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| Not known for his style of dress, pharrmacist Michael Tellinger at the ''giant footprint'' near Carolina in Mpumalanga, South Africa. |
SOME
call Michael Tellinger a rude New Ager, others “the real pharmacist” after that
ad for a headache powder “as recommended by real pharmacists” and a few grey
rockers may even recall his hit songs, but one thing no one ever calls him is
boring.
Which
is why it is good news that this resident from the small mountain town of Waterval-Boven has finally put
together “a very unique tour of some of the most awe-inspiring ancient and
sacred sites in southern Africa”.
He
told Witness
Wheels the tour covers from Cape Town to Bulawayo and is sure to challenge
conventional thinkers, delight the non-conventional and as always, invite
ridicule from the mainstream tourists.
But
Tellinger has long given up trying to please the mainstream tourists and now
only caters for well-heeled — and well-healed — spiritual explorers, which is
why the tour is billed in dollars: 3 900 of them and each one in U.S., not
Zimbabwean.
This
means for about R40 000, excluding any flights to SA but including a chartered
jet over southern Africa, Tellinger’s guests can now have guided tours to what
cynics may call piles of rocks in the continent’s most windblown places.
From
personal experience, we can vouch that Tellinger will at the very least inspire
a different look at those piles of rock, even if every archeologist out there
had by now agreed to disagree with him. For example, when Tellinger revisited
the “Giant Footprint” near Carolina with artifacts researcher and archaeologist
Klaus Dona, Dona advised Tellinger “to consult a good geologist and possibly a
professional doctor in order to further evaluate the foot-like shape in the
granite”, according to the website Conscious Life News. Make of that what you
will.
The
plan with SA’s first sacred sites is to take in the thousands of stone circle
ruins around Waterval Boven, visit the so-called Adam’s Calendar between
Nelspruit and Barberton, drop in at the Tswaing Crater outside Parys and visit
the Sterkfontein Caves, where the biggest hominid find yet is currently being
dug up at the Rising Star Cave.
Explorers
will fly by privately chartered jet to the Great Zimbabwe ruins and a visit to
the “sacred sites of the breathtaking Cape Peninsula” with researcher Dean
Liprini as guide.
Witness
Wheels must warn this tour is definitely not for the empirically minded or
casual day tripper. For one, the scheduled visit to Table Mountain doesn't
provide for the usual tourist activities of licking ice cream and admiring the
views, but aims to pay respects to the mountain as “the sacred heart chakra of
Mother Earth”.
For
the rest of us not able to afford a guided tour in a private jet, pack a picnic
basket and drive to any one SA’s many anthropological sites these holidays. Your
choices range from Mapungubwe in the far north to KZN’s bushmen paintings in the
Midlands.
We
are all very fortunate to live on a sub-continent that as yet has no queues in front of
its most ancient sites.
