and when things get bigger and emptier, how far your car can go on one tank of gas gets really quite important. no such thing as a pop-up petrol station: getting a petrol can for the boot wasn’t an act of hubris.
after 1,000km and two days wonderful driving we hit namibia, the country i can still sing the national anthem of having spent a year there when i was 18. no longer the majestic pacific coast of the garden route, past the lush farmlands of ceres, now a farm stall means biltong and not much else, and the landscape around grows bigger and emptier, bigger and emptier…
here, all looks innocent. round the bend, the path peters out and you’re scrambling over 45° rocks with waves crashing around you. truly wonderful, and so refreshingly… well, the national parks service really don’t mind you being on the edge.
got to knysna comfortably before sunset, to join a vision of family life: kids swimming in the river, grandparents helping with the braai (aka bbq). a veritable idyll, quite the trick character-from-times-past james has pulled relocating his corner of the office from london to south africa.
the hero of addo - and yes, against elephants fighting, rhinos mowing, giraffes silhouetted against the open sky - has to the dung beetle. driving is tricky as you have to avoid them, being a protected species and unable to fly out from underneath your wheel, but what heroic effort they make, and look rock hard in the process.
in africa, got to check out the locals, right? lions: check. apparently the rest of the party were worried about being eaten. i was worrying about focus. strange how a lens displaces you.
having spent the previous day editing the live cinema documentary while the others were out a-walking, i seized the turn of the weather to make a dawn sprint up the nearest hill. well worth it, amazing 360° views showing the plains beyond and the mountain ridge cloud forest rising up that made hogsback feel like some kind of displaced england. but here we have the three hogsbacks, the rising sun, and some proteas just to prove we’re really in sa. and photoshop cheese, pfft.
this is one of my favourite photos ever, for reasons i can’t entirely explain. hogsback felt a little like a scout camp: tin roofs, furnishings from another age, and lots of walking.
a 1950’s volvo, dirt roads, and marion’s schoolhood friend leading us down the roads of different era of her childhood: hogsback, south africa. marion’s 30th birthday present had been a ticket to south africa, and here we were.
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