A young hiker hoists the broken trig beacon on top of Brakkloofrant overlooking Fish Hoek. This is a really nice trail that takes you on an hour or so walk from the east to the west of Fish Hoek across the ridge of the Fish Hoek mountain, with fabulous views over Fish Hoek and Simon's Town.
Today's rather wet walk took us past the Lewis Gay Dam which is easy to get to, but feels totally isolated in the mountains above Simons Town. Charles Gay was Mayor of Simons Town for 25 years and also Member of Parliament for the South Peninsula for 25 years. He is buried in the Gay family grave in the Old Burying Ground off Runciman Drive. The dam was constructed in 1952.
The Helderberg Nature Reserve on the slopes of the Helderberg Mountain is owned and managed by the City of Cape Town with the support from the Friends of the Helderberg Nature Reserve. There are a number of interesting trails and walks to suit all ages, and a very nice tea room and visitors centre. This gate depicts Peggy, the one-legged Spur-winged Goose that made the reserve famous in the adjoining town of Somerset West. This famous goose is even depicted on the Christmas lights in the centre of town each December.
A hike in Newlands Forest was just wonderful in the heat today. This gorgeous, regenerating indigenous forest with its paths and trails is easily accessible and free to all - even though they are making you pay to take dogs there from 1 April.
This is Kleinplaas Dam which is up in the mountains behind Simon's Town - a popular place to hike to. The people who built the dam in the 1960s must have been very hopeful and optimistic because the water has not even reached the base of the marker that was put in there to record water level goodness knows how many years ago.
High up on the Kalk Bay section of Table Mountain are these strange standing stones. They are the eroded remains of what were once cracks in the mountain but they really look like they were sculpted.
The ruin of an old Second World War radar station high on the Karbonkelberg above Hout Bay. It was built to detect submarines when they surfaced to recharge their batteries. You can see Little Lion's Head in the background.
The weather really doesn't know whether to laugh or cry! On Sunday we went for a hike in the Kalk Bay mountains and saw this rainbow over Fish Hoek - reaching up into Sun Valley.
Today is a public holiday in South Africa: Human Rights Day - the anniversary of the massacre of innocent people at Sharpeville in 21 March 1960. We celebrated our freedom from the shackles of apartheid by hiking up Table Mountain with our son who is visiting us from the big bad city of Johannesburg. He is off to Brazil soon to do a hike for Save the Children and was looking for an excuse to break in a new pair of hiking shoes. Here he is at the top of Kasteelspoort - one of the best ways to get up Table Mountain. He looks like he is hitchhiking to a far galaxy! Far below is a rather foggy Camps Bay.
As the cricket world cup rages in India, we do a different take on India with a walk up Table Mountain on the India Venster route. I am not really sure about the origin of the name but most agree the India comes from shape of the ravine between the two buttresses - Arrow Buttress and Venster Buttress - that looks like a map of India when viewed from below. The Venster part, so it is said, is from the Afrikaans word venster that means window and say that this window in the photograph is the origin of the name. 
Rock dragons high up on Klaassenskop overlooking Orange Kloof and Hout Bay. I almost expected fire to come out of those nostrils!
If its Wednesday, it must be hiking up Table Mountain and ABC Wednesday. M is for the Mountain Club Hut on the top of Table Mountain where we hiked in a roaring Southeaster wind. It was great to be able to have a cup of tea out of the wind. One of the walkers is a member of the Mountain Club and we were her guests.
Today is Heritage Day - created for all South Africans to reflect on our predecessors. The Cape Point section of the Table Mountain National Park - where the Cape Peninsula peters out into the southern ocean - seemed like a good place to start reflecting. There is evidence of Early Stone Age humans with stone tools in sandy deposits dated to 600 000 years ago, and yet more evidence of the tool-makings of Middle Stone Age humans 200 000 to 40 000 years ago. Even more visible to visitors are midden and cave deposits with Late Stone Age shellfish meal remains, stone tools and bits of pottery and bone dating from 21 000 years ago to the arrival of the European explorers in the Fifteenth Century.
Our hike today - a rather windy, cloudy day - took us along the Pipe Track above the "belle monde" suburb of Camp's Bay. This is a hazy view of Lions Head, living up to its original Khoikhoi name Kuru-gxan which means "emerging egg". A very scenic Sunday.
A Carpenter Bee (Xylocopa caffra) visiting a Fountain Bush (Psoralea aphylla) on top of Table Mountain this morning. Many fynbos plants rely on these carpenter bees for pollination. They are big bees, often called bumblebees, but South Africa does not have any true bumblebees (Bombus).
Making spirals in the fynbos: a White Spot Moth caterpillar in a Trichocephalus stipularis shrub.
Today is Wednesday - which means walking on Table Mountain and ABC Wednesday. Luckily one of the first flowers I saw in the fynbos on the slopes of Chapman's Peak above Hout Bay this morning was a Fire Heath (Erica cerinthoides). Apart from the fact that they glow red like a flame, they come up after a fire in the veld. And fynbos is famous for being a fire-dependent vegetation type. 
Cape Town Time