Travel With a Purpose, Western Gateway (2026)

19/08/2023

Yes, at the London Royal Docks. One of several open water locations managed by Love Open Water London Royal Docks. I was thinking, while doing the 600m loop (there’s 400m and 200m options too), that for a city that caters to swimmers, London, with all its options (including the incredible array of lidos like Charlton and Tootingbec), is hard to beat.

22/07/2023

There are probably as many crazy stories about buildings and their residents in New York as there are buildings, or even as residents. The lady who died in poverty despite her millions. The out-of-work man who lived in a millionaire’s apartment thanks to a sweetheart rental deal decades earlier (and much to the chagrin of his rich neighbors.) The famous Collier brothers who died in the house where they had so much stuff, it was hard to find their bodies after no one had heard from them in days (or was it weeks?). Indeed, piles of newspaper had collapsed on the one (or so I remember). I even wrote my own tale of a crazy building, my own, in Flat/White. But cycling through Tribeca today, possibly the most expensive real estate in Manhattan, I thought of one of the weirder stories that I know is true, for many of the other stories have gained many twists and turns over the years to make them juicier, but also falser. The couple I met lived in a massive apartment with incredibly high ceilings, vast rooms and their own elevator for the entire floor. It’s weird, they told me. , and they told me how they got the place. Back in the days when Tribeca wasn’t Tribeca but a sh****le not worth naming downtown near the Holland Tunnel, they lived in what was a massive apartment, but the building was ramshackled, the area bad, the crime close. So close, in fact, that one morning a man was found shot in a car outside the building. The man also happened to own the building, and his distraught widow, not knowing what to do with it, was approached by some fast-thinking residents, who offered to buy it from her. They got the building for almost nothing, and then put a fortune into it, private elevators and such. That building might be one of the two in the pictures here, but also maybe not. They are in the same area as the building I saw, but it’s been a long time since I visited the apartment, which has now been surrounded by countless new structures in this epicenter of wealth. As a postscript, I’m not sure they ever found out who killed the man or why. But the rest of the story is as true as you’ll get in this real estate madhouse.

15/07/2023

I often wonder why we travelers click our cameras when we do. Some things, subjects, angles, people, buildings, light just capture our attention in that split second. (What we do with them aterwards is another question.) I have also noticed that my inclination to take a photo (and lots of them) is directly proportional to the freshness of the place. When I cycled down the Seine and Canal du Midi last year, it felt like I was stopping to frame a picture as often as I was cycling through the gorgeous countryside. Every turn I took opened up a vista to stop for.

It’s a strange thing these photos and what inspires us to take them. I live in Cape Town, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, but at some point in the last year or two … no photographs. I try force myself to take a few, but that juice to do so just isn’t there. The place isn’t changing, I realise, I am. It happens everywhere - the familiar becomes unremarkable. Whenever people tell me how exciting they find New York, I know it’s a statement come in the full flush of a two-week visit. Try two months, I want to tell them, or two years, two decades!

But go away for four years, like I did, and things suddenly seem if not fresh again, then fresher. The camera is out, the eye nicely attentive. Wandering around Brooklyn, the slower side of New York, the last 24 hours, I can feel that curiosity aroused again. And these pictures are what triggered my finger to snap. Don’t ask me why. Ted Botha

13/10/2019

A rainy day in Sussex and Kent, but not rainy enough to deter walking along lush country lanes and visiting Rye, once home of Henry James for 20 years, his home of Lamb House part of the National Trust, and the cozy warm Mermaid Inn. Nary a fast food chain store in sight, what’s it about English towns like this that make them not so touristy even when there’s tourists everywhere?

20/09/2019

To put it mildly, Spain is a bit crazy. In a good way, I guess. Right now I’m sitting in Barcelona’s Sants railway station waiting to buy my ticket across the border to France. Tickets are sold in various ways. There’s a line for today tickets and another for other day tickets. A third line for information about the train you need, and once you have that info, you have to go back to the other day line only to find out that you have to get a numbered ticket from a machine to get back in line to actually buy the ticket. Just as you’re approaching the machine an old man rushes in front of you to get his number first because he knows all about the today, other day and information lines. It’s like the cyclists. They know the rules of the road. There aren’t actually any to speak of. If there are, Barcelonans break them - to be honest, we all do, in whatever country I’ve been in - and they jump red lights often. But here, add to that unpredictability bike lanes that seem random, switching sides of the road, sometimes running together, sometimes sort, and sometimes in the middle of the road. And then there are the many, many, many crossings shaped like octagons that you have to make your way through, not entirely sure there’s a traffic light and not entirely sure if cars are coming (such is the poor visibility at said octagons). And then a few bikes cut in front of you. And many electric scooters, most of which are going faster than seems possible for two wheels. Besides that, though, I can’t say anything about Barcelona that hasn’t been said before, Guell Park and Sagrada Familia and wide boulevards and so many streetside cafes and people at them and food food food and a tourist invasion along Las Ramblas and around Placa Catalunya, where it’s almost possible to hear the kaching of tourist dollars. It’s crazy chaotic alright, but in a very very good way.

