ellarien | Long ago and far away 2: South Africa (Reply)

In my postdoc days, work took me to South Africa for three weeks, to a remote observatory in Cape Province. We had a little time in Cape Town on the way in and out.

I'd just acquired my first cheap 35mm camera.

Late afternoon on Table Mountain

The cliffs are called the Twelve Apostles.
It was quite late in the afternoon before we found the cableway, and we didn’t stay long on the windy mountain, but the views were magnificent despite the low light – the modern towers of the city spread out by the deep-blue bay, and the ravines behind filling up with evening cloud.

Distant Saltpeterkop (1)

View from the Observatory plateau on an overcast afternoon. This landscape is the Little Karoo, semi-arid, oddly reminiscent of my native moorland.

Distant Saltpeterkop (2)

Same view, different sky.

Saltpeterkop, closer

We did have one afternoon off, when we visited Saltpeterkop, the local extinct volcano. It was a hot afternoon, but it made a pleasant change from work, driving along the rough farm tracks and walking through the arid vegetation with its dried flower heads and omnipresent, invisible grasshoppers.

On the way back to Cape Town

There was one pass where the two lanes of the road take quite different routes, hugging the slopes of the hill: the descending one is rather exciting, and provided a fine view at one point over the wine-growing valley below.

Cape Point

We walked up the hill to Cape Point: the sea was deeply blue, and turquoise where it was shallow over the white sand. Far below a speck that might have been a seal came and went in the clear water. Behind us, the Indian and Atlantic Oceans met with very little fuss: ahead, the waves beat at the base of the cliffs, a frill of white lace on the aquamarine skirt of the sea. There were banks of cold mist on the water, like sourceless drifts of smoke. The sand was made up of pieces of shell, rather uncomfortable to walk in but fairly easy to brush off after a paddle.