Textiles and other South Africa General Tips

Favorite Thing: Anyone who has read the shopping tips on any of my other pages will know I'm an inveterate collector of textiles. Not only do I love them, but I think they make marvellous souvenirs - unbreakable, easy to pack and reminders of your travels that you can actually use in an everyday context once you get them home. No wonder I loved the washing lines of brilliant textiles pegged out along the roadsides of South Africa. Whether cotton tablecloths, as here near Kruger, or Lesotho rugs high in the Drakensberg, they looked wonderful.
I resisted buying though ( I already had a cloth from Zimbabwe, at home patterned with guinea fowl, that I loved) until I got to the airport and then I succumbed - more guinea fowl were my downfall, Zimbabwean ones at that!


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Fondest Memory: 'Fondest" and "favourite" are hardly the right words to describe some of these thoughts and memories, but where else to put them is difficult. No visit to South Africa can fail to leave some harsh impressions - the aching poverty of squatter's camps, chronic unemployment that sees groups of aimless youths everywhere and cars besieged by hawkers with their few pathetic items for sale at every red traffic light, whole hillsides covered with tiny houses set down on barren earth in a sea of soul-destroying uniformity - all this and much more and that's without the evidence of the duel scourges of HIV-AIDS and crime that the visitor and tourist is less likely to have to confront in his/her cushioned and protected state.

However, harsh and difficult as these realities are, don't let them keep you away from this fantastic country. There is so much that is so rewarding and joyous here as well. Apart from the stunning beauty of the landscape and the unique thrill of seeing its wonderful wildlife roaming freely - the things that bring most visitors here in the first place - there will be wonderful images that will stay in your mind. I have mine -go and find yours.

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Favorite Thing: "The Big Five" - you hear, and see, reference to these everywhere in South Africa - lion, leopard, elephant, rhino and buffalo - they're on eveyone's wish list. By all means put them on yours, but don't let the pursuit of them get in the way of taking pleasure in small things -
these are some of my favourites - my "small five"

A tiny, brilliant green chameleon on the road
Guineafowl everywhere -I love their quiet clucking and soft grey feathers with white spots
Flat topped acacia trees - they are just so "African"
The flashing colour of birds like the rainbow bee-eater and the amazing blue glossy starling
A tree full of the tiny, perfectly-made nests of a colony of weaver birds


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