Franci Van Zyl

Author's posts

New Zealand Advance Party

Hello one and all. As a family we are very aware that we’ve left anyone reading our blog wondering if we ever made it back home, or whether we’ve been stuck in Tonga for the past two years. Considering the whole COVID-19 situation the world currently finds itself in, we are very happy to report …

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Pacific Birds

In the Pacific most of my bird watching skills/compulsions were turned toward fish-watching – for the simple fact that there just weren’t that many birds to watch! (Lots of ocean and not too much terra firma, you see). At least I could count on the usual armada of Frigates, Brown Boobies, Noddies and Terns throughout …

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Whales, Diving and some other random things about Tonga – By Karin Jnr

Tonga instantly set itself apart from the other islands we’ve been to. Not only because it’s an actual island and not an atoll, but because of the unique labyrinth you have to sail through to get to the harbour of the main island itself. We stopped by the Tongan island named Vava’u. We came round …

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Marquesas Crossing – by Franci

This following blog is a little different, because I actually wrote it during the crossing. Sort of like a diary entry especially for the blog, kind of thing. Anyway, so here it is: As I am writing this we are coming to the middle of our eleventh day at sea. We’ve done 1265 nautical miles …

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Birds, birds, birds : )

The one nice thing about writing a blog about a place after everyone else has already written about it, is that I can write what I like and you readers pretty much know what I’m going on about : )   As I have stated before, there are a lot of birds in Brazil. So …

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French Guyana by Franci

Believe it or not, but since we left Cape Town – during this entire trip – not one fish was interested in our trolling fishing line. Well. . . okay there was one, but we only noticed because there was no longer a lure on the line when we pulled it in. I changed the lure one or …

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My take, which consists mainly of birds – Franci

I’m sure that at least some of you are wondering if there are really as many birds here as in the animated film Rio. The answer is no, but almost. Here in the city they are small and easy to miss if you are not looking. Hummingbirds especially, can pass unnoticed. They flit about so fast …

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There’s life in the Bay – Franci van Zyl

I was excited about coming to Brazil, because it has one of the largest amounts of bird species reccorded in one country. Round about 1,712 species. So far I’ve seen about 40 of those. No, its not a lot, but I dare you to name 40 different bird names without using the internet or a book …

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The art of eating and other things – by Franci

We are having trouble getting the engine to start, so we are basically at a standstill when there is no wind . . . just like it was this morning. So we took down all the sails we had up (which were just flapping around anyway), and went for a swim. All six of us …

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Not Birds

There are still a few more things I want to write, but my previous blogging piece is so full of birds I decided I had to make a new category. We had a resolve ever since we read about Jacob’s Ladder to go up there every day. When you see the pictures you will understand …

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