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Upcoming Events
The Gourrnet Festival
and Good Food and Wine Show - Cape Town
If
you like good food and wine, Cape Town is the place
to be in May. The Cape Gourmet Festival, a fortnight
of feasting from 7-22 May, is bigger and better than
ever. Besides the Laborie Restaurant Week, in which
top restaurants offer sensational two-course meals
with special wines at a set price, and the Cape Coffee
Route around the best coffee shops, there is the Good
Food and Wine Show from 20-23 May at Cape Town's International
Conference Centre. The Show offers a mouth-watering
array of culinary delights, new kitchen concepts,
home-made and fresh farm produce, cooking advice,
a Cheese Theatre, a Wine and Food Pairing Theatre
and much more.
Entry is R 50 for adults; R30 for pensioners and children.
For more information call the Gourmet Festival Hotline
on 084 565 0069 or go to www.gourmetsa.com
Futurex - Sandton ICC
Futurex is a new event bringing together Computer
Faire, SA's leading IT and computer exhibition for
25 years, and Tel.com, Africa's premier international
telecoms show, into a single unified showcase for
the information-, communications technology- and electronics
industries (ICT-E). This cross between a trade show
and a popular telecoms exhibition will be held at
the Sandton Convention Centre from 18-21 May and will
display the latest in computer systems, technology
convergence and telecommunications systems.
There will be no fewer than 270 exhibitors, including
all the major ICT-E companies together with visitors
from India, Israel, Taiwan, the UAE, the UK and the
US, covering the entire spectrum of information technology,
telecommunications software and electronics under
one roof.
Futurex is destined to become the major Pan African
event on the ICT-E calendar.
Royal Agricultural
Show - Pietermaritzburg
Highlight of the 2004 Royal Show, KZN's oldest and
most popular agricultural show, to be held at the
Showgrounds in Pietermaritzburg from 28 May to 6 June,
will be the Spar Food Hall, an exciting educational
display covering the entire food chain from farm field
to dining table. Last year's exhibit drew an audience
of over 110 000, making it one of the most popular
exhibits of any kind in the country. Other show attractions
include a Hall of Tourism and a Hall of Business &
Technology and some 280 exhibitors as well as a full
arena program of show jumping, cattle parades and
popular entertainment. For further information go
to www.royalshow.co.za
Festival of Fame -
Johannesburg
The National School of the Arts' Festival of Fame,
to be held from 11-14 May at various venues in Braamfontein,
Johannesburg, will bring together the talents of the
truly famous, the newly famous and the about to be
famous for four days of performances, exhibitions
and workshops in all forms of the arts. The organisers
promise to make the Festival of Fame into a major
event on the cultural calendar - 'the Grahamstown
Festival of Gauteng' - and to provide a crucial educational
experience for young would-be artists. Last year more
than 4000 students from 32 schools attended the festival,
which is one of the Johannesburg Development Agency's
'key event attractors' designed to bring the public
back into the cultural arc between Constitutional
Hill and the regenerated Newtown Precinct.
Pink Loerie
Mardi Gras - Knysna
Knysna, voted South Africa's favourite town for two
years running, is also 'Africa's Gayest Town - according
to the organisers of the fourth Pink Loerie Mardi
Gras, to be held there from 27-30 May. The carnival
offers four days of outrageous fun and non-stop entertainment
for gay people and everyone else looking for lots
of fun and laughter. There will be a fine living expo,
craft market, art exhibition, cabaret show and plenty
of live entertainment at a variety of venues. Like
it or not, Knysna is going to be painted pink by party
animals from all over SA, Africa and other parts of
the world.
For further information, go to www.pinkloerie.com
News & Trends
| Did
You Know - That Kimberley's Big Hole, dug
entirely by human hand, was once a modest hill called
Colesberg Koppie? When diamonds were discovered,
the koppie vanished within a year and after mining
had ceased decades later, the deepest shaft was
100 m below the surface. Source SA .info |
The James
Clarke Column
Nothing to see in
Kruger
Why would anybody go to Kruger Park right now - now
that the grass is as high an elephant's eye and "you
can't see a thing"?
I spent a week there this month - at Pretoriuskop
where the grass is highest because they've just had
a very wet March. The park's brooks were babbling
and we splashed through many a drift, but the roads
were in good repair. We drove around for five solid
days and saw nothing.
Well, not quite "nothing".
Certainly the bush was at its most beautiful. The
marulas were still in full leaf and the silver cluster
leaf trees were dressed as if it were high summer.
There were flowers I'd never seen before and I don't
recall seeing such a variety of butterflies.
One dawn we rounded Manungu koppie and to the northwest
the valley, blanketed in mist, was like a vast lake
stretching as far as Bushbuck Ridge. On the other
side of Manungu the open forest stretched east to
Mozambique,its bush willows laden with golden pods.
But we saw nothing in the way of animals. At least
that's what we told ourselves.
Yet, come to think of it we did see a leopard posing
on a nearby slab of rock at the base of a koppie.
How could I have forgotten that? Oh yes, and there
was a klipspringer on a koppie opposite. It was making
snort-like sounds which, translated, means (I think),
"I can see you, you stupid cat".
Oh, and we came across two herds of buffalo. That's
always a great sight. There were the ubiquitous herds
of impala, which I sometimes think are the most beautiful
of all buck.
The bush was as dense as I have ever seen it in the
last 40 years. There were a few natural meadows and
in one we saw, maybe 20 m away, a pair of white rhino
with a calf. I recall now that we did see the occasional
kudu and water buck - and quite often steenbuck emerged
from the grass to stand prettily in the road.
And elephant, of course. We found ourselves in the
middle of a breeding herd containing some very small
calves and some very irritable mothers. One came straight
at us and we had to take evasive action.
One always laughs a lot afterwards. High pitched
stuff mostly.
One day we were on a narrow road when we came across
a large bull elephant ambling towards us. As Rudyard
Kipling's character, Oonts, said, "the elephant
is a gentleman". Ian McFarlane, a hunter of note
whom I met recently, said, "Bulls are good-natured
fellows - but don't mess with cows."
Wildlife expert, Dr Jeremy Anderson, suggested that
nervous tourists and inexperienced game-rangers who
too readily reverse from elephants simply because
they flap their ears and trumpet, are "training"
elephants to charge. When in a vehicle Jeremy never
retreats.
So we didn't. We just sat.
The bull stopped 15 metres away and looked at us for
a couple of minutes. Then he walked off the road into
the grass, passed us, and then walked back on to the
road in a slow measured stride.
We saw a few giraffe and, of course, zebra.
We saw a large chameleon hesitantly crossing the road
and I was pleased to see all cars stopped and watched
it with great interest. (I always assume most visitors
are interested only in big stuff.)
We also saw a Fornasini's blind snake, jet-black and
as shiny as oil, side-winding across the road. We
came across a run-over puffadder and two other unidentified
snakes.
We identified 106 birds including a massive martial
eagle, a lizard buzzard, a pair of ridiculously-coloured
saddle-bill storks and five of this country's 10 kinds
of kingfishers.
As I said, we saw nothing.
Got
any questions?
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Kind regards
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