12/01/2019

Every day, 365 days a year, a clutch of people with backpacks that are perhaps a bit too heavy the first day set off for one of the most incredibly beautiful hikes in the world. To say 'incredibly beautiful' is actually selling it short. You have to see it to appreciate just how beautiful it is. On the first of five days, not a long one to start off with, just over 4 km, they get a taste of what lies ahead, indigenous forests, rocky beaches, waterfalls, river crossings, stretches of blue ocean that keep changing colour and temperament. Ahead lie winding paths, traverses, dropaway cliffs, coves and bays, spectacular lookout points, and many, many, many climbs and descents. Plus more drop-dead gorgeous views than you can shake a walking stick at. For fifty years last year, the Otter Trail, South Africa's first multiday hiking trail, has been quietly offering 12 lucky people daily this piece of Eden on earth. So popular has it become that booking is required a good year before you go. I was lucky enough to chance upon a couple who had booked out the trail for them and 10 others. Perhaps a bit gauchely I asked them to let me know if a spot went open in their group. A week later, it did. And on January 1, a good way to start any new year, we set off from the park gate entrance at Storms River. I had heard from people who had done the hike - that would be 290,000 by now, a not an insubstantial number - that it was not a difficult hike. I consider myself pretty fit and had done a couple of practise runs just to get the hiking juices flowing, but it certainly wasn't a walk in the park. The thighs, the feet, the back, they feel it. The payoff, though, is indescribable. And certainly it's the best value for money that R1300 (that's $100, you outsiders who are interested) will buy you - five days and four nights in, yes, Eden. South African National Parks has done a terrific job of keeping the Otter - named after the elusive Cape Clawless Otter, though we did spy Knysna Loeries, dolphin, genets, bushbuck, and the remains of a buck that might have been taken by a cat - in great condition, the paths well marked and maintained, the overnight huts (in stupendous locations) clean, the area patrolled. By the time you have done the momentous crossing of the Blaaukrans River (you hear lots about the Blaaukrans crossing before you get there, for it can be a challenge getting your backpack across dry, although, after some heavy rains, our Blaaukrans turned out to be the uncrossable Elandsbos River two days earlier), another day lies in front of you until the descent onto the long stretch of sandy beach at Natures Valley. Somewhere along the way, as we stopped to catch our breaths and have another of countless snacks (you eat a lot!), someone said something that I think we were all thinking but often forget, "We live here." @ Otter Trail

01/06/2017

A brilliant way to see how Johannesburg downtown is changing. Buildings being renovated, companies moving back in again, one of the best coffee shops in the city, people going to restaurants there, and the Past Experiences graffiti tour has been part of the rebirth.

26/05/2017

Inhaca Island, 32 km off Maputo, Mozambique, is bigger than Mahe, the main island and capital of the Seychelles, and quite a few Caribbean islands, 28 km by 18 km, but only has 5000 people and, given its size and beauty, not that many visitors. I was pretty blown away by the place, some rolling hills, a jungle feel in places, mangrove swamps, coral reefs, marine reserve, and a small town with a Barclays bank. In between, industrious women - why is it always just women in many African countries? - grow crops, each with a single hoe, nothing more. The meager houses in between, beneath copious coconut palms (each of which apparently has a known owner), are neatly laid out, some with (I couldn't believe it) patches of lawn outside reed huts, hedges, and nary a piece of garbage to be seen. King Inhaca - yes, there is apparently one - died recently at the grand old age of 103, leaving behind more than a dozen wives. A sage old man he was, it is said. A new young king is in the wings. Across the way from Inhaca, we could see Portuguese Island, which, despite being a World Heritage Site, apparently gets taken over by a cruise company called MSC every so often, which brings huge boatloads of partiers from, I think, Durban, who pretty much trash the beach. How they got permission to not only land there but also build there is a mystery to locals. (Paid off a corrupt politician maybe?) A vast colony of turtles that used to live there are no more. So all good news comes with some bad.

24/05/2017

I'm traveling through the south of Mozambique, an under-the-radar region, until now. Most travelers to the country head to the two archipelagos, Bazaruto in the center and the Querimbas in the far north. It's a1500-mile coast, so that's far! The south contains a recently created marine reserve that stretches from the capital Maputo to join the South African reserve of iSimangaliso. Along this spectacular coastline, the photos below will give you a small idea of what you can find.

09/12/2016

There's nothing like watching the train line stretch forever behind you as the country unfolds around you. Open caboose cars rock! On the Shongololo Express between Cape Town and Johannesburg.

08/12/2016

The feted Rovos Rail in South Africa has taken over Shongololo Express to create an old-world long-distance train ride similar to Rovos but that doesn't have all the trimmings and costs less. Trips run from two days to two weeks up to the Victoria Falls and into deep Namibia.

Travel With a Purpose

19/08/2023

22/07/2023

15/07/2023

13/10/2019

20/09/2019

12/01/2019

01/06/2017

26/05/2017

24/05/2017

09/12/2016

08/12/2016

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