVEL NECK PILLOW It looks more like a python wrapped around your neck than a snail, but anyway… This oversized foam pillow has a slithery design for a reason:The back follows the curve of your…

ANSWER #3 This one should be easy… A bright yellow bird must be a canary, right? Or wait, maybe a weaver? Let's back up a bit. What do we have here? A smallish, dumpy chap with a comically short tail, yellow plumage and some streaks on the flanks. It seems to have very sharp claws, although I'm not sure if that's significant. The most striking feature is the bill: a powerful triangle to crush seeds (and fingertips). Definitely a seed-eater, but which one? There are three bright yellow canaries: yellow-fronted, brimstone, and… uhm… yellow. But none of those have that fat, short-tailed look, and they all have striking face patterns, including a dark band along the jaw. How about weavers, then? Lots of options there! We can cross out most…

WINNING LETTER Drama at the waterhole I took this photo on the H1-6 in the Kruger Park, just north of Mopani rest camp. A clan of hyenas had stolen a buffalo carcass from lions the previous evening and dragged it into the Bowkerskop waterhole. This is the scene that greeted us the next morning… It was absolute chaos. The hyenas fed voraciously and fought with each other, although the“fighting”was mostly giggling and baring of teeth. They'd all eaten so much by that point that they were just being scratchy. When the black-backed jackals arrived, the scene became noisy and stinky. It was funny, too, as all the animals battled each other for pieces of rotten meat. We watched them for two hours, entertained by their interactions. The hyenas tried their…

The Tankwa Karoo is the complete opposite of the Garden Route. It's dry, it's hot and the gravel roads eat car tyres for breakfast. It's basically the last place you would expect to see a farm stall selling homemade baked goods, cold drinks and knick-knacks. But then, in 2011, the Tankwa Padstal opened its doors. The annual AfrikaBurn event has since introduced thousands of people (often urbanites who have never turned off the N1 before) to this semi-desert. Now every weekend brings bakkies, Jimnys and motorcycles that kick up dust in search of the Tankwa's greatest asset: space. And where there are people, a farm stall will follow. These days there are four of them in the Tankwa! Here's your guide. Tankwa Padstal This is the unofficial headquarters of the…

WHY? We publish a selection of reader pictures in every issue. Don't be shy, haul out those shots you've been hoarding on your computer and send them to us! We like just about anything: wildlife, landscapes, portraits, holiday snaps or bugs in your garden. HOW? Send your photos to takeyourpic@gomag.co.za Submit only your three best shots each month. Don't send files bigger than 4 MB – if we need a bigger version, we'll ask for it. Give the name, surname, home town and contact number of the photographer. Also include info about where and how the shot was taken, and what equipment was used. If you manipulated your photo in any way, tell us what you did. No AI illustrations, please. THE FINE PRINT We reserve the right to use…

Baked cheese with grapes Serves 6 as an appetiser Preparation time 25 minutes Baking time 20 minutes You need • 1 wheel of camembert • 1 wedge of brie • 2 bunches of grapes • fresh thyme • 2 tablespoons honey • 100g mixed nuts, seeds and dried fruit • toast or crackers, to serve Here's how 1 Preheat the oven to 200°C. Make a few deep incisions into each cheese without cutting through. Arrange the cheese, grapes and thyme in an ovenproof dish or cast iron pan and drizzle with honey. Bake for about 15–20 minutes or until the cheese has melted and the skin of the grapes has burst open. Baking the grapes intensifies their sweetness, which complements the creamy cheese perfectly. 2 Scatter the nuts, seeds and…

There are trails everywhere on the Wild Coast – you can find paths along any beach from Gonubie to Port Edward. The only problem is you don't always know if you're on a hiking trail or just on a track used by fishermen and cattle. Morgan Bay, a holiday town about 4 km south of Kei Mouth, is technically in the “tame” part of the Wild Coast, but it's wild enough. To make it easier for visitors, Richard Warren-Smith, owner of the Morgan Bay Hotel, has laid out several footpaths between Morgan Bay and the next bay to the south, Double Mouth, called the Morgan Bay Cliff Trails. “I've spent my entire life in Morgan Bay, so I know those cliffs like the back of my hand,” he says. “We…

Lots of building materials The African paradise-flycatcher (pictured), black-headed oriole and Cape white-eye all build a round, cup-like nest using a range of materials. Construction starts with pieces of bark attached to a branch with spider webs. They then line the nest with softer materials like grass, fur or pine needles. And they use lichen to camouflage the nest. My private houseboat The African jacana looks for floating vegetation and adds some grass or plant stems to make its home on the water. The red-knobbed coot also has a floating nest, but it prefers more structure. The coot's nest is usually a mound of plant matter with a depression for the eggs. The great crested grebe (pictured) puts in even more effort: It builds a sturdy nest from reeds and…

It was a Saturday, around 7.45 am, in August 2024. As usual, I peered through the kitchen window to see whether the black-collared barbets had eaten the papaya I put out for them earlier. But a movement caught my eye deeper in the garden, on the lawn. I grabbed my binoculars and saw that a common fiscal had just caught an African red-eyed bulbul! 1 I didn't see the hunt itself, but what followed amazed me. The fiscal didn't eat its catch right away, but tried to carry it over the garden wall that separates our yard from our neighbour's. The wall is more than 2 m high! This was the beginning of an effort that lasted about eight hours. I fetched my camera – a Canon EOS 750D –…

Suddenly, a herd of cattle burst out of the bush across the road. I barely missed them, but the small motorcycle behind me, carrying two women passengers, was knocked over. The tar road out of Gembu in Nigeria was falling apart, but it felt like our local N1 compared to what we'd been through over the past few days (see issue #197). We were aiming for the town of Bali, 232 km to the north, via the Mambilla Plateau at about 1 200 m above sea level. The air was “cool” at 27 ˚C and the views were amazing. But the dream didn't last forever. A roadblock loomed ahead. Tyres and drums and sticks in the road. A man in uniform with a long rifle signalled for us to stop.…

Washed in the glow of the setting sun, the boutique hotel La Petite Ferme basks among shiraz vineyards dotted with poppies and watsonias against the slope of the Middagkrans mountain. On a stoep flanking our suite, my companion and I are reclined in chairs – feet up. Ahead, the Franschhoek valley drops past pine trees and whitewashed farmsteads. Its main road with its chequered tables and blackboard specials (slow-roast duck and sautéed herbs); its heritage buildings, art galleries and garden walls with spills of bright bougainvillea, are hidden from sight. I'm wiggling my toes at the sunset, which flushes across the sky in swirls of blush. From within the now-encroaching twilight, a peacock squawks – a jarring sound at odds with the ethereal spectacle of the moment. All around, a…