I love stories like this one. Just last week, on a couple of walls in Woodstock, Cape Town, a small group of selected young artists with names like Pavement Special, Black Koki and Fuzzy Slippers (well, some of them, the others have more normal sounding names like Xanelle, Jonx Pillemer and Dathina Mzayiya) were busy painting a series of mural art.

It's a way of celebrating local artists, mural art and the original culture within the communities in which the art is shaped.

Street art is funky. It flies in the face of the idea of a gallery as the place in which art can function. And it acts as a 'bridge'; a connection between the community in which the art functions and the rest of the world that sees the art as a reflection of the community.

And in SA that's important, as the majority of people never see the inside of a gallery, nevermind local art.

Green Cab FleetThere is always something worth seeing and experiencing in Cape Town, the only problem is you often have to travel far distances to get there and those carbon emissions aren’t doing any good to the environment. Foreign tourists, in particular, have been limited to joining a tour group or hiring their own car to get around the peninsula. Never fear though, because now you can get from A to B guilt free. Thanks to The Green Cab, you can visit the V&A waterfront, the Cape Point nature reserve, Simonstown, Chapman’s Peak and several other destinations without adding as much to your carbon footprint.

The Green Cab provides Cape Town’s first responsible tourism transport and tour offering with eco-credentials. Their vehicles are fuelled with

This beautiful and huge 'nest' is a work of art by Land Art artist Jody Joyner from Tucson, Arizona. You can see it at Soekershof, just outside Robertson.

Inspired by the weaver birds' nests that run along the Klaas Voogds River through the gardens, the nest is made of woven hibiscus twigs...

A friend of mine, who lives in Hong Kong, got the following via email the other day:

API ALERT - Causeway Bay Roadside

The Average Pollution Index at the Causeway Bay Roadside air quality monitoring station is 178. The air is hazardous. We recommend that you avoid roadside situations and refrain from vigorous outdoor exercise.

The contributing pollutants are:

Jill's cob guest houseWe find the house via a combination of directions from McGregor’s locals and the ability to follow our noses once we have the rather obvious house in sight – there are not many homes in McGregor that look quite like it. Outside is a sign – cobbits cottage. It’s an apt description of what stands before us, built completely out of earth and serving as MAT’s headquarters.

going green by simon gearIts nearly Christmas and many of us are thinking about gifts to buy. Well one book that I can wholeheartedly recommend is Going Green - 365 Ways to Change our World. This book is filled with great ideas on how to make our planet a better place. The book is written by Simon Gear, known as one of South Africa's favorite weathermen.

the auldearn garden in the elgin valleyThis last weekend was the first weekend of the annual Elgin Open Gardens. The weather was stunning - perfect for a day out in the beautiful Elgin valley, which is known for its apples and beautiful gardens. The gardens are also open next weekend, the 6th and 7th of November. You pay a small fee ranging from R5 to R20 a person, which is donated to a different charity. This year there are over twenty open gardens that you can visit. It's best that you plan on leaving early and spend the day in the valley, so that you have time to explore some of the gardens. There are some absolutely stunning gardens that are sure to inspire you.

We stopped off and had a leisurely brunch at the Houwhoek Farm Stall, which serves delicious food and has great stall, at which we bought some wonderful dried apricots for the road.

There is something of the sacred in Hogsback. Perhaps it is the ethereal proximity of dense, indigenous forests that hint at faery folk, or its remoteness that make it so. But few people leave here without some element of reparation, even if it is simply their faith in the beauty of nature that is restored.

The approach to the eco shrine, which the artist Diana Graham calls the 'Voice of the Earth Eco shrine', does much to reinforce this impression. It is a tunnel formed by lean, leafy Hazelnut trees that create a vortex through which one moves from one time into another. Or so it seems.

2010 is virtually upon us, but before we allow the new year to sweep us back into the swing of things, it's a good moment to reflect on the past year and what news stories were most popular with our readers.

1. is Woolworths just another bad egg?
So there you are; surrounded by posters of poultry basking in their freedom, your conscience and shopping experience clean because you are promised that the eggs you are buying came from free-range chickens. If chickens could smile, I’m sure we would be confronted by an enormous picture of a splendid beaky grin.

2. you can recycle tetra pak!
I have to confess to sending various irate messages to Tetra Pak over the last year about their apparent lack of recycling facilities in Cape Town, or the country for that matter. The perception out there, despite their very obvious drive to recycle overseas, is that one can't recycle tetra pak, and there are a fair amount of them if you consider things like fruit juice, some olive oil, long-life milk and custard all come in these containers – they heap up over time!

Tulum, Yucatan Peninsula, MexicoSouth African’s have a history of reacting when it’s always far too late. We look for solutions to our electricity shortage only when the lights go out. It takes 20 years to build a new large power station that would make a difference to the power grid and that’s if the government can even raise the money. Which, it’s proving it cannot do, as the international investors would rather invest and lend money to those countries with vision and integrity. ESKOM has recently announced more cancellations of new power generation projects than additions to our power grid. The reality is, they cannot raise the money. Our energy security future looks particularly dark.