Rovos Rail At Sunset

Rovos Rail – Cape Town to Pretoria, South Africa

Last spring I took the luxurious Rovos Rail from Cape Town to Pretoria, traveling across the Karoo with pitstops in Matjiesfontein and Kimberley. The trip took two days, slowly traversing the vast and varied land that is South Africa. We embarked from the station in Cape Town midday and made it to Matjiesfontein by sunset, which created a pretty stunning backdrop for the train! Matjiesfontein is a random little town without much going on, but it was fun to explore and get a drink at the local pub.

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Phantom Forest, Knysna

Phantom Forest Eco Reserve, Knysna

On my first visit to Africa, I took a week to tour the Garden Route and was traveling serendipitously without any solid plans… While I was hanging out in Hermanus, I read a magazine that was raving about Phantom Forest, an eco-reserve in Knysna, so I decided to make that my next stop! The trip was a pretty huge whirlwind of awesome, but Phantom Forest stood out among other hotels with its amazing views, hilltop privacy, monkeys!, delicious homemade breakfast, and a cabin that felt like my own personal fort in the Afromontane forest. I even got to see a Knysna Turaco! [/lourie, whatever you guys are calling it!]

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Cape Town Neighbourgoods Market

This award-winning market features over 100 specialty traders every Saturday, creating a weekly platform for local farmers, fine-food purveyors, organic merchants, bakers and distributors, grocers, mongers, butchers, artisan producers, celebrated local chefs, and micro enterprises. The Neighbourgoods Market is housed…

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Living Room Makeover

Our apartment just got switched over to new management, and with them came higher rent and promises of improvements and upgrades. New carpet! A new refrigerator! No more leaky spigots! That has motivated us to give the rest of the house a makeover. Right now there is absolutely no direction, nothing matches and everything feels temporary. Time to turn this house into a home!

Here’s part one of “Living Rooms I Could Live With”:

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McMenemy Hike

We’re going to Costa Rica at the end of February and have been trying to get in better hiking shape, so this weekend we went to McMenemy trail to check out the sights and wend our way up to one of the better lookouts in all of SB county. One of my goals is to capture every last plant that ever existed and this trail helped bump up my collection. Please see:

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Egyptian Pyramids

Africa Again

over the course of four weeks in africa i had: jetlag, malaria medication side-effects (hallucinations! paranoia!), two allergic reactions to fish when i wasn’t aware that i was being served fish, a cold, pharaoh’s revenge, and now some strange stomach virus. somehow i slept from 6pm to 5am last night and now i’m slowly starting to feel like a citizen of earth again instead of some phantasmal echo of my former self.

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Living it up on Zanzibar

After a week landlocked in the Selous, we hopped a flight out of Dar Es Salaam over to Zanzibar. The company we booked a flight through had a little trouble deciphering my name and instead of getting “Kelly Lane” on my ticket they came up with “Kruy Lank.” Close! Luckily security was a little lax, so my boarding pass and my passport didn’t have to match.

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Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel, Zanzibar

Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel, Zanzibar

On the northernmost peninsula of Zanzibar Island, Ras Nungwi Beach Hotel overlooks a sparkling expanse of iridescent Indian Ocean, a cluster of whitewashed and palm thatched cottages in rich tropical gardens. Its myriad pathways are shaded by elegant palms, creating soft sun-dappled walkways between beach and banda, balcony and bar.

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