Morocco

The Algarve, Portugal

Cornwall

South Africa

"It's like a playground out there!!" With a grin as wide as the horizon, my surf-mad partner, Dale, comes bounding up the beach. Exhausted yet energized and emotionally charged, it is his third surf session of the day, and Mossel Bay, South Africa is living up to all expectations.

The 12-hour flight and excruciating entertainment of South African airways does nothing to dampen our excitement. I will soon inhale the air in Africa, fling my arms around precious family, and re-visit our beloved beach shack. With a car, a surfboard and wettie, cameras and laptop, we will take a road trip along the famous Garden Route from Port Elizabeth to Cape Town, come up close to lions and stand at the tip of the African continent. For me, this month long trip is to be a photographer’s dream. Sitting next to me, Dale is no-doubt day dreaming about the waves - of riding 1000 meters down the beach at Jeffries bay, hurtling down the 8 ft face of the swell at Mossel Bay and exploring the countless breaks in Cape Town.

When we land in Port Elizabeth, "the windy city", it is bustling with improvements ahead of the 2010 World Cup Soccer games. Anxious to get to the beach, we pile in the 4x4 with my cousins and drive the short distance out of town to Bushy Park. At the shack, built by my grandfather 50 years ago with packing boxes and corrugated iron sidings, there is limited electricity and a long-drop convenience out back! Life there is deliciously basic. Ostriches meet us as we turn off the main road and onto the sandy track. Ahhh… It is then that the smell hits me. Fynbos - Afrikaans for “fine bush” - is that sweet and musty mix of coastal thicket and semi-desert grasslands, hardy enough to withstand the dry summer and raging coastal winds - a brilliant green expanse of indigenous wilderness, lush, pungent and sun-burnt, it is everywhere you go in the western cape and to me it is the smell of Africa.

After wildly excited greetings - more cousins, friends, kids - we arm ourselves with cold Castle lager and saunter down to the beach. “Those waves are SO rideable!” Dale is indignant that he has been persuaded to leave his board in town. “No-one surfs at the shack” I remind him. It’s too rocky, inconsistent, no paddle-outs, a shark presence – quite dangerous. “But I could make history as the first American to surf at the shack!” “You would also BE history!” 10-year old Sebastian pipes up.

Quickly relaxing into the beauty of our surroundings, we explore miles of small coves and beaches, swim in rock-pools, laugh at the sound of crickets competing with the waves, see whales in the distance, and fall quiet watching the sunset silhouette the rocks against the sky. Evening braais (barbecues) are boisterous with happy family all around. Whole chickens barbecued with cans of beer in their cavities, beer bread rolls, a side of lamb, boerewors sausage, gem squashes, carrot and mint salads, prawn stuffed avocados, we eat the New Year in.

A swell is on it’s way to Mossel Bay, and a few days later we are hurtling down the N2 in Auntie Jeno’s loaned red Vauxhall, surfboard slung inside. Mossel Bay, discovered by Bartholomeu Diaz in 1488, is a quaint town 150 miles from the Cape of Good Hope and said to have the second mildest all year climate in the world (after Hawaii). Cousin Johnnie puts us up in relative luxury in an old fisherman’s cottage on the Point, right opposite the two breaks in town, Outer and Inner Pools. For Dale, it is five days of heaven: three surf sessions a day with no particular duties in between. Just “big boy” breakfasts, lunch, strolls around town, sundowners watching the pods of dolphins from our deck, and various inventive meals served up with tenderness and graciousness by my cousins. His patience has paid off.

"There will always be another wave". Sean Thomson, South Africa's most famous surfer sums up the ideal surfer outlook on life in his book "Twelve Simple Lessons for Riding through Life". Patience is only one thing learnt in the waves that translates to every day life. He talks of respect for the power of the ocean, taking time to consider the wave and be aware of our surroundings, of seizing the right opportunity, sharing one's knowledge and looking out for others, promoting courtesy, paddling back out after painful poundings, passing on the passion, that "stoke" that all surfers feel and above all trusting our instincts to live life fully in the present.

There is an African philosophy – Ubuntu – that believes we affirm our humanity when we acknowledge that of others. The next day, exploring the townships outside Port Elizabeth, including the Red Location Museum dedicated to Nelson Mandela, gives us harrowing insight into the vast racial, religious, educational and socio-economic differences so obvious in South African society. In the past I had seen first hand how Mandela’s cherished “ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony” challenged racial apartheid opportunities”. For Dale though, his first exposure to the ravages of this blistering regime, is deeply moving. We are distracted from the obvious poverty of present day life today by the warmth and friendliness of the people we meet, who, like Mandela, seem unburdened by resentment and bitterness and rarely answer racism with racism. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the South African Nobel Laureate, says, “A person with Ubuntu is welcoming, hospitable, warm and generous, willing to share… “ and support one another. It is with these thoughts, and the connections we feel between Ubuntu and the surfing philosophy of patience, respect, tolerance, compassion and sense of belonging to a community, we say goodbye to our beloved family and head towards Jeffries Bay.

