Over the first weekend of October, the Heritage Portal of Johannesburg along with participating residents of Upper Houghton organized an event to showcase 9 heritage gardens in both private homes as well as St John’s College and the King Edward VII School. With spring well underway, this was a great chance to see some amazing places normally inaccessible by the general public.
Villa at 36 St Patrick Road
I have written before about some of the nature reserves we have visited right here in Joburg such as the Lonehill Nature Reserve and the Melville Koppies. There is another one that we have been meaning to visit for quite some time and we finally did so at the end of September.
Mankwe Dam
Pilanesberg National Park is a Big 5 reserve about 2 hours north of Johannesburg. This is a great park to visit if you are in the Joburg area and maybe don’t have enough time to get over to Kruger. In the past year, we have made a couple day trips as well as a weekend camping trip to Pilanesberg. Sightings haven’t been all that great for us (the cats have eluded us completely on all trips) but of course it is always the luck of the draw when it comes to wildlife. We are always happy to just be out on safari and to see whatever we have the chance to spot so our time in the park has always been enjoyed.
A couple of weekends ago we attended the Africa Aerospace and Defence Show or AAD 2014. The show was held at Waterkloof Air Force Base near Centurion from September 20-21 2014 and while we were initially quite noncommittal about attending this event (we feared huge crowds, too hot etc) we had a fantastic day and we were both so glad that we went, even if we did end up a bit sunburned.
AAD 2014
Under an African Sun 