René Seifert - Entrepreneur & Global Citizen

Just finished to upload the set of pictures to Flickr from my memorable holiday in South Africa. It was mainly two weeks in Cape Town, with some daily excursions. Although the country is much much bigger than the Cape Region, there is no chance for getting bored in that time. There is so much to do and so much to see and so much to eat ;-) A lot of people had “warned” me what a phantastic country it would be and I have to admit that I could start living there tomorrow. Here a selection of some of my favourite pictures:

Here the approach on Cape Town International Airport with a hired Cessna 72 RG (including flight instructor, as my British pilot license is not automatically valid in South Africa). We are in the final approach to the 3.6 km long Runway 19. Note the Jumbo Jet from British Airway at the holding point taking off shortly after us. (Immediately after us another Boing 747 had been landing before, though.)

Here an overfly of the Cape of Good Hope looking north and having litterally whole Africa in front of us.

One thing that makes Cape Town so fascinating is certainly the Tabe Mountain with its peak at 1086 meters which cuts through the city from north to south. In which other city of the world can you go for a mountain tour in the morning and lie on the beach for lunch? What makes the mountain also so amazing is its impact on rapid climatic changes, like here to see the clouds. Often they cover exactly the horizontal plane of the mountain, then it is called the “table cloth”.

A very worthwhile excursion went to the Aquila Game Resort, approximately a 2 hours drive from Cape Town, with the Big 5 animals, here a nice view on the “model of the safaris”, a giraffe:

And this, dear children readers, is a good example how NOT to do it. That’s me after getting the sunburn of my life as the result of being negligent of sunscreen. Hence, you look like a reptile during its moult. One could also name it simply “idiot” …

What make South Africa so fascinating? It is the mix of the best what life has to offer: A functioning infrastructure, straightforward and reliable people, in their way however friendly and fun-loving with a very harmonic relationship to nature, a phantastic landscape, plenty of space and last but to least, a very very positive attitude about the future. And all that in spite of the huge problems like crime or the HIV-pandemic. But from the heart and their souls the people seem to believe that leaving the madness of the apartheid-system behind them, they are geared towards a better tomorrow. And that makes it a beautiful environment to live in.