Mad with love

Gifkool, snotroos, kelkiewyn.

Piempiempie, bobbejaantjie, ink-tulp.

Kinkelbossie, skilpadblom, pienk lewertjies.

Read it aloud, no, sing it aloud.

Now try this: spiloxene serrata, moraea tripetala, nemesia versicolor.

I’ll stop right there. The Latin just doesn’t do it.

The poem at the top of this blog, that love song, that ode, is a list of Afrikaans names for spring flowers on the index page of the West Coast wildflower guide. You could just recite all the names and send it to Radio Sonder Grense as a poetry reading. 

Your blogger hard at work, jumping for joy.

On the last Sunday of every August we have a date with the piempiempies, surings, froetangs and tamaraks. It’s a secret route on a non-disclosed section of the West Coast, a spring paradise. Secret, because a small part of it crosses private land and in spite of my heart-rendered letter to the German land-owner, he refused permission for us to cross his property. So we quietly cross his land and tell no-one.

For the last ten years it has never rained on the last Sunday of August and this Sunday, true to form, dawned sunny and peachy. We walked with the ocean at our right shoulder, facing the flowers as they turn towards the sun. We threaded in and out from the beach to the veld to sandy jeep tracks that hug the coast. Then we found a green meadow dotted with tiny flowers, where we ate our early lunch and drank tea. Shortly after, we stopped again in a field of daisies that faded like candy from pink to yellow and drank more tea. We passed tortoises chewing on surings and picked up tortoise shells and porcupine quills and a beautiful zen stone.

We found a glossy black mole snake in the dunes that had just swallowed a mole and looked immobile and vulnerable and very full. We ended our walk along a long wide beach where the sea turned silver in the late afternoon sun.

My friend Heidi sent me this quote: A flower is a leaf mad with love. Our West Coast meander is a walk mad with flowers. It is our happy walk.

In homage to solitary walks

Walking alone is like sitting between the cellos in a symphony orchestra. It’s like cooking with the stew in the pot, being inside the cloud that rains.

I love walking alone. There is a secret ravine on Table Mountain that harbours me on short afternoon walks and has a Verraux eagle that ignores me. A few days ago I was alone in a valley on top of the mountain in the middle of a city of 3.7 million people. Deep in this valley there was no sign of the city at all.

It felt as if I could hear every single thing. The darting song of every sunbird, the moist croaking of frogs, the sound of water flowing deep under a rock, the wind shaking the seed pods on the reed-like restios.

When I’m alone I take longer, see more. Stand at the edge of a pool reflecting the blue sky and watch the frogs go plop in the water, then stare at me with bulging eyes just above the surface, their legs hanging down like swimming paraplegics.

In the mouth of a cave I could feel the cool air on my cheek coming from deep inside it. Across the valley a waterfall made the sound of a distant car crunching on gravel.

When I’m walking alone I feel like the first person and like the last person.

I love walking alone.

King of the mountain

I remember once many years ago we were on holiday in Cape Town. We went up Table Mountain in the cable car and my mom pointed at the figures far below us and said: “Look children, mountain hikers!”

Today I was one of those mountain hikers that waved back up at the cable car. And I wouldn’t have swopped places for anything in the world. India Venster is a king of a hike. It is pure royalty. It is filled with splendour and has had its share of tradegy. It is one of the oldest and most popular routes up the mountain. It has claimed lives, absorbed buckets of sweat and been trodden by thousands of boots.

On this day, another peach in this glorious midwinter hot spell that has lasted almost three weeks, we added our footprints to the thousands before us. Spring has confusingly sprung and it’s only July. The bobbejaantjies sat in royal blue clumps, the red buds of the China flowers have popped open to a surprising pink and white and the yellow daisy bushes shout ‘springtime!’

India Venster is tough. For the first two thirds it’s a hard, straight-up climb, mostly just below the cable car. The difficult part is where there are some big step-ups between some big boulders and this is where most of the trouble has been. Thanks to the kindness (and hard work) of some mountain lovers, India Venster now has some sturdy bolted on handholds and chains that have made this tricky negotiation much easier.

Doug and Keri with baby Rachel.

Now the hard work was past us and the blue sky soared above where a black eagle was being chased by crows. Then it pulled away from the crows like a Ferrari leaving a Volkswagen at the kerb. What chance does a crow have against an eagle with a two-metre wingspan and such a stately name as Verreaux.

Spot Gilad, dropping out of the sky on a rope.

As we rounded the buttress to the back of the mountain, a friend dropped out of the sky. Literally. It was the well known Gilad, abseiling down a rockface as if it was a normal Sunday morning occurrence, which, for him, it probably was.

When we smelt the bacon we knew we were near the top cable car station. We took the cable car down and passed some hikers on their way up India Venster. This time I knew exactly what if felt like to be the one down there on the rock.

My new love is shimmering and flirty

I have fallen in love. Again. This time my passion goes by the name of homoglossum priori. Yes, yes, I know, not very compelling. Neither is its popular name, rooi Afrikaner. That makes me think of Eugene Terreblanche’s nek.

