Breathtaking views
1. From the top of the Drakensberg
On one side of the Mount-aux-Sources amphitheatre you can stand next-to the Tugela waterfall and look out over the rippling Kwazulu-Natal hills towards the sea. My dad says that on a clear winters day he could see the ocean. The Drankensberg is like nowhere else on earth – you feel reverent if you stand here, even if you have a bit of a light-hearted streak… Even if you’re on the chubby side, you can reverse the day’s walk and climb to the top of the amphitheatre. Make a plan…
2. In the Kruger
I ave many favourite lookout spots in the Kruger Park. The one is at Olifantskamp in front of the cafeteria (if they finally finish building there someday), is wonderful. I have even stood there with binoculars and seen a leopard running on a small beach on the Olifants River. Now that I think of it, I’ve also seen a leopard from the deck restaurant at Onder-Sabie. I’m also crazy about sitting with binoculars on a bench near the river in Letaba and see how many elephants and marabou storks I can spot. Or at the Nwanetsi picnic spot near Mozambique. No man, the Kruger is full of great viewing spots…
3. Naspers’ cafeteria
Few people that work for Media24 in the tall Naspers building in Cape Town like the cafeteria on the 22nd storey, because it’s quite old-fashioned… it reminds one of a university residence’s dining hall. But if you arrive early in the morning, there are almost no other people and you can get two eggs and a bit of toast for something like R6 and sit and look out over the harbour and Robben Island. One morning I sat there for half an hour and watched a whale play in the Duncan Dock. He rolled and slapped his flippers and tail on the water and blew water… When I went back at lunchtime he was still there, until the harbour hands nudged him back to the open water with a tugboat.
4. Bitou and Keurbooms
It’s not much of a view, but one of the spots where I love to stand and fish is right there on the peninsula where the Keursboom and Bitou Rivers flow together at Pletterberg Bay. You can fish with sand prawns to catch kabeljou, spotted grunter and even elf. There are always a lot of people about, but there is an absolute Zen-like calm about the water shallows. Far in the distance, a group of birdwatchers troop carefully past, a middle-aged man paddles past in a kayak and wants to know if the fish are biting, there in the deeper water with their lines in the water sit two old men laughing in a little boat. I make out the words: “Now that’s what I call a beauty!” Behind me in the grass, a couple of Rastas wake up after the previous evening’s pipeful of dagga. This is a great place.
5. Fort Klapperkop
I have a soft spot for Pretoria. This place has a short but busy existence. If you stand here at Fort Klapperkop in the south and look towards town, you can feel so much of the spirit of Pretoria. This town has a sort of a besieged feeling – you’re standing by a fort, just to the left is the foreboding Voortrekker Monument, in front of you is the sewing machine of Unisa like a sliding door at one of the portals to the city. Behind that sits the cluster of skyscrapers that in the old days were the conceited spirit of the Afrikaner and the results of Paul Kruger’s important Dutch statesmen’s defences against “darkest Africa.” Behind that is the Moot area, from where the “bittereinders” launched attacks on Lord Roberts’ men a century ago after the British occupied Pretoria. The irony is that Pretoria is now a sort of African Washington D.C. Pretoria these days is a more tolerant and metropolitan city than even ten years ago.
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