Peter Baxter Africa

Setting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa

January 7, 2013
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Reels in Motion is a project to promote and market Southern African fly fishing to a US and international audience. I will be touring the main fly fishing destinations of South Africa and surrounding countries during the 2013 season, returning to the US in the summer to conduct a series of chat sessions and presentations on what there is to offer the serious fly fisherman in Southern Africa. The project will result in a book to be published in 2014, and a series of promotional and information articles published on my own website. The 2014 schedule will include East and Central Africa Reels in Motion offers the opportunity for South African fishing destinations to promote their product overseas, and for [...]

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Dry Fly Headwater Fishing in South Africa

May 8, 2013
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They say that the pinnacle of a fly fisherman’s art is mastery of the dry fly. In fact there are those that say that the use of any other technique is not fly fishing at all. I am sure that this is overstating the point, but the small stream, small tackle principal is definitely addictive, and in my experience at least it is easier to catch a fat, torpedo sized trout in one of the warm water dams and reservoirs of the Eastern Cape of South Africa than it is to tempt a seven inch wild bred brown trout to rise up for a dry fly on the crystal clear streams of this superb fly fishing region. To this I [...]

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Fishing the Headwater Streams of the Western Cape

March 3, 2013
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This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 10 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013The Western Cape hinterland of Cape Town enjoys a well fleshed selection of fly fishing opportunities, quite a few of which are along the lines of stocked dams and reservoirs, but there are also a good number of wild stock streams and rivers, all within a few hours drive of the main metropolitan area. The best of these can be found in the Hawequas Mountain Catchment Area in a wide arc between the towns of Ceres in the north and Grabouw in the south, including Wellington, Worcester, Villiersdorp and Somerset West. Fishing these streams was without doubt the perfect way to [...]

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Lagoon and Estuary Fishing in the Western Cape

March 3, 2013
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This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 9 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013By the time I made my way down towards the East Coast – that is the coast of the southern rump of South Africa – I had begun to run into a time crunch and could not really make the best of the opportunities available. I did, however, pull into the small coastal town of Hermanus, usually famous for its Southern Right Whale breeding runs, but also located at the mouth of the Klein River and one of the recognized coastal fly fishing hotspots along the East Coast. Hermanus itself is a lovely spot. In the African context it might appear [...]

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Highland Lodge, Eastern Cape, Home of The Bloody Big Fish

February 8, 2013
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This entry is part 8 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 8 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013It was Wolf Avni who urged me to make a point of visiting Highland Lodge just outside Dordrecht in the Eastern Cape, enthusing in his inimitable way about some environmental anomaly that produces outrageously big trout. I had earmarked Thrift Dam as the likely source of the big fish I wanted before the end of the Eastern Cape leg of the trip – this is after all big fish country, but having failed to land that big fish, my hopes shifted to Highland Lodge. I drove up from Queenstown early in the morning, reaching the Stormberg at its most flattering hour, [...]

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Thrift Dam, a South African Fly Fishing Legend Exposed

February 5, 2013
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This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 3 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013Thrift Dam was suggested to me by author and adventurer Kevin Thomas as being something of an oddity on the South African Fly Fishing circuit – this for reasons of it having been at one time an experimental water administered by the Rhodes University Ichthyology Department in the study of trout in South African waters. According to Kevin, it was reputed to hold some of the largest trout in any South African water. The other point he mentioned was that he had heard that it was now inaccessible without a four-wheel-drive vehicle. I added it to my calendar without finding out [...]

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Fishing in Rhodes, Eastern Cape, South Africa

February 3, 2013
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This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013(The image on the left is Tony Keitzman in 1992 with a prize winning trout) Leaving KwaZulu/Natal and entering the Free State is also about leaving the brash, California style mindset of that particular part of South Africa and entering an older, more culturally defined region of the same country. South of the Orange River things are very different. The perennial South African color issue is less sharply defined here. There is far less of that clear black/white divide in the south than there is in the north, and more of an historical blending that reveals a great many more people [...]

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Fishing – or Not – the Beautiful Thukela River

January 28, 2013
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This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 4 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013The Thukela River proved to be a disappointment. The story begins a few miles south in the Giant’s Castle Reserve where I fished the Bushman’s River, catching several ten inch brownies, but once again, as had been the case everywhere so far, that big fish eluded me. I had deliberately avoided seeking any advice on the upper Thukela River, located within the Royal Natal National Park, because I suspected that if I did someone would warn me that fishing hereabouts would be a waste of time. The Berg region had just received a comprehensive dousing thanks to a low pressure zone [...]

