#Africa

This jumpsuit love story began eight months ago, when I booked a Caraci experience on Airbnb to celebrate my birthday. Thorsten and I spent a glorious day in the Joburg CBD, shopping for African print fabric, learning how to sew, hanging out in the city, and having fabulous jackets made to our exact measurements.

The Drakensberg Mountains fly under the radar in South Africa’s tourism scene. Everyone goes to Cape Town and the Kruger and the Garden Route, but the Drakensberg doesn’t often make it onto that “must-see” tourist itinerary. Even I’m guilty of neglecting the Drakensberg; I’d dipped in once or twice over the years but had never done a proper Drakensberg weekend until last month, when Thorsten and I stayed in Royal Natal National Park’s Thendele Camp and did the Tugela Gorge hike. Now I’m appalled at myself for sleeping on this spectacular part of South Africa for so long.

I’ve developed a great interest in clothes, as most of you know, especially locally designed and thrifted clothes. And clothes-swapping – the act of exchanging clothing items with others, rather than buying new or second-hand clothes – is like thrifting on steroids. We’ve all got clothes that we don’t want or simply don’t wear anymore…Why pay money for new ones when you can trade for them instead? This is the theory behind Swap Movement.

Regular readers will know that I’ve written a couple of posts about Noordgesig – affectionately called Bulte, which means “Hills” in Afrikaans – lately (see here and here). Last year I befriended Lavinia and Fabian Otto, who live in Noordgesig, and they’ve been slowly introducing me to Bulte’s unique history and culture.

Those of you who follow me on Instagram may have noticed I’ve been hiking a lot lately. I’ve always loved to hike. But for some reason – maybe because I now have a car that can take me to any hiking trail in South Africa – I’ve started wanting to hike a lot more. So when Ezemvelo, a privately owned nature reserve less than two hours from Joburg, invited Thorsten and me to come check out their hiking trails a few weeks ago, I was excited to check it out.

Last Tuesday I put on my big-girl pants – or, more accurately, my young-girl pants – and stayed out past midnight to attend the Sawubona Music Jam in Chiwelo, Soweto. I’ve known about the Sawubona Music Jam, which happens every Tuesday night, for years. But as a middle-aged person usually in bed by 9:30, I could never find the right time to travel to the far side of Soweto for a weeknight show that runs until 2:00 a.m.