Head over heels

This morning's walk on Fish Hoek beach revealed lots of kelp washed up after last night's storm. Many of the kelp stipes were encrusted with barnacles which are the most fascinating creatures. They are highly modified crustaceans and this is their adult phase. After swimming around the ocean as planktonic larvae, the adults settle down, head first, and cement themselves to a substrate, secreting a shell and extending their legs (or cirri) through a hole at the top to filter out food particles. I think this one might be the White Dwarf Barnacle (Notomegabalanus algicola).
These were the creatures that so fascinated Charles Darwin too.

Stormy skies

Storm clouds gather over Meadowridge Common and Haylett Way Park children's playground. Autumn is in full swing - although yesterday was one of the hottest days we've had this year!

Mother Goose

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.

Bad Hair Day

Scene in Kloof Street. Scar is hair salon and the guy is Ninja from the hip hop music group, Die Antwoord, which is quite big here.

Thirties style

The Balmoral Hotel building in Muizenberg. Once the very height of seaside chic, then rather down the drain and very out. Now the elegant Art Deco building has been restored to its former glory.

Any interested hoteliers I wonder?

Getting married in the morning

Two friends tied the proverbial knot in a delightfully informal wedding ceremony in the Thomas Mossop Memorial Hall, which is used by the Methodist church, in Little Mowbray. A choir of young girls formed a singing and clapping guard of honour as we all came out.

(I was curious as to who Thomas Mossop was, but can't find anything about him.)

Bleached and beached

Chalky cuttlebones are a familiar sight on beach high tide lines in South Africa. As a kid I remember collecting them for my budgies. They are the internal skeletons of cuttlefish, members of the Cephalopodia (a Greek word meaning "head feet") class of mollusc that include squid, octopuses and cuttlefish -certainly the most sophisticated invertebrates around today. Their ancestors used to dominate the waters of the prehistoric ocean - everyone has heard of ammonites and belemnites; and there is even a legendary kraken.
My find this morning on Fish Hoek beach is probably the cuttlebone of Sepia papillata - a large cuttlefish (15 cm long) that occurs in the open ocean off southern Africa. The cuttlebone is used to regulate the buoyancy of the cuttlefish by modifying its gas and liquid content.
Cuttlefish are also famous for producing the familiar sepia pigment used in ink.

Information from Two Oceans: A guide to the marine life of southern Africa by George Branch et al.

Autumn harbinger

These sorrel flowers that have suddently appeared on the mountain are the first sign that Autumn is on its way. They are Oxalis polyphylla or finger sorrel.

Nurturing mother - with chameleons

I came across this column outside the Kramer Law building on Middle Campus at the University of Cape Town recently - a bronze done in 1996 by Bruce Arnott, entitled Alma Mater. I was very taken with the chameleon crawling up the side. The heritage trail brochure says of it "This sculpture of a female figure used as a supporting column is referred to as a caryatid and is often associated with classical Greek figurines. However, it is not exclusively a western figure, since it is known from China, ancient Persia, West Africa and the Congo, particularly in the art of the Luba people. This caryatid symbolically combines the twin roles of authority and responsibility. The phrase, Alma Mater (Latin: ‘nurturing mother’), is often used to denote a school or university, and here we see the emblems of learning being generously offered by the stylistically evolved caryatid figure. The chameleons represent historical process and transformation."

Sláinte

My belated St Patricks Day post - with apologies to the sainted Patrick!

Spotted

This week's Fish Hoek walk revealed a few Three-Spot Swimming Crabs (Ovalipes trimaculatus) washed up on the high tide mark. These crabs live in the turbulent surf zone on sandy beaches and eat bivalves and gastropods, particularly Plough Snails (Bullia). They can swim, as their hind limbs which have "paddles" on them indicate, but they also scuttle across the sand, and bury themselves in the sand - backwards first - when threatened.

The corner caffee

A typical scene in Batts Road, Wynberg - one of Cape Town's olderst suburbs.

Cool and green

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.