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Small Stream Fishing on the the Bushman’s River

January 25, 2013
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This entry is part 5 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 5 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013After spending a week or so at the coast to take refuge from a wave of turbulent weather that washed over the sub-continent towards the end of January, and after taking care of a little bit of business, I set off towards the Drakensberg uKhahlamba National Park to test out the fishing in one or two of the many rivers that flush off the flanks of the escarpment, feeding ultimately into the catchments of the two big brothers of KZN rivers, the Thukela and the Umzimkulu. I had already fished the Umzimkulu outside Underberg, unsuccessfully I have to admit, thanks to [...]

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Fly Fishing in the Southern Drakensberg

January 14, 2013
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This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 6 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013Underberg is a small town located on the southern rump of the Drakensberg Mountains, and is known primarily for its dairy output, but also as a well rounded recreational area for the metropolitan hubs of Gauteng and Durban. The South African Drakensberg comprises the east and south facing escarpment of the range (with the bulk of the high country beyond falling into Lesotho) which is for the most part protected within the boundaries of various park subdivisions, providing a sweeping wilderness preserve, some 130km in length, and in places 20kms deep, comprising some of the most breathtakingly beautiful highland habitat in [...]

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Giant’s Cup: A Fly Fishing Education in the Foothills of the Drakensberg

January 14, 2013
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This entry is part 7 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 7 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013High in the catchment the rivers run clear thin and clear as gin…and fishing requires the lightest touches, ultrafine tackle, faultless presentation and tiny flies.. Those few magic weeks before spawning begins are, in the opinion of this humble pen, the most rewarding angling to which an aesthete can aspire. In calf-deep water, with nowhere to dive, even a two pounder becomes as acrobatic as a gymnast and more cunning than an octopus – Wolf Avni,  A Mean-Mouthed, Hooked-Jawed Bad-News Son-of-a-fish Particular thanks go to Ian Davis of the UHTFC, and Wolf Avni, author, philosopher and student of life One of [...]

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Cath Fly Tying, Tying Flies in Kenya

January 8, 2013
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I was surprised recently to be contacted by Catherine Akondo of Kakamega, Kenya, exploring the possibility of marketing trout and bass fishing flies tied locally in Kenya and marketed through a few organizations in UK, Canada and the US. The company, Cath Fly, is an offshoot of the more famous Ant Top Fly Company based in Nairobi. The minor anomaly of something as northern hemisphere, and perhaps as arcane, as commercial fly tying in a place like Kenya is probably not as odd as it seems, bearing in mind not only that most commercial fly tying takes place in the developing world for the western market, and that Kenya, with quite a few indigenous fly tying enterprises, enjoys something of [...]

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Connemara Township, Nyanga – A Fly Fisherman’s Paradise

January 5, 2013
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This entry is part 2 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 2 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013The greatest peril in life lies in the fact that human food consists entirely of souls. All the creatures that we have to kill and eat, all those that we have to strike down and destroy to make clothes for ourselves, have souls, souls that do not perish with the body and must therefore be pacified lest they should revenge themselves on us for taking away their bodies – Inuit Proverb The Nyanga leg of Fly Fish Africa 2013, Get the Reels in Motion, was a little bit of a lesson in the futility of planning, especially in Africa. Nyanga is [...]

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Lake Kariba and the first Tiger Fish

December 31, 2012
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This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion - Fly Fish Africa 2013

This entry is part 1 of 11 in the series Getting the Reels in Motion – Fly Fish Africa 2013Arriving on lake Kariba on Christmas eve did not bode well for fishing. The party seemed to have started early. Neil Gordon, an old friend who was joining us on the lake, and who I had bumped into earlier in Harare, wandered unsteadily over to our lake side chalet fairly late in the afternoon. He and I had chatted in Harare a few days earlier over a few beers about the prospects of catching a decent sized tiger fish on a fly. He was, and is, a Kariba aficionado, and although he had heard or it done successfully on the Zambezi [...]

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South African Fishing Flies

December 15, 2012
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It really is quite extraordinary how well supported, deeply rooted and innovative the South African fly fishing fraternity is. One of the first things I did when I arrived in the country was to make my way down to the local bookshop to see what literature there was available on local South African fly fishing destinations and lore, and I picked up the latest edition of the FOSAF (Federation of Southern African Flyfishers) publication, Favoured Flies and Select Techniques of the Experts, which offers a selection of the preferred fly patterns of a number of recognized South African fly fisherman, most, if not all of which are tied by the contributors to the book. A Selection of the Best This [...]

