Transkei Trundling

Last week was a fairly eventful week as I made my way down the Transkei to photograph our friends' wedding in Cape Town (Noordhoek to be exact). The plan was to spend a few days driving down and sussing sites out for photo shoots and meet my family in Cape Town the say before the wedding (I'll be blogging about the chaos that is a Jewish wedding shortly ;) ).

Ah, but the plans that we make. In my case plans were somewhat thwarted due to rain, a rapidly braking and skidding bakkie in front of me and a poorly positioned, slightly panicked and now, sadly, deceased donkey. So that marked tickets for the right hand side of our small car.

Not to be outdone, Cape Town had it's own offerings. While travelling in on the N2 the driver in front saw an accident up ahead and slammed on anchors. Following suite I came to halt behind him, only to be rammed along the left hand side by the driver behind. Wonderful. What a Christmas present! (I guess to be grateful I wasn't hurt in either of the accidents).
 

On to more important things such as Photography though. The entire length of the N2 is well worth a consideration in terms of landscape material. The Transkei is admittedly very rural with pockets of extremely eroded soil. The heavy December rain does no favours for these eroded channels, sending torrents of red-brown mud flowing down the rivers. Nevertheless the rain also means that the usual grey and yellow brown are replaced by vivid greens against dramatic clouds that seem to build up like giant rugged castles in the sky.

The rolling rural hills are soon replaced by the massive stone steps that mark the beginning of the Garden Route. Tsitzikamma Forest is worth a visit just for the massive boulders and tortured rock that looks as if it is in a perpetual battle with the crashing waves. In a way, the Garden Route was almost a disappointment after Storm's River and the Tsitzikamma. The Garden Route is beautiful, but it doesn't have the same rugged and raw nature as the former.

I'll be posting within the next few days on weddings as well as a more in-depth look at the the book that I have been working on. Theoretically I have just delivered the final proof to the printers, so I feel that I can now start writing about the experiences of my first book...pointing out some of the pitfalls for the first time photographic author.