J-Bay, once a quiet fishing village with a crowd of hippie surfers, now fast becoming a large urban sprawl, boasts one of the best right hand point breaks in the world, and is, every year, host to the wildly popular Billabong Pro surfing competition at Supertubes. The town feels unremarkable to me, marred by careless architecture in the race to house the influx of people. But the waves are mesmerizing: the furious pitching lip of the wave as it collides with the calm water below, sending up massive sheets of water to form the ultimate goal – the tube , which then echoes loudly as they crash into the white water. I join the crowd at the benches, everyone happily agitated by the arrival of this great swell with offshore winds, and look out over these legendary breaks - Boneyards, Impossibles, the Tubes, Albatross and others. Though my lens, exploding with “sparkle factor” from the backlit spray, I watch Dale live out a lifetime dream.

Every morning I watch Dale hopping around in a happy struggle with his wetsuit, waxing his board in a hasty circular motion, a huge smile of excited anticipation. He scoops up his board, and with a customary leap in the air and a click of his heels, flies off down the beach. But before launching himself into the frigid water, he always stands still and silent, feeling the power of the wind and the spray flying off the water, considering his options, and then with care and experience picks his way over the rocks to find the waves. He paddles out to the line up, and as he takes off on a wave, sailing across a thin slice of water, it strikes me: what a conscious choice he is making to pursue a passion, and what exhilarating satisfaction he experiences from pushing the boundaries in this way. Waves, like life, can pound you down, but a surfer’s commitment is his backbone. It keeps him strong and steady as he plows back into position undaunted. I notice how Dale is often engulfed by emotions when he reflects upon the blessings that come his way. He knows how to fully live in the moment, aware of what gives each day meaning: a familial show of affection, a chance encounter with a stranger, a great wine, the sun on his face. I love that he can sing and dance with abandon. These are great gifts.

A few days and hundred miles later, I am framing up a teeth-baring lion in my (thankfully) long lens. We’ve traveled North to Addo Elephant park, a perfect daytrip from PE that is home to one of the densest African elephant populations on earth and boasts the big 7 (elephant, rhino, lion, buffalo, leopard, southern right whale and great white shark). On an adventurous self-drive we encounter elephants chomping down trees, buffalo slouching through the bushes, hyenas crunching the bones of a dead antelope, howling black-backed jackals, and delightful warthogs foraging like myopic pigs. But it is at the nearby and more exclusive Kariega Game Reserve that Dale has his first up-close experience with a pride of lions. These truly heart-stopping animals walk past us just feet away, with nonchalance and a certain disdain but with utter confidence. The thrill lasts well into the evening when, with the help of fine food and South African wines, we cement the sweet connections made earlier with our friendly safari companions.

Once again, we load the car with sticks of biltong (jerky) and bags of rusks (sweet stale bread) and fly down the Garden Route - towards Cape Town, our final destination. Dale surfs and makes friends at St Francis Bay of “Endless Summer” fame – no longer the dunes and fisherman’s cottages depicted in this 60s surf movie, but an affluent and manicured area. We pop in at Victoria Bay, a sweet seaside community with some easy point breaks and quaint bed and breakfasts, at Stillbaai – a very Afrikaans town, sprawling, and with a slightly disconcerting quietness – and then head away from the coast to the colonial town of Swellendam where we wander around the stunning Cape Dutch architectural monuments and have a lunch of crocodile burgers.

Cape Town… “If we want to save anything, we first need to truly appreciate it” is the slogan for the New Seven Wonders of the World. Nestling at the foot of Table Mountain ( it’s included in the final 28 world wonders, beating Mount Everest and Mount Fiji! ), to me there is no more stunning city in the world. Awe-inspiring natural beauty hits you everywhere you turn. To drive the nine spectacular curvaceous kilometers along Chapman’s Peak Drive high up in the rocky cliffs over looking towns that tumble into the Atlantic, is a life-changing experience. The surrounding wine-lands engage you with yet more extraordinary scenery, history, elegant architecture, delicious wine tastings and more challenging out-door activities like hiking and horse-riding. We explore funky antique shops and eat fish and chips in Kalk Bay, are humbled by the tour of Robben Island where Mandela spent so many years incarcerated, and jump in glee at the city views from the top of Signal Hill at sunset. We hold on tight to each other rumbling up Table Mountain in the cable car, and then squeel with tipsy delight over sparkling wine and playful mountain dassies ( rockrabbits) at the top. I am in my shooting element, my eye/spirit and camera always greedy for more – the smiling African faces, the vast vistas and smouldering sunsets, the soft shapes of the mountains behind the bluest of waters, the brilliant colors and cultures of the Malay Quarter, and the vibrancy of downtown life. Dale is humbled by the powerful waves, rising at dawn to surf in freezing Atlantic temperatures at Glen Beach, Llandudno, Camp’s Bay, Noordhoek Beach, and the landmark Outer Kom at Kommetjie – only a few of the four dozen nearby breaks. We are both touched by the kindness shown to us, not only in the loving generosity of family companionship, but by the strangers who share his waves and the ones who open themselves to my interested eye. We leave Africa with our spirits stimulated, our emotions nurtured – and most definitely fully ‘stoked”!