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Catching Kariba Bream on a Fly

November 27, 2012
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Bream in their many forms are a ubiquitous fish throughout Africa, and although they have a slightly mundane reputation – perhaps because they are so common and are caught in such large numbers, even to the extent that they are a dietary staple in many regions – they are a worthwhile sport fish, and are caught reasonably easily on a fly. There are many different species distributed over much of Africa, but the Kariba Bream could be one of three species: Red Breasted Tilapia, or Tilapia rendally, commonly known as a pinkie, found in large schools, and known as a decent fighter, although seldom caught at weights over 1kg, Nile Bream, or Oreochromis niloticus, quite a commonly caught fish, or [...]

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Fly Fishing for Zambezi Tiger Fish

November 26, 2012
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In the Pacific Northwest the killer game fish to catch on a fly is the legendary Steelhead, but in southern Africa the bad boy on the block in the Tiger Fish, a game fish par excellence, and one hell of a fish to catch on a fly. Tiger have been sought after as a game fish in the region for many years, probably since the fist baited hook was dropped into the Zambezi. As a sport fishing quarry, my memory of tiger fishing was that it tended to be caught on a specific, two-tone spoon that was white or silver on the outside and red on the inside, presenting an orange/silver flash as it was retrieved. The idea of catching [...]

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Fly Fishing in South Africa

November 8, 2012
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It usually comes as quite a surprise to many European and North American fly anglers to learn that a strong and long standing tradition of fly fishing exists in South Africa. In fact both Kenya and Zimbabwe also offer modest fly fishing options – each of which being a little bit of a hangover from the period of British occupation during which great efforts were made to replicate the best of the British isles in Africa. The same is true in South Africa, of course, but having experienced a much longer Europeanesque experience, the tradition is much more deeply rooted in South Africa than it is further north. It is still certainly possible to have a great fly fishing experience [...]

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Fishing the Stocked Lakes and Streams of the Pacific Northwest

November 7, 2012
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North America is the land of lakes Just a quick glance at the map will clearly illustrate this fact. A ring three to five hundred miles deep around the Hudson Bay must contain a million lakes. Some of these spill over into the US, offering opportunity in Wisconsin and Minnesota for absolutely outrageous fishing just about anywhere, and for anything, you can imagine. The streams and rivers of the Pacific Northwest are salmon waters, and in season the game fishing, for every variety of salmon, but also perhaps the most sought after fish in the region, the steelhead , is also unbelievable. This is the fly fisherman’s mecca. Grand central for devotees of the fly. And if the wild fish [...]

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Older Climbers and Mount Kilimanjaro: Five Reasons

October 2, 2012
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>> Contact us for more information Eco Travel Africa is specializing in Kilimanjaro for older climbers, baby-boomers, over fifty and over sixty, for the simple reason that Kilimanjaro is a practical objective for older climbers. There is nothing easy about climbing a 19300ft mountain like Kilimanjaro, but it does help that the technical aspects of the climb are reasonably friendly to older climbers. For older trekkers Kili is a well established climb destination In General Kilimanjaro does not present a particularly technical challenge. Even during the conventional summit approaches the climb is not steep. That is not to say there are not difficulties, far from it, it is a difficult mountain to climb, but for older climbers and trekkers, it [...]

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Royal Geographical Society’s Hidden Journeys Cairo to Lagos

August 6, 2012
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View Northern Africa from the air with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s Hidden Journeys The Hidden Journeys Project aims to enliven the flying experience and transform it into a fascinating exploration of the people, places and environments thousands of metres below by providing inspiring information to air travellers about the parts of the world they fly over (www.hiddenjourneys.co.uk). The flight path between Cairo and Lagos explores the fascinating landscapes of Northern Africa, covering the Kufra oasis, the Tibesti Mountains, Lake Chad and Abuja along the flight path from Cairo to Lagos. This journey crosses some of the driest parts of the planet. Yet these inhospitable places are inhabited by millions of people who rely on crucial water from the [...]

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Royal Geographical Society’s Hidden Journeys Dar es Salaam to Johannesburg

August 6, 2012
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View South-eastern Africa from the air with the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)’s Hidden Journeys  The Hidden Journeys Project aims to enliven the flying experience and transform it into a fascinating exploration of the people, places and environments thousands of metres below by providing inspiring information to air travellers about the parts of the world they fly over (www.hiddenjourneys.co.uk).  The flight path between Dar es Salaam and Johannesburg explores the stunning landscapes, wildlife and human history of eastern and southern Africa between two of the continent’s fastest growing cities. In the southeast corner of Africa lie some of the most beautiful natural landscapes and wildlife found anywhere on the continent. From the dazzling cichlid fish in Lake Malawi/Niassa, to the [...]

