Monthly Archives: December 2012

A blogging award for de Wets Wild to end 2012!

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one-star-2012-blog-award1

Thank you to everyone for helping us out – we gladly and gratefully accept your vote for “Blog of the Year 2012”!

Thanks again to Jenn of “The Serenity Space” for honouring us in this fashion, we really do appreciate it!

In turn we would like to nominate mjculverphotography as Blog of the Year 2012: Through a shared interest in and passion for the beauty and peace to be found in the great outdoors, our path has crossed with that of Marks and Joey – a real highlight of our year. We are regularly blown away by the beautiful images they create through their unique style of photography. We hope that you’ll accept this nomination as a small token of our appreciation, dear Joey and Marks!

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The rules for the award:

1 Select the blog(s) you think deserve the ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award.
2 Write a blog post and name/tell us about the blog(s) you have chosen – there’s no minimum or maximum number of blogs required – and ‘present’ them with their award.
3 Let the blog(s) you have chosen know that you have given them this award and share the ‘rules’ with them
4 You can now also join The Facebook group – click ‘like’ on this page ‘Blog of the Year 2012’ Award Facebook group and then you can share your blog with an even wider audience
5 As a winner of the award – please add a link back to the blog that presented you with the award – and then proudly display the award on your blog and sidebar … and start collecting stars…

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What a great way to end the year: Jenn, the fabulous author of “The Serenity Space” has kindly nominated de Wets Wild for an award!

We consider the nomination a very humbling honour – thank you again Jenn.

What’s more, Jenn’s given us a pick of three awards to choose from: the “Very Inspiring Blog Award“, “The Illuminating Blogger” or “Blog of the Year 2012“. This is where we’d appreciate our readers and followers to decide for us which of these, if any, you feel we most deserve – please?

(we’ll close the poll by the 10th of January 2013)

Thank you very much for your contribution – we appreciate every one of you who have taken an interest in our blog, your thoughtful comments and most especially the online friendships we’ve forged since launching de Wets Wild. We look forward to much more of the same in 2013 and wish you all only the very best for the new year ahead!

Golden Gate Sunset

Golden Gate: 28 December 2012

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Our time at Golden Gate is drawing to a close – tomorrow morning we will be heading back to the city. But as if to console us, Golden Gate Highlands National Park has given us a rare and precious parting gift: a fleeting glimpse of a serval, a rarely seen small wild cat, just after sunset.

Serval

Our 2012 in Pictures

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For the final challenge of 2012, we decided to submit a selection of photographs of the various accommodation units we stayed in while exploring South Africa’s wild places this year (you can click on the images for a clearer view).

Have a look here for more submissions in this week’s challenge.

Unusual

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Nature has sculpted a whole bunch of unusual rock formations – on both a large and small scale – from the sedimentary sandstone here at Golden Gate Highlands National Park in South Africa.

(you can click on the images to see them enlarged in a gallery)

Golden Gate Scenery
Brandwag Buttress
Brandwag Buttress
Golden Gate Scenery
Mushroom Rocks
Sedimentary rocks
Sedimentary rocks

We’re participating in the online adventure travel magazine LetsBeWild.com‘s Wild Weekly Photo Challenge for bloggers. This week’s challenge is “Unusual“.

Golden Gate: 27 December 2012

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A visit to a National Park is not always about the “hairies and scaries” – these photographs were taken while walking around the Golden Gate Highlands National Park today:

Golden Gate: 26 December 2012

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We arrived at another of our favourite South African wild places this morning: the Golden Gate Highlands National Park, located in the eastern Free State Province, where our base for the next three nights will be the charming Glen Reenen Rest Camp. Again we will give a proper report back soon, but for now we will try to post one or two pictures daily while we are here.

Today’s weather was overcast, rainy and cool but came sunset Golden Gate was lit in magnificently warm hues.

Golden Gate

Ithala Game Reserve: 23 December 2012

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And so the sun sets on our last full day here at Ithala this time around. Of course, we are already planning our next visit!

Ithala sunset

Tomorrow morning we’ll take one last short drive before taking the road back home to Pretoria for Christmas. Luckily for us we are leaving for Golden Gate National Park, another favourite of ours, on boxing day.

 

We wish you and your loved ones a blessed Christmas!

Ithala Game Reserve: 22 December 2012

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Good evening again from Ithala Game Reserve!

On our afternoon drive today we came across this female white rhinoceros with her calf in dense shrubbery – we liked the shot so much we wanted to share it as our “pic of the day”.

White rhinoceros (Ithala)

Long may they and their kind have a home here in Africa!

Surprise

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This is a likely outcome when you surprise a temperamental elephant bull – he charges, kicking up dust as he goes!

(photo taken near Mopani Rest Camp in the Kruger National Park, South Africa)

For more of this week’s challenge: Surprise!

Ithala Game Reserve: 21 December 2012

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We got this picture of “Africa in the sky” this morning at Ithala – does this gap in the clouds also remind you of the shape of the African continent, as it did us?

Africa (Ithala)