One year on

My 1st anniversary, exactly a year ago today I moved into the Beast in Queenspark and it's only taken 365 (it is a leap year isn't it) days to get to Cape Town.  I guess tortoise comparisons are in order, though what's the hurry.

When I house sat for a couple of weeks towards the end of last year there had recently been some horrendous fires just up the road from here and the whole of Silvermine Reserve was closed.  When I went past the other day it was open again so I popped in to see what it looked like and though it is recovering all the proteas and keurbooms have perished.  But fire is supposed to be good for fynbos and this was bourne out by these Rooibergpypies (red mountain pipes) or if you insist Tritoniopsis triticea poking out of the otherwise fairly barren landscape.  As there was a rather chilly wind blowing I didn't stay there long and moved down into the sheltered valley section where I came across a furious bird party, initially consisting of Cape robin-chat, Southern double-collared sunbird, Fiscal flycatcher and Karoo prinia

It soon became apparent what all the fuss was about especially when a boubou appeared and started dive bombing the top of a nearby bush, screaming maniacally.  There seemingly unconcerned sat a juvenile boomslang sunning itself - I suppose the birds are unaware of the fact that snakes are deaf.  I fully expected to see it take out one of the cheeky sods but it merely ducked when they got too close to it's head.

I decided to come back some other time and tackle one of the walks when I was better prepared and drove down Ou Kaapseweg behind a bakkie sporting a sign that read "We repair what your husband fixed".  As I was going to be in one place for some time I thought I'd better investigate a gym so went along to Virgin Constantia - sure we'll sign you up for 3 months at only.............R1 200 a month!  Don't worry I've got a bicycle.  Later I popped into a pub right on the railway line in Kalk Bay and ordered a double vodka, lime and soda .........R52 please, guess I'll drink at home.  I also wanted to compare the city centre with Durban so went into town and found a parking near the Old Fort (closed for repairs) and made my way to Adderley Street - first difference, all street names in Durban have been changed.  Not much difference in the lack of pavement though, all but a narrow corridor filled with make-shift stalls selling everything imaginable - wonder if the shop owners charge them rent.  The biggest difference is that everything is still pretty clean and tidy. Thence to the reasonable calm of the Company Gardens, all very English with oaks and squirrels - both imported.

I made a circuit of the Parliment Buildings and was astounded to see old Louis Botha on his horse at the main gate.  In the light of the #rhodesmustfall campaign it struck me as rather amusing.

I decided to treat myself to breakfast one Sunday so repaired to a restaurant on the beach at Fish Hoek and was once again dazzled by the sheer beauty of the Cape - very reasonable brekkie too, both from quality and price point of view.

A drive up into the hills produced another of those "Wow" moments.

As evidenced by huge numbers of coots - I counted a hundred outside the window the other day - the waterways in Marina da Gama produce massive quantities of water weed but the municipality has a cunning plan.  Voila le aquatic mower, a fearful contraption that's all gnashing teeth, churing paddle-wheels and a roaring diesel engine.  It not only clears floating weed but is capable of reaching about a meter underwater as well, the cut "grass" being transferred to a bin by a conveyer belt, then dumped ashore by the rear one.  Note the attendant Little Egret, there's obviously fish and frogs in them thar weeds.

As I haven't visited Seapoint since I was a lad, I loaded the bike and headed down there.  There's a promenade that runs all along the shore line and I was amazed to discover a civilised way to access the monstrosity called the V&A Waterfront.  There's a back door with free parking and very few people, but a rather busy Helipad which I see from the Times, residents are getting fractious about.

On another beautiful day I returned to Silvermine determined to visit Elephant's Eye Cave which I vaguely recalled from the notice board was about 1.5 k's distant and about 200 m higher up.  As you can see virtually every tree and shrub perished in the blaze except some that were close to the dam which originally suppled water to Muizenberg.  I was about on my last legs when I made it to the Lookout and saw.....

.......that the cave was still miles off and a heck of a way up.  I took a picture.

The view the other way was fairly breathtaking.

If I saw and heard 6 birds during the 3 hours I was there it was a lot, but I did run into the very aptly named Table Mountain Beauty.  Back at the car park I checked the board again -  the cave was actually a 6 k round trip not 3.

A bird I have been seeking for a very long time has pitched up near the Emily Moon restaurant just outside Plettenberg for several years and sure enough it was back again so I decided a quick 1000 km trip was in order - it has been a very long time after all.  I got hold of friends who have recently settled in Plett and they kindly offered overnight accommodation, so off I went.  Of course the idiot bird never showed though it was seen the day before and the day after I was there.  Ah well.  So the best I can do is.........