I spotted my new love when Jan and I walked up to the Saddle earlier this week (see previous blog). It was icy and windy and yet here were these red-velvet pointy flowers swaying in the wind, smiling at the cold. Six-pointed scarlet stars.  The other day someone said there aren’t many flowers on the mountain in winter. Well, wherever they were walking, it wasn’t in this gold-green fynbos with its red beauties. Homoglossum priori is the flirty younger sister of the red disa – the one I fell in love with four months ago. My new love, h. priori,  wears a flimsy red dress and pointy shoes and dances in the wind.

So, today, armed with a new 100mm macro lens for my Canon 40D, I went back to the Saddle again. Today there were blue skies and full-on sunshine, but it was still icy up there in the teeth of a very cheeky southeaster. You could feel the Antarctic on its breath.

H. priori is not shy. She performed for the camera. Smiling, weaving, shimmering her velvety petals. Oh yes, I am in love. And here she is, in full glory.

And here, just because Table Mountain is one of the oldest mountains in the world, is a rock. A very old one. In the last light.

Grey turns to gold on a Blue Monday

It happened again this afternoon. When I looked out the window I saw a grey afternoon, clouds sweeping over the mountain and a wind that shook the pine tree next door. Not exactly inviting weather for an amble on the mountain.

Homoglossum priori - fancy name for a six-pointed star that shines on the mountain in winter.

But wait. Jan arrived home early on this, a miserable Blue Monday. He dragged me out the house by the scruff of my waterproof jacket and announced that we were walking up to the Saddle. If you look up at Devils Peak, you’ll see the saddle at its bottom right, before it slopes upwards to the top of Table Mountain.

And then the grey afternoon was transformed by alchemy as the late sun broke through underneath the clouds and washed the mountain with pure gold. It’s one of those wonderful mysteries of Table Mountain. Don’t believe it when it looks miserable from your window. Just be brave enough to tie up your boots and get outside and let that clear light touch you and breathe the fresh cold air that carries a hint of buchu on its breath.

Below Devils Peak the slopes were star studded with six-pointed red flowers. Homoglossum priori swayed in the chilly southeaster, catching the sun in their petals, turning this flower from the Iridaceae family into a red-gold creation. Popularly named Rooi Afrikaner they flowered next to the path, in the cracks of rocks and next to the stream up on the Saddle.

Which brings me to one of my favourite spots in the whole world: a patch of soft grass sheltered by a huge rock in the middle of the Saddle. Here you can lie back on the softest grass bed (check for ticks afterwards), listen to the stream tinkle and catch an orange-breasted sunbird hopping onto a bush in front of you. We ate a sweet orange and rinsed our hands in the icy stream. No Blue Monday stands a chance against this. It’s called Heaven.

The Saddle is a world in itself. A freezing wind galloped ahead of a bank of clouds that poured down the mountain, lost us in mist and five minutes later cleared to let the sunlight back, dancing over the disco-green leaves of watsonias, pelargoniums and leucadendrons. As a last special bonus, the sky lit up around Lion’s Head in a candy-pink sunset that faded into thick creamy clouds that soon became grey again. Which just goes to show: don’t let the grey clouds bully you.

Home sweet home

The most beautiful view in the world: Table Mountain from the window of a Boeing. After five days in Gauteng, home sweet home.

Free at the top

The colours on top of the mountain are blue, bright blue and deep blue. I don’t know about you, but it’s been ages since I’ve been on the actual flat tabletop bit; the western table, if you’re looking at a map. The part where the cablecar ends and a lot of tourists walk around. 

The Table Mountain Cableway’s new cable card is a great offer. For R490 per person you can go up and down the cableway as many times a year as you like, but not more than one return trip a day.

So this morning, when Jan and I felt like an easy post-flu stroll but still needed to be on the mountain and smell the fynbos, we had the brainwave to buy the cable card and put it to work immediately. We sailed up and the best thing of all was the sense of wonder on every face - including our own - even though we had done this many times before.

At the top it took us just a few minutes to shake off the crowds and walk towards Maclear’s Beacon (named after an astronomer who also has a crater on the moon named after him).  

This path is close to the blue sky. Clumps of reed-like restios stand ankle deep in pools of shallow winter water reflecting all that blue. A winter’s day like this is a perfect Cape Town day. Not a breath of wind, mellow sunshine and, up here, the croaks of tiny frogs like hairline cracks in the still air.

The route that loops back from the beacon takes you along the edge of the mountain and sudden, original views of the city, seen from the sharp side of the mountain. It’s like floating to the roof of your room and looking down at a familiar scene. Below us the cliff face dropped hundreds of dizzying metres. Although it’s not really exposed, it’s exhilarating to feel as if you’re walking along on the edge of the mountain, with the ocean a kilometre below you. 

Wisps of cool night air hang over the Atlantic Ocean, below the Twelve Apostles.

Ahead of us Table Mountain was a massive chunk of reassuring sandstone, with Lion’s Head looking very small from up here. And then we were back where we started. An hour and a half’s easy stroll, but a great mountain high. No sweat. At all. Just flash those cable cards.