One of the most prestigious awards that can befall a South African winemaker is a 5 star rating in the annual John Platter wine guide. This year Vilafonté , the first American-South African wine making collaboration, has made the cut with their Vilafonté Series C 2006 red blend. Most people would understand that a 5 [...]
( #1 of 8 ) The Richtersveld is found in the north-western most corner of South Africa, right up against the border with Namibia.It’s a dry and arid semi-desert with some of the most rugged landscapes you’ll find on the continent of Africa. It’s a place of strange and unexpected beauty with wonderful rock formations, [...]
Ok, I have to admit it in a public space: I, Tinus le Roux, grew up in Camps Bay, Cape Town, at the foot of the famous Table Mountain. Now, if you haven’t been to Camps Bay, you won’t understand why most of those readers who have, just had a negative emotional response toward me. [...]
There are a thousand reasons why I am proud and privileged to be a South African – and recently I found 8 more to add to the list. South Africa has 8 World Heritage sites, a collection of places as fascinating and intriguing as they are beautiful – and Virtual Africa has 360º images of [...]
At last the weather in Cape Town has cleared up – and we’ve had a chance to dust off the equipment and shoot some panoramic pictures – and we got an interesting one of Rhino’s to start with. (Like all of our pictures, this one is 360º and interactive. Click and drag to look around) [...]
It’s supposed to be Spring here in South Africa, but as you can see from the picture below, the weather gods haven’t received the memo yet….. to see a full screen version of this panoramic image, click here If you’re not a South African, you might not be able to appreciate how strange this picture [...]
Thousands of South Africans celebrated Heritage Day (24 September) by gathering at Maropeng, near Johannesburg. Maropeng means “returning to the place of our origin” and is situated in the Cradle of Humankind, a famous World heritage site where excavators have found some of the oldest hominid remains on earth. (Click here for a larger version [...]
Shamwari Game Reserve, in the Eastern Cape of South Africa, forms the perfect backdrop for the latest Animal Planet ‘reality wildlife documentary’ – Shamwari: a Wild Life. Seeing that it is one of the most exclusive safari lodges in Africa, not many people will have the privilege to visit Shamwari in their lifetime, so we [...]
The new Google Earth plug-in allows you to view 3D Google Earth imagery in your browser. It’s the most impressive and most important geo-immersive imaging development of the year and we’ve been able to make it work with the Virtual Africa interactive 360 degree images. Let me translate that for those who don’t know what [...]
One of the first posts on this blog was about the beautiful islands of Mozambique and I mentioned then that Virtual Africa was heading back there to take a few new pictures. Well it’s time to show them off! We’ve created a Google Earth file (click here to download) and an interactive map with virtual [...]
So this blog is supposed to be about virtual tours , I know – but what are unwritten rules without their written exceptions?
This post then, is not about 360 degree photography, some interesting place in South Africa or a new feature in Google Earth – it’s a congratulatory ode to the South African surfer who rode the biggest wave at the recent Red Bull Big Wave Africa competition held at Dungeons, near Hout Bay.
(Seen below on the right)
James at RBA
Our friend and hero (and incidentally a partner here at Virtual Africa): JAMES TAYLOR.
If you’re a South African, you’ve probably seen him as the guy with the Volkswagen Beetle on his back in the Santam TV ad – or in a newspaper or two as one of the insane surfers taking on the Cape’s biggest waves
Virtual Africa has created a Google Earth file on behalf of Afrikaans newspaper Die Burger to compliment their article on the Hermanus Wine and Food Fair.
(Kliek hier vir die Afrikaanse weergawe.)
Google Earth Hermanus
We’ve created 45 interactive panoramic images of the following wine farms and cellars in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley : Sumaridge, Newton Johnson, La Vierge, Hamilton Russell, Creation, Ataraxia, Hermanuspietersfontein, Whalehaven and Spookfontein.
Google Earth layer with virtual tours of Madiba’s B-day places We’re not really good at singing or writing poems – so we thought we’d make a map and some virtual tours. Here’s a Google Earth layer that includes some of the places where our beloved Mr. Mandela has spent a few of his many, many [...]
For all those South Africans tracking Robbie Hunter and Barloworld’s progress at the Tour de France this year – Google has come to the party in an effort to make the Tour even more interactive. In what has to be described as exquisite marketing timing, Google Maps has released their first batch of European Streetview [...]
South African Tourism Google Earth layer has gone live. The layer has been publicly available for just over a month, but now it has been included into the Google Earth Core Database. For the uninitiated, this means that the content of the layer is available to all Google Earth users. All 300 million of them! [...]
Virtual Tour of Pinnacle Point After watching Tiger Woods’ heroics at the US Open earlier this month, I was scanning the sport channels to find out if he did any damage to his knee. In the process I saw an insert on our very own Pinnacle Point Golf Course near Mossel Bay (on the famous [...]
The recent publication of an article in Die Burger has had quite a few people emailing us to ask about Lekkersing. For those of you who are truly well educated and or well traveled, you’ll know that Lekkersing is a tiny town in the middle of the desolate Richtersveld in the North Western part of [...]
My father always took our family to some of the weirdest and most wonderful places in South Africa. It instilled in us a reverence for the untouched and an appreciation of the historic. It is for this reason that our shoot at Lake Fundudzi was one of the most gratifying experiences I’ve had in virtual [...]
So you want to explore South Africa – and you need a map. Well, we think we’ve got something you’d like. We have about 4000 panoramic images of some of the most beautiful and interesting spots in South Africa and we’ve geo-located the first 1000 or so onto a Google map – for your pleasure. [...]
About a year ago, Virtual Africa sent some photographers out to Robben Island to create a virtual tour on behalf of South African Tourism. This virtual tour was included in the official SA Tourism Google Earth layer and we thought we’d share it with you here. Robben Island has a unique and colourful history: Leper [...]
