The jewel in the ankle bracelet

Deer Park is the jewel in Table Mountain's ankle bracelet. It's low on the slopes, and from here you can walk up to Tafelberg Road and onto the higher slopes.

In the late afternoon the setting sun paints these lower slopes red-golden. It's a place where you can open your arms wide and have a full-on nature experience, just 500m above the restaurants in Deerpark Avenue in Vredehoek.

I've walked here a million times.
I know Deer Park's moods and Deer Park knows my moods.

I love Deer Park.

Chappies espresso

Sunset on Chappies. Far below, Chapmans Peak Drive is Sunset Boulevard, full of cars, picnic baskets and champagne glasses. Here, on the contour path high up on the mountain, the fragrance of an espresso slowly percolating wafts passed us. I'm with my sister Marikie and her son Marko, a young adventurer with a special talent for making espressos.
Sunset, fresh coffee, happy Christmas.
A mountain for champagne, for coffee and streams running with fresh rain.

Marko the espresso king with his mom Marikie.

Golden light, golden rock.

High on Chapmans Peak it's just us and the watsonias.

Small miracles

Agapanthus with diamond and papyrus.

Small miracles on a rainy afternoon at Kirstenbosch. 

A spotted eagle owl sits in pouring rain in a flower bed right next to the path. 

My friend Fran shows me the secret room inside the heart of the giant ficus, a hollow big enough to sit in. And then she hugs the tree.

It’s cold, it’s wet, but it’s a small, perfect afternoon.

Spotted eagle owl blurred in the rain.

Pincushion's indigenous xmas wrapping.

Fran in the secret room of the ficus.

Walking in moonlight

Tonight the moon rolled over the mountain like a battered old tin plate with dented edges. Two days before full moon.

Watsonias swayed in the howling southeaster and danced across my camera lens.

Just me and my moon shadow on the mountain. No-one else.

One mountain, many lives

Her name is Shahnaaz and she’s a healer. We met this afternoon over a bright pink cloth on a saint’s grave on Table Mountain.

I was walking past the mosque on Signal Hill and Shahnaaz was about to enter the mosque with her family. I asked her about the pink cloth, which had not been on the saint’s grave a few days before. The graves are called kramats and there are about 6 or 8 of them around the mosque.

She explained to me that making an offering to the saint buried there could include placing a new cloth, called a chadar, on the grave. “There are many layers of cloth on top of the grave, placed there over a long time by many people.”

Then Shahnaaz told me that she was there to make a special offering to the saint under the pink cloth. He had been a healer and so was she, offering reiki and reflexology and all kinds of other alternative treatments.

She had fasted for two days and now, as the sun set, was about to break her fast with some dates and nuts.

Shahnaaz, the healer about to break her fast.

I said goodbye to Shahnaaz and then noticed a group of cyclists who had met in front of another kramat. One of them leant his bicycle against the grave. “Um, this is a sacred spot,” I said without thinking. “Oh it’s just a dead person,” the man said. One mountain, many lives.

Rumours of rain. When a cloud hangs over Lion's Head like a lacy Catholic mantilla veil, it will rain tomorrow. Really.

White in the forest

Forests are not only green. There are thousands of shades of white. Bark white, lichen white, fresh petal white, dried petal white, white of seed, rushing water white. Light reflecting on waterfall white. White of clouds. Silver tree's cracked white trunk.

 

 

Fool moon

Lion's Head adrift in fog.

You won't believe it, but it happened again. I sped out of the house early this morning to go and see the full moon set. But when I got to Kloofnek the whole full moon extravaganza was hidden behind a thick blanket of mist. This is exactly what happened a month ago when I went looking for the full moon. (See previous blog)

However, Table Mountain being Table Mountain, it had a surprise parcel of gifts hidden behind its back, as usual. 

Confetti Alley

 Don't for a moment think wet air dampens the spirits of the birds and the beetles. Slangolie Ravine, a deep gorge above Camps Bay, was like an echo chamber of birdsong. Red-winged starlings, Cape sugarbirds and orangebreasted sunbirds screeched, whistled and sang full throttle. Chunky black beetles whirred along like jolly little helicopters. Even the sound of the waves are amplified in the gorge and it's easy to believe that no world exists outside these walls of rock. The steps going up to Slangolie are covered in buchu sprinkled with white flowers and if you crush the leaves the buchu scent sticks to your fingers. And all the time the mist moved; then closer to the mountain, then back to the ocean - like a restless sleeper wrestling with his blankets.


I had to try and capture the beauty of this misty spring morning with my iPhone, because Speedy had left her camera's memory card behind when she sped out of the house. The pics aren't bad for a cellphone, I'm sure you'll agree.

So I've been fooled by the moon again. But just wait, another full moon will come around in a month's time and then - surely - I will see it set.

The pipe track in the mist.