Western Cape

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Slangkop Lighthouse in Kommetjie

I hope to one day have the opportunity tick off all the lighthouses on the South African coast on my list of places visited.  A lighthouse is just such a powerful symbol and the fact that each one is unique means that when you visit one its not a case of saying "just another lighthouse".  In January I had the opportunity to tick the Slangkop Lighthouse in Kommetjie on the Cape Peninsula off my constantly growing list of places to visit.  The…

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29/03/2012
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Sunfish on the beach

Taking a walk along Noordhoek Beach in the Cape I stumbled on a dead sunfish.  This was only a baby, but still something very unusual to see washed up.  Sunfishes are so called because of their habit of drifting at the surface as if basking in the sun.  There are two species of sunfishes found in the waters surrounding Cape Town, the Ocean Sunfish (Mola mola) and the Sharptail Sunfish (Masturus lanceolatus).  Now I'm no sunfish expert so I'm not going…

5 Comments
19/03/2012
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Noordhoek beach

Cape Town, the second largest city in South Africa, has a rural backyard.  "Huh?" you ask.  The Noordhoek area on the Cape Peninsula is about 30 minutes from the city centre, yet it has a country town feeling to it with farms, small holdings, charming little shops, restaurants and bars as well as lots of open spaces.  The showcase of Noordhoek is the 8 km long unspoiled strip of sandy beach stretching from the foot of Chapmans Peak all the way to Kommetjie. …

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16/03/2012
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Barb wire silhouette sunset

Spending 10 days in Noordhoek on the Cape Peninsula one would have thought that I got a couple of nice sunset pics around the area.  But alas I didn't.  Don't ask me why.  One of the afternoons I did go out I headed onto the first part of Chapmans Peak Drive from the Noordhoek side to get a nice sunset with the Noordhoek beach in the foreground.  My position turned out to be wrong and the sun didn't even go down…

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14/03/2012
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Table Mountain from the V&A Waterfront

The last couple of posts featured visiting Table Mountain and going up by cable car as well as the fabulous panoramic views  and view sites on top of the mountain.  But all the pictures was taken from the mountain itself, so for today's post I wanted to show the view of the actual mountain as seen from the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront. 

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12/03/2012
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Enjoying the view on Table Mountain

The view from the top of Table Mountain is magnificent, awesome, stunning, breathtaking, beautiful, blêrrie mooi, unbeatable, c'est magnifique... and so I can go on.  How do you enhance that view even more?  You get a couple of people to sit right on the edge - or just use an angle to make it look like they do - and take a picture of them enjoying that (all the above adjectives all over again) view.  In this case they were…

9 Comments
09/03/2012
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Table Mountain cable car

Perhaps it's only me, but this angle of the cable car approaching the Upper Cable Station on Table Mountain is probably one of the most iconic and recognisable Table Mountain photo opportunities not showing the actual mountain.  I especially like this angle when the low clouds push in from the sea and you only see the top of Lions Head sticking out above it.  Now if I can just get the opportunity to photograph it which isn't the easiest thing to…

4 Comments
07/03/2012
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Visiting Table Mountain

One of the Seven Natural Wonders of the World. Situated within an Unesco World Heritage Site. Part of a National Park. Not just one of Cape Towns most iconic landmarks, but also one of South Africa's.   Who I am? Sound like a question from a game show with the obvious answer being Table Mountain.   Now I hope nobody got it wrong though. Table Mountain was on the top of our list of places to visit while in Cape…

7 Comments
05/03/2012