...........show you someone else's picture of a Sooty Falcon.  Returning to Cape Town one passes the Mosgas plant just outside Mossel Bay which is situated right next door to Eskoms' gas fired power station.  The question that begs an answer is why is Mosgas burning off flammabe gas that could SURELY be used in  a GAS- FIRED power station?

A rather odd sight outside the lounge window had me gropimg for bins.

A Great Crested Grebe, never seen one snoozing before.  It's like having your own private hide, though the birds are common you do get superb views such as Yellow-billed duck and Mallard which I refuse to show as they really ought to be shot.  No, I'm not a raving looney, they are cross breeding with our Yellowbills and as has happened in New Zealand we may lose a species all together and just end up with hybrids.

Took this while having breakfast the other morning.

There are parts of the Cape that are even more quaintly English than England, the bathing huts at Muizenberg being an example, not sure if anyone uses them but they are well maintained.

Having read about the lighthouse at Slangkoppunt near Kommetjie I just had to go and see it.  Completed in 1919, it is 34 m high and made of ............... cast iron!  Quite how they managed to weld the massive pieces together is something that I have not been able to ascertain but it is impressive nonetheless.

Driving back from there I decided to take Boyes Drive which skirts the mountain behind Muizenberg and I stopped at the place where a lookout is posted to keep an eye out for Great Whites.  They would certainly be easy to see on a day like this and the couple of hundred guys on boards at Surfers Corner are very appreciative I'm sure.  With breakers over a kilometer long and about a meter high I may yet be tempted to try long-boarding.

Gansbaai to Cape Town

Hermanus is the centre of a massive abalone or perlemoen (as they are known locally) farming industry and I discovered that tours were offered at one of the biggest.  Having never tried them I also opted for the post-tour tasting to see what all the fuss was about.  I arrived at the appointed hour and found the guide - Johann - and one other guy and was told that the other two guests were stuck in a traffic jam and would be late. So as we were both engineers he offered to show us some of the nitty-gritty before the farm tour.  As they manage to get through 2.5 MW of electricity a month and with Eskom's dodgy record of late they have come up with a plan - wave generated power.  This involves building a wall across a small bay with a system of one-way valves which allows water to build up a head at high tide and generates power as the tide recedes.  The initial installation will provide 1 MW and if it proves itself another 3 MW will be added, with the excess sold to neighbouring businesses and Eskom can go whistle.  

He also showed us the necessary to maintain the 10 million liters per hour water flow through the farm, with the above structure being a giant settling tank to get rid of any unwanted solids - wont bore you with the details but it is pretty impressive.  And on to the farm suitably attired in wellies.  They have a stock of mature abalone that provide the eggs and sperm and once they get to a size visible to the naked eye they are transferred from spawning tanks to this lot where they huddle beneath cones (they don't like sun) in shallow, well aerated water and after about 3 months are about the size of a pea.

As they get bigger they are thinned out and placed in larger tanks where they hang around on black plastic sheets suspended vertically munching kelp and a formulated seaweed mix.  Each tank has it's own water supply and drain so that if any disease breaks out it is limited to a single site.  Outlet water drains back into the sea but not before they squeeze 100 KW of electricity out of it's downhill rush back to the ocean.

After about 3 years they get to this size and a year later they are canned and sold exclusively to the Chinese, a 400 g tin goes for R390 - guess that's why the company is called Abagold.  At any one time the farm is home to over 14 million of the beasties and the tins contain either six or eight of them, do the math.  So what do they taste like?  Think chewy pilchards, guess you've got to be Asian.

One Sunday I went and collected the paper then drove down to Franskraal beachfront where I parked near a group of fshermen who were trying their luck off the rocks.  I sat and watched them for about 20 minutes to see what they were catching and in that time six out of seven of them caught rocks.  They would try and jiggle the hooks free but eventually gave up and snapped the line.  Seems to me it would be far less of a waste of time if they just threw 10 hooks into the sea and went home for a beer.  Further along from where I was parked was this quaint little fisherman's cottage which had been turned into the Strandveld Museum.  Though not open on Sunday I went back the next day and for R5 was transported back to the days when Dyer Island was occupied by guano miners.  It's actually a private museum and the huge Afrikaner who owns it was a professional diver and spent quite a bit of time lifting artifacts from the Birkenhead, that hit the rocks off Danger Point back in 1860 something.  As the ship was short of lifeboats the captain ordered "woman and children first" and virtually all the men drowned.

The following Sunday it was Kleinbaai and it was rather like Heathrow with all the coming and goings of shark boats and anglers.  The two biggest boats (one being launched below) merely load up 40 or 50 spectators and don't even carry cages.

