#Photography

Leshiba Wilderness was the third stop on the Blogitects’ Limpopo road trip. Read about our first and second stops.

Like last week, I don’t know how to start writing this post because I don’t know how to describe our stay at Leshiba Wilderness. I don’t even know how to describe what Leshiba is. Calling it a “game reserve” is woefully insufficient. And calling it “luxurious”, even though it is, conveys the wrong impression. Leshiba is luxurious in the most fantastical sense…a luxury lodge built from artists’ visions and dreams.

Some of you might remember a post I wrote last year about bicycle spinning and stance in Soweto. The bicycle stance subculture, which is the art of transforming regular bikes into flamboyant showpieces that ride very close to the ground, stemmed from the car stance culture – same thing, but with cars.

I’m suffering from a creative block this week and couldn’t think of anything to blog about. Then I remembered I have a set of pictures and sketches from my jacaranda walk in Kensington, which I hosted with Johannesburg in Your Pocket a few weeks ago. I never got around to writing about that walk due to the Rugby World Cup madness that happened on the same day, so I’m doing it now.

Last weekend Thorsten and I visited Dolobran, one of Joburg’s oldest, quirkiest, and most mysterious mansions, on a tour with the Johannesburg Heritage Foundation (JHF). Dolobran is unique among Joburg’s “Randlord” mansions (other examples of which include Villa Arcadia and the View) in that it’s privately owned, still occupied by descendants of the original owners, and almost never open to the public. Saturday’s tour was open only to JHF members and photography wasn’t allowed inside.

This week, the last week of October, is peak jacaranda week in Joburg. The trees are laden with flowers and each breeze brings a shower of purple blossoms raining down onto the street. But the Pretoria jacarandas peaked about two weeks ago, and I was lucky enough to catch them during an epic photowalk hosted by Johannesburg In Your Pocket and the Joburg Photowalkers.