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More Pictures of Portugal
Europe
Spain and Portugal - More pictures of Portugal
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- Written by: Richard_McKie
- Parent Category: Travel
- Category: Europe
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In April 2023 we took a package tour to South Africa with our friends Craig and Sonia. We flew via Singapore to Cape Town.
Cape Town is the country's legislative capital and location of the South African Parliament.
It's long been renowned for Table Mountain, that dominates the city.
On the morning of May1st 2016 I jumped, or rather slid, out of a plane over Wollongong at 14,000 feet.
It was a tandem jump, meaning that I had an instructor strapped to my back.
Striding Confidently Before Going Up
At that height the curvature of the earth is quite evident. There was an air-show underway at the airport we took off from and we were soon looking down on the planes of the RAAF Roulette aerobatic display team. They looked like little model aircraft flying in perfect formation.
To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream:
ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause:
… But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
When I first began to write about this subject, the idea that Hamlet’s fear was still current in today’s day and age seemed to me as bizarre as the fear of falling off the earth if you sail too far to the west. And yet several people have identified the prospect of an 'undiscovered country from whose realm no traveller returns' as an important consideration when contemplating death. This is, apparently, neither the rational existential desire to avoid annihilation; nor the animal imperative to keep living under any circumstances; but a fear of what lies beyond.