Guest post by Tracy Wynter.
There are some things that money simply can’t buy: the ticking of your vehicle’s engine right after you’ve switched it off after reaching your holiday destination, just before you start unpacking, in that happy moment knowing that you’ve finally arrived; the deafening silence of a Karoo afternoon, holding its breath as the clouds gather, teasing with the promise of rain; the deliciously grassy fragrance of a horse’s breath, tickling your nose as your lean your head against its face; the reflection of the flickering fire on a half empty glass, when everyone is fed, tummies are full and all the problems of the world have been solved around that very fire ….
This is one of those moments. A moment when all is still, save the occasional call of an unidentified drab little bird, and the persistent buzzing of a hopeful fly. The Tankwa Karoo provokes reflection and introspection – this is not a place for the restless and easily bored, those who need to keep moving and ticking boxes in order to have their holiday dreams fulfilled. It may lack the drama and flamboyance of the Tsitsikamma, the showiness and overabundance of Addo and the gentleness of the grassy plains of Cradock. This is a place that somehow seems a little reluctant to share its magic; until you’re still, that is, and start to appreciate it for its spartan, rugged beauty.
One year ago, we published an open letter to the universe, putting our travel dreams out there in the hope that they would morph from happy imaginings into something a bit more tangible.
According to Rhonda Byrne, The Great Secret of Life is the law of attraction. The law of attraction says like attracts like, so when you think a thought, you are also attracting like thoughts to you. Thoughts are magnetic, and thoughts have a frequency. As you think thoughts, they are sent out into the Universe, and they magnetically attract all like things that are on the same frequency. Everything sent out returns to the source – you.
This year, we put Rhonda’s theory to the test and the Universe delivered tenfold. Perhaps not always in the exact form we had imagined, but pretty darn close. So, on a scale of 1 to 17, how did we do?
If you were to tell me that you could find a tourist destination without a single photo on the internet, I would call you crazy. In this digital age of oversharing on social media any place travel worthy has been facebooked, instagrammed and tweeted to death, in addition to being marketed on its website and myriad accommodation booking sites. Everywhere can be found on Google’s image search. At least that’s what I believed until I went on a cyber mission to locate somewhere nice to stay around Vanderkloof Dam in the Northern Cape.