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Kilimanjaro Western Breach Summit: A Viable Option For Older Climbers

April 19, 2012
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Separating the Fact from the Fiction There has long been an aura of risk about climbing Kilimanjaro via the famed Western Breach. The matter came to a head in early 2005 with the death of three American climbers as a consequence of a rockfall. The route was briefly closed and assessed, perhaps more an act of protocol than safety, and opened again soon afterwards. It must be remembered throughout that these types of endeavors carry with them an inherent risk, and although every effort is made by climbing outfitters to both sanitize the risk and talk up the adventure, accidents happen, and the random nature of a tumbling scree of boulders hitting a tent, or knocking down a moving climber, [...]

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Mount Kilimanjaro Crater Camp Abuse

March 22, 2012
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The current buzz in Kilimanjaro is the imminent closure of Crater Camp. I discovered this on my most recent trip when a few mates and I summited via the Western Breach and spent a long and ugly night at Crater Camp. Crater Camp is touted as the last word in isolation on the slightly over-trammeled Kilimanjaro circuit. There is no doubt that getting up there, particularly via the famous Western Breach, is a large undertaking, and spending the night at over 5500m is not for lightweights, but isolated Crater Camp is not! We made the trip up from Arrow Glacier Camp in about 7-hours of fairly solid slogging up the middle of the Western Breach. Scrambling over the edge of [...]

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A second look at South Africa Travel: A thinking person’s alternative

December 20, 2011
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This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Heritage & Cultural Travel in Africa

This entry is part 5 of 8 in the series Heritage & Cultural Travel in AfricaAs a travel destination South Africa has a few key advantages and disadvantages The main disadvantage the country suffers is violent crime. This is balanced out, however, by the fact that the South African travel industry is finely tuned, highly efficient and well regulated. The chances are thus very slim that dusk might ever find you stranded on a street corner in Hillbrow with ne’er a taxi in sight. Crime also tends to inhibits a little bit the freedom of a self-drive tour of South Africa, which is a shame because South Africa is the one country in Africa with a comprehensive highway system, however [...]

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Rwenzori Mountains of Central Africa

September 13, 2011
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Rwenzori Gallery, my last trip there in 2006 The Mountains of the Moon One of the last secrets of accessible African venture travel is the famed Central African Mountains Of The Moon. The Rwenzori Range, straddling DRC and Uganda, is a rugged range of snowcapped peaks that, although not the highest in Africa, are without doubt the most rugged and beautiful. The range itself is made up of a sprawling conglomeration of peaks comprising six massifs separated from one another by heavily forested gorges and laced together by a number of streams and alpine lakes. The six peaks of Rwenzori are Mount Stanley (5109m), Mount Speke (4890m), Mount Baker (4843m), Mount Emin (4798), Mount Gessi (4715m) and Mount Luigi di [...]

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Mountain climbing and hiking for Baby Boomers in Africa

August 18, 2011
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Climbing and Hiking in Africa is great for boomers There are two words that will put in a nutshell why climbing and hill walking in Africa is so feasible for oldies: climate and porters. Lightweight survival kit is all you will ever need, and there is usually someone close at hand willing and able, and often legally empowered to carry it for you. Then there is all the cerebral interest that is so often absent in northern hemisphere destinations. Floral and bird diversity are just two of these. Estimates vary on precisely what can be seen in different places, but in destinations such as Mulanje in Malawi, Chimanimani in Zimbabwe/Mozambique, the Drakensberg in the South African Midlands and the various [...]

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The Chimanimani Mountains of Zimbabwe

August 18, 2011
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Buried somewhere in my memories of childhood is an image of that broken ridge deep in the hazy distance during fire season, as the family drove between Chipinga and Melsetter sometime in the early 1970s. Those were the days before the war, before convoys, landmines, ambushes and all the rest of it; when the Chimanimani National Park became inaccessible, and slumbered under the occasional boot of an army patrol or a wandering band of comrades. Then in the 1980s, after the dust had settled and Zimbabwe was born, the gates of the National Park reopened, and with the ginger fear of left over landmines, civilian visitors began to spread out again, and pick up the threads of this beautiful mountain [...]

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