Red jewels, blue treasure

We started our annual pilgrimage to see the red disas on a silver morning where mist floated off the sea and the day balanced on the edge of a coin between hot or cold.

Myburgh’s Ravine above Hout Bay lay in the dappled shade of old yellowwoods and rooi els and a carpet of waxy little yellow flowers had been shaken like tree dust over the forest floor.

We found the red disas near the top of the ravine and caught our breaths. The sort of breath you breathe in a cathedral, an art gallery, the first view of a new continent. Scatterlings of scarlet danced on green mossy ravine walls, dipping and swaying on their long stems in the cool morning air that drifted down.

 In the thick green shade last night’s misty rain still lay in droplets on their red petals. Disa uniflora. Pride of Table Mountain. Our own orchids, jewel of the mountain.

But from this jewel-red start, the day turned blue. At the top of the ravine mist blew in in blue-grey shards. In her usual way, Table Mountain had some surprises for us. We had started off to find the red disas, but then discovered a treasure-chest of blue: blue disas, agapanthus, blue lobelia, blue roellas. We found the blue disa by chance as we took a wrong turning and made a detour on a wild and distant corner of the mountain above Hout Bay.

Then we found the right way, where Llandadno Ravine had gashed a steep path down the mountain, and it was like climbing down a ladder from the blue sky to the blue ocean. The day had finally turned from the edge of the coin and now it lay in front of us: filled with blue, sunny side up. 

Blue disa, herschelia graminifolia, above Llandadno Ravine.

Shrouded Agapanthus. 

Tea break on Hout Bay Corner.

Surrounded by mountains, cloaked in mist

Last night I went to the top of Table Mountain to see the moon rise and the sun set. This ordinary sentence, written on an ordinary Tuesday, doesn't start to describe what I saw. 

The world from up there was an action movie. Clouds raced over the mountains and  sunlight burst through in golden circles, only to disappear in the next moment.

The bay and the Cape flats lay under a blanket of puffy silver mist that moved, shrunk and stretched into different shapes minute by minute.  A ship pulled out of the harbour, the setting sun reflecting on its white chimney, before disappearing into a dark, white world. 

Platteklip Gorge makes a dent in Table Mountain's shadow on Devils Peak.

From the top of Table Mountain, the Helderberg and Stellenbosch mountains stood like cardboard cut-outs in the late light, as close as the next suburb. 

At last the sun dropped over the horizon, as if burning a hole into the billowing mist and the sky burst into orange fire. 

Then the moon popped out behind the clouds, high in the sky, and the last cable car down was called.

Not an ordinary day at all.

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.