Healthy lunch today…

Since I have been spending so much time at home over the past week, I have reverted to a bad practice. Mainly eating bread and home made rusks.

This easy to go-to meal is just so simple to prepare. Pop the two slices of 50% Rye and 50% white into the toaster, smash a boiled egg, a teaspoon of mayonnaise, sushi ginger, salt and pepper, pour the 5th mug of coffee from the percolator, and Bob’s your uncle! Meal complete and I am sated.

Obviously I am supplementing it with other food, but the bread is my killer. In the week I have gone up by 2 kg and it shows.

Today, while out in my car, I called in at Produce Direct Farmers Market and purchased some nice fresh items. https://www.facebook.com/producedirect/

As can be seen by the photo above, I still had a half a fillet of kipper over and this, with fresh vegetables made a super lunch. I wish I could just get used to eating this way. It is so tasty and delicious, but old habits die hard.

My father was a Chief Assayer on a Free State Gold Mine, Western Holdings…

He was there virtually his entire working life. In those days it was an admirable thing to do to be loyal to the company that employed you. How times have changed.

Anyway, working for Anglo America was very rewarding. We were given a free house in Welkom which was changed as your position improved. So from a small little cottage, we eventually moved into a really nice large home that was more than adequate for our family of seven.

But what was even better than this perk as far as I was concerned, was that he was entitled to Long Leave.

It was during these periods of extended leave that we, as a family were taken all over South Africa.

We were extremely lucky in this regard and these trips gave me a very good grounding on where everything is. The new names of the areas have changed with the new Government in power, but I still think of them by their old names.

The Eastern Transvaal, Bourkes Luck Potholes, Bridal Falls, God’s Window, Barberton, Pilgrims Rest… the list is endless and fortunately as I type these names, the beauty of these memories remain.

The Cape and Transkei.

How many happy holidays spent in family run hotels, Wavecrest (Where one got the Wavecrest Walk), Trennerys Hotel at Qoloha(The Trennery’s Trot), Seagulls Hotel, also at Qoloha (The Seagull Scamper) and the now very popular Umgazi.

Not sure why we always ended up with a runny tummy at these places, but in those days it was certainly par for the course!

The Eastern Cape

This was the area we would always stop at on our journeys, as this is where my father was born. He came from Elliott, a very beautiful part with the high Mountains which stood sentinel over the town with large rock formations which we were told were known as Punch and Judy.

His Aunts and Uncles lived there and only one of them ever married and after his wife’s death, he returned to live with his brothers and sisters and they stayed there most of their lives.

Some places I wonder if you have heard about…

I have taken them off a website called Atlasobscura.com, what a wealth of information for someone who is looking for an out of the way destination. I hope you might be tempted to go and discover them yourself one day.

Sunland Baobab in Limpopo.

Physically, the giant tree ranks at the top of many lists. It is one of the largest baobabs in South Africa, and at a whopping 72 feet high and 155 feet around, the widest on the entire continent.

Besides its remarkable dimensions, the baobab is also one of the oldest trees on Earth. According to some estimates, Sunland Baobab is 6,000 years old. While there is some controversy regarding the age, carbon dating has placed the tree easily past the millennium mark, putting Sunland Baobab among the ranks of California’s legendary sequoias.

To add to the wonder of the species, Baobabs naturally hollow out after 1,000 years. Sunland may have passed that mark generations ago, and as such has hollowed to such a point that the owners of the land, the van Heerden family, created a small pub inside the space. Amazingly, the rustic bar has 13-foot high ceilings and can comfortably fit 15 people. Mrs. van Heerden even claimed to have once put 40 full-size adults inside for a party.

Visitors wishing to grab a pint inside Sunland can even spend the night in one of five local Jungalows on the property to complete the full safari party experience.

Update: The giant tree trunk split and a third of it collapsed in April, 2016, likely due to its age. It is unclear whether the section with the bar was effected by the collapse.

Update May 2019: The bar is still open, though it’s run-down and in rather rough shape.

Adam’s Calendar …

IN 2003, SOUTH AFRICAN PILOT Johan Heine was flying over the hills of the gorgeous Mpumalanga region of South Africa when he crashed his plane into the mountainside. After exiting the plane, Heine saw before him three monolithic, five-ton dolomite stones sticking out of the ground, and behind them a giant stone circle.

Known to only a select few and accessible solely by rough dirt roads past the wild horses of Kaapschehoop, the megalithic stone calendar is dubbed Adam’s Calendar. With the shape of a circle and a diameter of 100 feet, it is nicknamed the “Birthplace of the Sun” and dubbed “Africa’s Stonehenge.” As with many similar stone monuments, it loosely aligns with the celestial world.

The stone circle generated a fair amount of buzz after Michael Tellinger, a writer, claimed it is the oldest manmade structure in the world and was made by a vanished civilization. However, his claims have been widely disputed. As of now, the true age, origin, and purpose of Adam’s Calendar remains a mystery that is yet to be solved.