Cape Agulhas beckoned as it was only 90 k's up the road and I felt I had to visit the southern tip of Africa again.  My route there was through a little dorp called Baardskeerdersbos which was such an intriguing name that I looked it up in our local travel bible,TV Bulpin.  Turns out baardskeerder is the Afrikaans name for a solifugid or sun spider (odd as they're nocturnal) - rather terrifying things that when exposed to the sun will immediately seek shade and will charge towards you if you are providing some.  The translation is beard shaver and arose from the incredible belief that these critters cut chunks of hair from sleeping peoples' beards or hair.

L'Agulhas is apparantly Portugese for needles and does not refer to the dangerous rocks all around the Cape but rather the fact that magnetic compasses point to true north there and nowhere else on the planet (the magnetic pole and north pole are not coincident).  It also appears that in spite of the dirty great lighthouse some people never learn....

And so to Cape Town with The Beast stowed on a smallholding near Atlantis and of course I had to get it stuck in the sand and was extremely fortunate to have the owners' son there who managed to extricate it.
I had planned on staying in Kleinmond and completing the coastwise leg through Gordons' Bay which didn't happen so I took a drive from Muizenberg along the coast road to Strand, G-Bay, Hangklip and Betty's Bay as a token completion.  It started out cloudy and rather dramatic with a weird cloud creeping up the mountain behind G-Bay that looked like a waterfall.

As with most other towns in the vicinity development has been intense with dozens of high-rises in Strand. Near the G-Bay harbour I noticed a rather unpleasant odour and the water looked like blood - a red tide which was a first for me.

It's a natural phenomenon caused by an algal bloom that arises irregularly when conditions are right but it is toxic and makes all shellfish inedible.  It was very difficult to get a shot of the effect as the sun was high.

That little knoppie on the right (below) is esentially the end of False Bay and for fairly obvious reasons is called Hangklip (hanging sone) as it looks about to keel over and land on the villlage below it.  The red tide is also more apparent in this shot, dark water in the foreground, normal blue background.

Once at Hangklip you look straight across the bay to Cape Point in the distance - there have been a few brave souls (read headcases) who have swum it.

Some mighty mansions have sprung up on the slopes above Gordons Bay of which I thought this was probably the most peculiar - keeping well above the raging infernos that have been plaguing the Cape is all I can imagine.  Notice the blue sheen above the tub on the lower right - yup the reflection from the hanging pool!

Though I'd noticed it before there was this crazy stuff happening just off the N2 near Kyelitsha which I had to investigate.  Cape Film Studios and the galleons are full scale replicas used for a TV series which I seem to recall is "Black sails" or some such.

Kalk Bay is one of my favourite spots and if you are around in the late afternoons the fishing boats arrive and put their wares up for sale on the harbour wall.  Haven't yet but am sure that I will induge sometime as fish in the supermarkets is diabolically expensive

An added attraction are the Cape fur seals that hang around waiting for scraps.

Further along near Simonstown the M65 climbs the hill and a road I'd never noticed before leads to one of the numerous batteries in and around the harbour.  These dudes were fairly serious with massive 8" (200 mm) barrels which I reckon could probably drop projectiles on ships coming through the straights 10 k's away.  Decommissioned now though.

And the view, well this is the Cape you know.

Heat wave

It would appear that most of the country is gripped by ridiculous temperatures, I mean 35 C in Cape Town, still don't believe in global warming?  Mossel Bay wasn't too bad but I went in search of the next site and overnighted at a resort on the Breede River called Kambati which was sitting at 40 odd when I arrived.  The chalet had no aircon but the wind picked up later and cooled things off a bit. Fortunately next day was cooler and the sun coming up over the mountains was a rewarding sight - pity about the geese.

I'd never been to Bontebok National Park (it's the smallest at just over 6 000 Ha) before so checked that out, lovely camp but not much shade.  Also popped in to Swellendam, tatty camp but lots of massive oaks.  So with no firm decision made it was back to the Baai, where the temp in the van was 36 C - secret weapon though, it has aircon.  My neighbours were an odd couple who had been cycling around Africa for yonks and decided to settle back in Mosselbaai as he was born here.  Settling down entailed pitching the smallest tent you can imagine and buying a couple of vespa-type scooters.  During the hottest part of the day they would disappear with-intent (sorry) as there was no shade on their site - quite how their brains weren't fried I'm not sure.

I went out early one morning as I'd seen a spot with a nice little wave that I thought I could handle but had no kit, and of course as I had the kit there was no wave.  Bumbling along the beach front I noticed a lot of activity and pulled in for a squiz.  Numbers of nubile young maidens really got my attention, it was the local surf club having a competition - highly energetic bunch.

