An unlikely experience in a bush full of hearts

This time round for the WordPress photo challenge we are urged to show: An object or person in an unlikely place, an unpredictable experience, a serendipitous accident: we want the unexpected.

A compilation of photos I took just after 12 pm on 1 January 2018 while witnessing a marvelous fireworks show. The children were exhilarated with the show (almost as much as me having successfully captured it 🙂 )

The photos I am posting were taken during an unexpected holiday as we did not book it. Traditionally these very popular sites are booked a year in advance and people tend to book the same site again and again as they get to know the people around them. To illustrate: despite my appearance I have 2 stunning teenage daughters and therefore a gazillion guys offered to help us set up camp. They are going to be disappointed as we are not camping there again this year…

Friends of ours booked a campsite for friends of their’s from Gauteng as a gift. But these friends had car trouble and couldn’t travel the 1 300km to Hartenbos. With the site being vacant, they offered us the camping site as well as a caravan. This extension of the holiday was certainly unexpected and we enjoyed it a lot.

Hartenbos in the Southern Cape, South Africa, is a quiet sea-side town for most of the year. But as it is one of the most sought after holiday destinations in South Africa (for South Africans) it has a great number of campsites and other holiday accommodation. The town transforms during its peak seasons with the “highest” of the peaks being the period after Christmas to early January being summer in the southern hemisphere.

Personally I prefer holiday destinations with real peaks  (see I’ll rather be rathering which was also part of this holiday), i.e. mountains, but I must admit I enjoyed the camping and atmosphere a lot as it was a hit with my teenage daughters and happy children rubs off on their parents and vice versa. Hartenbos translated means heart and bush. While it does not offer much bush/woods/mountains it does have have a good impact on the heart. With the reality of safety concerns in South Africa, Hartenbos is one of the few remaining places you can walk at any hour to your heart’s content while being safe. And for this reason I focus on few night-scapes.

This is a home of a local resident and certainly contributes to the festive atmosphere

This cave was excavated by waves of yesteryear and I took the photo at 1:30 am. Out of sight is a lighthouse but it’s beams are visible.

The lighthouse itself, trying to tell ships that although the cave was excavated, it is in the ship’s interest not to try and excavate it further!

The Riviera Hotel’s lights reflecting on the Hartenbos lagoon. I Took the photo from a train bridge and approximately 40 years ago I caught my first (and last) fish from the river bank just behind me – I could write a blog about that !!

VIPs we are, we even got complimentary tickets to a music show. Uhm, maybe the complimentary tickets have something to do with the campsite being close to the Hartenbos open air amfi-theater where the concert was held and the lens does not need a ticket. This specific singer is Elvis Blue. No he is not a cheap Elvis impersonator. He was a music teacher and one of the kids he taught, died of AIDS when he was 11 (in other words his mother was HIV positive at his birth). This boy’s name was Elvis Blue and he wanted to be a star. In honour of him Jan Hoogendyk’s stage name became Elvis Blue.