Painting Travel Adventures

ARTIST & PHOTOGRAPHERS
MAGICAL JOURNEY TO

SOUTH AFRICA

Facilitated by Jill Segal & Lee Kraemer
February 4-21 2008

As long as there have been humans, they have been living in South Africa. And we now know that possibly the first humans to express themselves artistically, were living in Southern Africa. Thus a Journey here is a return to our human and artistic origins; an opportunity to appreciate and be inspired by the same energies and vistas that inspired our earliest humanistic endeavours.

But there is so much more to be gained from a visit to South Africa. Throughout history, ancient and modern, it has been, and remains, a virtual laboratory of the nature of humanity.

The first European descendents of the original human diasporas to begin their return were the Portuguese explorers. As they eventually made their way around the Southern tip of the mother continent, they recognised it as a place of challenge.

A Portuguese epic poem of the time, tells how Adamastor, a member of the race of giants, fell in love with Thetis a sea nymph. Her mother, Doris, told him that she had arranged a tryst for him with her daughter but when he arrived, she betrayed him and imprisoned him in rock deep in the southern oceans. There he remained, imprisoned in his anger, to hurl great storms at the mariners trying to round his headland. The rock in which he was imprisoned is what we now call Table Mountain.

Having endured the winter storms that can pound this peninsula, the first sailors to attempt to round the southern tip of Africa, returned to Portugal and told their king that they had found their way around the 'Cape of Storms'.

The King immediately instructed that the name be changed to 'The Cape of Good Hope' because, despite its sometimes stormy nature, it provided a vision of a future that was filled with hope and potential for riches.

South Africa has always been on the cusp of storm on one side, and a future of hope and fulfilled potential on the other. What one sees in the South Africa of today, is a testimony of the resilience and triumph of the human spirit.

It is a country of astonishing diversity in many dimensions. It is a country that embodies all the world’s challenges and achievements, and all the world’s, hopes and successes in overcoming those challenges.

It is a country whose demise has been predicted by experts throughout its history, and yet it is there for all to see, still flourishing, still dealing with problems, still acheiving. So far it seems that the Portuguese King was right.

With Magical Journey you will travel in a way that few foreigners on commercial packages do.The Journey has been carefully structured to allow you to explore and enjoy as many dimensions of the diversity as possible, both artistically and socially, in the time that we have available, while having a truly great experience.

We look forward to being your hosts.

THE ITINERARY

Monday 4 February

Arrive at Cape Town International Airport and transfer to our hotel in Stellenbosch. After an introduction to the programme, South Africa and each other, you will be free to wander the Oak lined streets of this beautiful town and settle after the long flight.

Stellenbosch is the oldest town in South Africa after Cape Town. Soon after the Dutch first settled in what is today Cape Town in 1652, their ‘Burgers’ moved out into the neighbouring mountains and valleys. They were later joined by French Huguenots and artisans from what is today Indonesia and Malaysia who were brought in as slaves by the Dutch East India Company. The mixture of these cultures produced the graceful and unique style of Cape Dutch architecture and a tradition of viticulture which has been preserved down the centuries. As you travel around the Cape you will become aware that it is home to a population of people that is unique in Africa, and whose cultural and ethnic roots lie in the soils of the Khoisan - the oldest people of Southern Africa, as well as Europe, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Tuesday 5th February
A day in the Winelands.

The estates of the Cape Wine Lands centered on Stellenbosch and Franschoek have held true to the legacy of their forebears enabling wine writer Hugh Johnson to claim that ‘wine is made in no more beautiful place on earth’. We will visit some of South Africa’s top, award-winning estates and lunch in the gardens of carefully preserved original Cape Dutch homesteads with their gleaming yellowwood doors, windows and floors.

After our day in the wine lands we will return to our hotel in Stellenbosch (B)

Wednesday 6th February

"This Cape is a most stately thing, and the fairest Cape we saw in the whole circumference of the earth." Sir Francis Drake.

