In whats becoming an annual pilgramage for Michelle & I, we hit Franschoek last weekend for the Franschhoek Literary Festival. Mich was more serious about the talks than me, but Franschoek is an awesome destination regardless of the excuse. Especially in Autumn!

La Motte Wine Estate

Autumn in Franschoek
We worked out that for the past 12 years we’ve been living in Cape Town, the place we have gone away to most is Franschoek. Luckily, for the past few trips, we have found a stunning little log cabin to stay in at an awesome spot called Otter’s Bend Lodge.

Otter’s Bend Log Cabin
At the top of Franschoek Pass is the Mont Rochelle Nature Reserve in which we’ve done many cool day hikes.

View from Mont Rochelle

The Franschhoek Valley

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Tagged as:
photoEssay,
Travel
Tagged as:
photoEssay •
Travel
The trip so far:
Part 1
Part 2

Augrabies in HDR
We had no fixed plans or itinerary (which we’re fast learning is the best way to travel) so we decided on the way home from Kgalagadi to stop over at Augrabies Falls National Park as it was only 28km off the N14. I had only heard mediocre reports about Augrabies, but after visiting all I can say is that it is a landscape photographer’s Mecca!


Quiver Trees

More Augrabies HDR

Augrabies Falls
From a photographic point of view Augrabies was very HDR friendly. HDR – which stands for High Dynamic Range photography – involves taking 3 pics of each scene – 1 overexposed, 1 underexposed and 1 normal, and then sandwiching them in the post-processing. It is a new technique for me which I totally love and will be blogging about why I love it soon.
On the final leg home we stopped at another quirky little coffee shop cross succulent nursery just north of van Rhynsdorp. These obscure little places are so much more interesting to stop at than the Ultra City plastic. Highly recommended.

View from Coffee Shop
And a final view of the Clan William Dam on the last day of the journey:

Clan William Dam
And now back to the boring old task of paying the bills. I’m setting my countdown timer to the next trip right now.
Tagged as:
photoEssay,
Travel
Tagged as:
photoEssay •
Travel