Monday, September 24, 2007

National Braai Day

Unbelievable, but yes. We have a National Braai (BBQ) day.

We spent ours wandering around Tygerberg Nature Reserve. I have lived in Cape Town practically my entire life, and never knew this reserve even existed. The first I knew of it was when my mother moved house to about 1km from it (about 5 years ago), and mentioned it to me. Because of its position, it's not the kind of place you want to visit in bad weather - it's very exposed, so can get very windy and cold.

However, the weather was playing along today, for all the braaing that's taking place, no doubt. We decided to brave it and go have a wander. Needless to say, we are all thoroughly exhausted (up hill and down dale pushing pram and toddler = very sore back, arms and legs!). However, it was well worth it. The views were incredible - the wind had blown away the smog (I wish now I'd taken a photo of the view from the other side of the mountain, looking towards Cape Town) and so we could see all the way to the Franschoek mountains, Houwhoek on the far side of False Bay, down to Simonstown on the other side of False Bay, and across to Table Mountain. As I said - awesome views!

In addition to the stunning views, we were treated to our first exposure to ticks (welcome home to Africa!) since coming home, but more importantly, we saw buck! Up close and personal. At one stage, they took a real interest in the pram and followed us up the hill for quite a way. Finally I think they got a bit spooked by the sound of my phone taking photos and wandered off the road again into the bush. Incredible!

Here are a few photos (of the loads I took) to give you a flavour of the day. This is the back of the mountain - looking up towards the only eyesore: phone masts (which I've skillfully avoided including in the photo). The purple flowers look rather grey in the photo, but they were just gorgeous in real life. The yellow ones also look a bit dull. I think I will have to play around with my phone settings to get the right light.

This is looking out from the back of the reserve towards the Franschoek Mountains. From the top of the reserve you can see from there all the way round to Table Mountain.

This is the last of the buck disappearing back into the bush. They had followed us all the way from the large tree you can just see on the right, at the very bottom of the hill.

Here are the other buck - this is looking out towards Table Bay again. If you look closely you can see the baby buck with them. If I remember correctly, these are Bontebok, a type of antelope (we don't get deer in SA).

I love this country!

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