We will drive through the magnificent Cape Peninsula, and, weather permitting, will take the cable car to the top of Table Mountain from where we can gaze down on the City and suburbs of Cape Town and the Table Mountain National Park, a region which constitutes one of the six recognized floral kingdoms of the world. It includes 8500 plant species, of which more than 6000 are indigenous amongst which is the protea, an evergreen shrub for which South Africa is renowned, and which is the national flower. (B)

Thursday 7th February

We will visit Robben Island, where leaders of the ANC (African National Congress) and other movements were incarcerated during the struggle against the Apartheid Regime. You will see the cells of former State President Nelson Mandela, and other famous leaders. Robben Island is a place where, despite the intentions of the jailers and against all odds, positive energy and a spirit of hope and tolerance were kept alive. Today Robben Island is kept as a museum in the spirit described in this statement by Ahmed Kathrada a former prisoner and now Director of the museum:

"While we will not forget the brutality of apartheid, we will not want Robben Island to be a monument to our hardship and suffering. We would want Robben Island to be a monument... reflecting the triumph of the human spirit against the forces of evil. A triumph of non-racialism over bigotry and intolerance. A triumph of a new South Africa over the old." (B)

Friday 8th February

An additional day in Cape Town, to cover the many other attractions, and allow for flexibility in case weather has prevented us from making some of the planned visits. Cape Town is a city where one is never at a loss for things to do. (B)

Saturday 9th February

We will fly to Johannesburg for the start of the second, and very different, leg of our Journey. After arrival, we will travel by bus to the Origins Centre of the University of the Witwatersrand.

The area around Johannesburg, and Southern Africa in general, is where the most, and most complete, examples of early hominids have been found and studied. It is clear that Southern Africa has been the home to humanity over the millions of years from our first emergence. Wits University - as it is known - is one of the world’s leading institutions in the area of paleontology and paleo-anthropology having been lead by some outstanding personalities in the field for over three quarters of a century.

The Origins Centre has only recently been established to familiarise we modern humans with who we are, and our becoming over those millions of years. We will be given talks on the path taken by hominids to reach modern man, as well as introduced to the origin and evolution of art and culture in Africa, with examples of the art and music of the San people.

This visit will reinforce the reality of the essential ‘oneness’ of all humans and prepare us for what we will see the next day of what happens when we forget that. (B)

Sunday 10th February

After a short tour of the city of Johannesburg tracing its evolution. in the space of just seventy years, from a mining camp to the leading city on the continent, we will visit the Apartheid Museum. In this museum you will see the consequences of following a mistaken social and political ideology, and how this nation managed to free itself from the shackles of those consequences, while remaining free from vengeance and retribution.

We will then drive to Soweto (South Western Townships) Johannesburg’s twin city – the largest African city on the continent. We will lunch at a traditional Shebeen – a word borrowed from the Irish to describe an illegal drinking establishment. The Shebeens were originally illegal, bypassing the laws against the sale of alcohol to Blacks through other than ‘official’ outlets, and which developed into sophisticated restaurants and centres of social activity in the township.

We will visit and walk in the only street in the world where two winners of the Nobel peace prize, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and ex President Nelson Mandela lived virtually side-by-side. In doing so you are very likely to experience first hand the warmth and in friendliness of the people of Soweto. (B,L)

Monday 11th February to Friday 15th February

We will set out on the culminating phase of our Journey – meeting our fellow African inhabitants of Earth in their own environment. During this phase, the many historic and archaelogical sites, rock art and stone tools, will serve as a reminder of how long mankind has been part of this landscape.

To make this phase as complete an experience as possible, we are going to vist two very different areas. For the first, we will cross the Limpopo river into Botswana, to the Mashatu game reserve. Here, in one of the oldest landscapes on Earth, you will be able to see a great variety of the wildlife for which Africa is famous. Mashatu is the home of no less than seven of Africa's giants: the African elephant, the lion, giraffe, the baobab tree, the eland, the ostrich, and the kori bustard. Along the river courses, huge Mashatu trees provide shade for eland, impala, wildebeest, giraffe and zebra, whilst at night, the bat-eared fox, African wildcat and the magnificent leopard search for prey.Some 366 species of birds may be seen.

From Mashatu we will recross into South Africa and travel paralell to the Limpopo, the northern border of South Africa, to Pafuri at the northern end of the the Kruger National Park

The Kruger National Park, had its origins in the establishment by President Kruger, the last President of the old Transvaal Republic, in 1897, of a Game Reserve in the east of his country, making it, along with Yellowstone, one of the oldest national parks in the world. The park of today encompasses an area of nearly 760 000 square miles, and the actual area available for wild life to roam freely, has been significantly increased by the removal of fences between the park itself and the private game reserves that were established along its western border.

As of now, there is a project underway, to vastly increase the area avaiable for wildlife, sufficient to allow animals like the elephant to regain their historic migration patterns, by the formation of a vast Transfrontier Park incorporating adjoining game conservation areas in South Africa, Mozambique, Zimbabwe and Botswana.