When handing in my keys I got talking to the owner of the park who recommended that I avoid Swellendam and head for Robertson, but I'd heard on the radio that they were due for a 40 degree day so settled for a couple of nights in Bontebok, and the first animal I saw........

............... and the Ag shame.

So why's is not a Blesbok?  It has a definite sheen to the coat and the facial blaze is supposed to be continuous (though on this one it doesn't appear so) and finally it has a lily white ass like me.  Took a drive around next morning and among a lot of other interesting things found this beauty - Erica ceririthicoides  or Fire heath

Although the reserve is mostly fynbos, it borders the Breede and has a lovely mountain backdrop.  Birdlife wasn't particulaly prolific but I did see the majestic Denham's bustard - twice.

Next it was off to Gansbaai to check out the three caravan parks there and on the way I just had to stop for this shot - so South African.

The first two parks were both municipal and a bit run down but Strandskloof was magnificent and I immediately paid for a week.  Returning to Bontebok I came across this guy.....any guesses?

I've done many lectures on raptors and I have assured scads of people that though Steppe Buzzards have many colour morphs there is ALWAYS a line on the breast separating the blotched uppers from the barred lowers - well, nature loves to make a fool of you.

 When I arrived at Strandskloof with the van I had a major problem locating the DSTV satellite, I kept finding strong signals but the decoder didn't like any of them.  I finally moved the dish to the next site, locked on and was on my way back to see if I had picture when I noticed the problem, one of the cables had come loose where they plug into the back of the van - very frustrating.  When I was putting up thr awning a couple of old tops (well older than me) wandered over and offered to help which was how I met Frik.  He told me that his wife and himself had decided they were tired of living in "prison" in Pretoria, so rented the house and hit the road.  Five years later they thought it was time to settle down again but just couldn't get used to it.  So they sold the house and headed for their favourite camp and he said "It felt like we were on parole".  He then spoke to Riaan, the owner, as he didn't want to have to move camp every month or so to save the grass and asked if he would throw a slab, which was promptly done and he is now resident AND employed - he runs the shop over weekends.  When I told him I was going to house sit for three months he said "Well when you get out on parole you can come back here"

Strandskloof is about 10 k's past Gansbaai near Franskraal and Kleinbaai.  From the camp you can make out Dyer Island, which has seals, which are the favourite food of Great Whites, and boy is it big business taking people cage diving.  The harbour is so small that the boats have to be trailered after each trip so not only do they sport at least two 250 HP Yamahas most of them have tractors to haul them out - major bucks but obviously worth it.  The biggest I saw, called Dreamcatcher had four Yamahas and took out 32 people when I saw it depart.  As the cage only holds four it must take quite some time to cycle everyone - not my cup of tea, the sharks must be totally habituated by now.

A trip to Hermanus to find what the boffs are calling an Elegant-type Tern as there is lots of argument about whether it's a hybrid or not was disappointing but not a total loss as there was a pod of Common dolphins very close inshore.  A further 4 visits have still not produced the tern!

And this is where I want to live when I retire.

On the far side of town I found a road that headed up into the mountains and was eventually rewarded with this stunnning view looking back to the lagoon - thousands of birds but rather smelly.

Though the fynbos was pristine there wasn't much in flower except these almost luminescent everlastings.  I initially thought Helichrysum but when I looked them up they are actually called False everlastings - Phaenacoma prolifera and they certainly were prolific.

Further up the coast towards L'Agulus I came across Buffelsjagbaai (bet the English girls have fun with that) where there is a small coloured community and a large Abalone (Perlemoen) farm.  These are popping up all over the place with most near Hermanus and one conducts tours which I intend to do sometime.  Just look at the colour of the water in the bay though.

On the way back I noticed a couple of splashes of red next to the road which turned out to be one of the Paintbrush Lilies, Haemanthus coccineus.

I also took a drive to Kleinmond to check out the caravan parks there as potential next stops but they were both a bit disappointing so decided to stay on here until I move to Cape Town at the end of the month.  On the way back I passed the Kogelberg Nature Reserve and decided, as the habitat looked right, to see if I could locate a Cape Rockjumper or two.  That was a total failure but I did find something really interesting
Nivinia stokoei, which I only managed to find in the book because I thought it looked like an Aristea.  The distribution is a tiny little dot centered on Kogelberg, so I considered myself extremely fortunate.
.

Atlassing took me to a small reserve near Franskraal called Grootmelkbos, where I flushed a Spotted Eagle Owl and though birds were scarce I managed to find a number of these Brunsvigia orientalis which has the magical name of Koningskandelaer, which I believe translates as King's chandelier.