Wild Coast lighthouses - Cape Morgan Lighthouse

The Wild Coast isn't called the Wild Coast for nothing.  It may be paradise but it can get rough out there if it wants.  So with that in mind, it's nogal strange that there are only three lighthouses (some websites say four but I'm not sure which the 4th one is) along this whole piece of coastline, Cape Morgan in the South, M'bashe roughly in the middle and Cape Hermes at Port St Johns in the North.  Out of the three only Cape Hermes is what I would call a traditional lighthouse. One built of brick and mortar.  The other two are both lights sitting on top of lattice steel towers.  Crossing back over the Kei Pont from Trennery's Hotel recently I decided to make a quick detour and have a look at the Cape Morgan Lighthouse.

A roughly three-kilometer drive along a narrow dirt road took me up to the 12-meter high Cape Morgan Lighthouse built in 1964.  The light is located in the Cape Morgan Nature Reserve and emits two white flashes every 10 seconds with a range of 24 sea miles.

The reserve saw Titanium mining take place here in the 1950's and if you follow the path down to the coast from the lighthouse you will see the remains of the mine's old seawater pump station.  The 4-day / 3-night Strandloper Trail also starts at the new Eco Centre in the reserve and covers a distance of 57 kilometers to Gonubie in East London.

Driving away I was happy to tick off another light on my list of South African lighthouses.  We seem to take them for granted seeing them along the coastline yet don't always realise how important a role they have played over the years and still do. Flash on.

STL DPB On The Road - The Sad Mariachi

There are many restaurants in Tamarindo near the beach. On all of our visits we found mariachi bands going from one to another, playing a few Mexican songs and asking for tips. It's optional but I always give them something. The music is pretty good and it seems like a hard way to make a living.

As a rule, the performers are pretty cheerful. However, the affect of this accordionist told me that something was weighing him down. He never smiled, but he still played well.       

Lizared And Leftovers

I need to run through some more images from Costa Rica until there is an opportunity to shoot new material back here. (There is something on  tomorrow.) Going back over the files, I found this. For some reason it got past me on my first review. This was taken during a night walk in the Monteverde cloud forest with a superb local guide. How he finds these little critters in the dark, even with a flashlight, is beyond me.   

A 21st C Purim Spiel?!

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Today is the happy holiday Purim!
It's also our monthly CDP Theme Day and City Daily Photo bloggers are busy interpreting the idea "play."
I'm going to try to link the two by using PLAY as a noun.

Purim Spiel is the Yiddish term for the boisterous plays, sometimes even mini-musicals, that are thought up and put on every Purim.
So Spiel, pronounced shpeel, means a play and in Europe Jews have been keeping this Purim custom for centuries.

In Meitar this afternoon the Scouts put on a whole carnival. (More about that later.)
On stage was Tooti the Superhero.
Instead of  Esther saving her people from wicked Haman, we had Tooti, a woman with super powers, saving humanity from some kind of alien invasion (or something ...).

Here's a tiny video so you can hear as well as see our modern little Purim Spiel:

Happy Purim!
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City Dailly Photo Theme Day - Play

I managed to come with something from Costa Rica for CDP theme day. This was taken at just about the same place as the photo in yesterday's post.