We will be tavelling to an area known as Pafuri, which is at the epicentre of the Transfrontier park, being at the point where South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe meet.

The Pafuri area is recognised as being a unique ecological and beautiful region: the meeting point of a multitude of habitats, and thus a region of incredibly rich bio-diversity. It is by far the most diverse area within the Kruger Park with 75% of its animal, reptile and tree species being found within only 1% of the total expanse of the park.

The region is also historically important. There is evidence that it has been inhabited by humans from as far back as 1.7 million years ago. These early humans – probably homo erectus, have left us, particularly on hill tops from where they used to watch game, hundreds of thousands of stone tools. One can also see signs through their stone art, of more recent inhabitants of the area, including those who were part of the civilisation that built Great Zimbabwe and Mapungupwe, in the thirteenth century.

In the more recent past, it was a critical military area during the time that there was an undeclared war between South Africa and its neighbours, and thus, for many years, it could not be visited. In 1969, the local inhabitants, the Makuleke people, were moved out by the government, into an area outside the Kruger Park. Then, in a landmark restitution ruling in 1997, the area was returned to them. In a far sighted decision, they decided to leave their land within the Kruger National Park, and to allow it to be co-managed as a wilderness concession, from which they would benefit both financially, and through skills transfer.

Pafuri is an area seldom seen by visitors, and certainly tour groups, and the diversity of experience available makes it an area well worth taking the time to get to as part of this unique and Magical Journey.

During your stay in these two parks, you will enjoy comfortable lodgings, good food and be taken on game drives and, for those who wish, walks on foot accompanied by Game Rangers who will introduce you to aspects of the wild that you could never meet and experience in a vehicle. You will also have the opportunity to combine game walks with visits to ancient sites. While one cannot orchestrate a true wildlife experience, we are sure that your time in these two parks will be remembered and thought of for years to come. (BLD)

Saturday 16th & Sunday 17th February.

After our last Game outing in the morning we will drive to Magoebas Kloof a mountain resort overlooking the picturesque valley of Modjadji the rain queen, a legendary matriarch of Southern African society. For those who read the books of H Rider Haggard when they were younger, this valley and the legend of the Rain Queen, was the inspiration for his book ‘She’.

Monday 18th & 19th February

Romantics and treasure seekers of times past, have long dreamed of finding the mythical sources of the treasure of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, as well as legends of the great Kingdom of Prester John, somewhere in the ‘Dark Continent’. As Southern Africa opened up to European, American and Australian exploration, espescially after the ‘gold rushes’ of the later 1800s, prospectors, with their hammers and pans, spread over the mountains and streams of South Africa. One of the first places that a find was made was in Pilgrims Rest. The original, and very pictureque, mining town that resulted, has been preserved as a national monument. It is set in one of the most scenic areas of South Africa. We will spend the next day in the area, to take advantage of the artistic and photographic opportunities.

We will stay in the original mining town hotel. (B)

Wednesday 20th February

We will make our way back to Johannesburg to prepare for your departure home, the following day and to provide an opportunity to do some last minute shopping. (B)

Thursday 21st February
Departure for home.

As you leave the ‘City of Gold’, we will be hoping that your visit will have enabled you to take with you many images and memories, and much inspiration that will enrich your future artistic life. But we also hope that you will leave with new perspectives, and a faith in the resilience of the human spirit, which, with compassion and tolerance, can produce a better world for all of its inhabitants, human and other. Most of all we will be hoping that you will be left with a desire to return to our shores.

COSTS

Land Costs for Journey: CDN$5750
Single Supplement: CAN$ 950

Land cost Includes:
All accommodation includes quality hotels and lodges
All meals in the game reserves with vegetarian options
Other meals as indicated in itinerary
All transfers and land transport.
All entrance fees, game drives, tours and guided walks/hikes as per itinerary.

Does not include:
International Airfare to Cape Town returning via Johannesburg
Gratuities
Travel insurance and airport taxes.
Items of a personal nature & optional activities not included in the itinerary.
Drinks, and meals not indicated in the itinerary.

Please note that this itinerary is for guidance, and while every attempt will be made to abide by it, changes may become necessary due to factors outside our control, or to improve on the content, or make adjustments in the interests of the participants.

If this Painting Travel Adventure piques your interest in any way and you want to learn more, feel free to contact me by phone (905)-781-3834 or by email: jill@jillsegal.com

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