Cottage in need of TLC

Rhodes Cottage Museum on Main Road Muizenberg is a fascinating place to visit. It was in the front room on the left of this photo that he died, on 26 March 1902 - almost exactly a hundred and ten years ago. Whatever the current political feeling, Cecil John Rhodes played a huge role in the shaping of the South African nation. Yet this little museum (housed in the cottage that Rhodes bought to tide him over till the big house adjacent to it, Rust en Vrede, was designed and built by Herbert Baker) is rather run down inside, and the displays look like they could do with an upgrade. In comparison with some of the classy museums in our city, this one is rather poor -and sadly in need of a lick of paint and some proper restoration. It seems to be looked after by volunteers from the Muizenberg Historical Conservation Society, relying on the odd donation that gets stuffed into a little wooden box at the door. I wonder why De Beers, the fantastically, fabulously wealthy mining company that Rhodes masterminded, can't spare a million or two to sort it out.

Art and Aircon

Woodstock is possibly the most "quintessentially Cape Town" you can get. It is a wonderful mix of the old and the new, the mundane and the exciting, black and white - and just about anything in between. The swish and trendy Lovell Gallery for example, is wedged in between an aircon regas garage and a corner "cafe" on Albert Road. And a bit further down is the fantastic Old Biscuit Mill.

Bicycle race

Today was the annual Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour in which thousands and thousands of cyclists complete the track from Cape Town city centre all around the Peninsula to Green Point. Early this morning we passed them coming down De Waal Drive past Mosterts Mill. It was an absolute stinker of a hot day and I congratulate all the cyclists who completed the tour.

Sky views

These crazy people jump off Lion's Head and paraglide down to Camps Bay Beach. Always a bit tricky in Cape Towns windy conditions! Interested? Click here.

Imagining the past

As you leave Fish Hoek Beach you cross the railway line, and on your left is the South African Navy's "WO's, CPO's and PO's Mess". This is the site of Fish Hoek's original farm homestead that was built, it is thought, in the nineteenth century by one of the owners of the "Vischhoek loan place"or farm, a Thomas Palmer, who bought it in 1822 and then went insolvent, after which the farm was subdivided into three. Several subdivisions later it was bought by the formidable Hester de Villiers, who was the owner when this photo was taken in the early twentieth century. The scar made by the stone quarry (opened in 1896) in the hill above can be seen even to this day. Today, a hundred years later. The blue arrow marks the spot of the naval mess, hidden behind the ugly beach buildings.

Fabulous filtration

The water that collects naturally on the mountains of the Cape is a reddish-brown colour due to the nature of the vegetation and rock, and although it is perfectly sweet and clean, people were uncomfortable with it, so in 1935 work started on a filtration plant on the slopes of Table Mountain at Kloof Nek. The water that came from the Hely-Hutchinson and Woodhead reservoirs on top of Table Mountain was filtered through the plant and emerged in the taps of homes in Cape Town as crystal clear water. The plant is housed in this beautiful redbrick building which was designed by Patrick Henry Thomas Shillington and Franklin Kaye Kendall for the Cape Town City Council. You can see it at the start of the walk along the Pipe Track above Camps Bay at Kloof Nek.

Heat and, er, sea sand

Recreating the days of the Raj - on the beachfront of Camps Bay. To go inside, click here.

Life saving on Clifton

Today the Lifesaving Western Province junior and senior championships took place on Clifton Fourth Beach. Competitions consist of combinations of running, swimming, paddle-boarding and surf skiing and the choice is made of who will go through to the national champs later on.

Carnival time

Queuing to get into the Community Chest Carnival at Maynardville Park in Wynberg. It began as a theatrical garden party in 1954 and has evolved into an annual event that all indigenous Capetonians just can't resist. Famous for its variety of food stalls, this unique carnival raises funds for some 400 social welfare organisations that the Community Chest supports - from healthcare and rehabilitation to child support and care of the elderly.
Interesting to read that a carnival is associated with the period just before Lent in the Catholic religion. Its origins stretch way back in time.